Silent Movie Laughs Are Plentiful In The Fantastic Charlie Chaplin Effort The Gold Rush

Note: This review covers the 1942 version of The Gold Rush.

As Smash Mouth once sang, "All that glitters is gold". And in the 19th century, people headed West in the great California gold rush in hopes of scoring a fortune that was located directly below your feet. Even once that gold rush died down, people fervently traveled across the globe to all kinds of biomes in hopes of obtaining financial prosperity beyond their wildest dreams. This concept of striking rich by way of gold was such a ubiquitous idea throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, it was inevitable that one of the most prolific filmmakers of the early 20th century would tackle it in one of his films.

Lana Del Rey Deserved Better Than The 2013 Great Gatsby (When Good Songs Happen To Bad Movies)

Welcome to a new bi-weekly column called When Good Songs Happen To Bad Movies, in which I look at pretty well done songs that just so happened to debut in more subpar features.

Lots can be said about Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but one can never say that the feature had a shortage of bombastic elements. Whether such elements were actually good or not is another debate (I'd say mostly not), but it is one of the more audacious movies made in recent years, with 3D being utilized to help fully sell the absorbing atmosphere of the era while rap music populates 1920's environments.