"Sidewalk Stories is both sweet and shameless, a movie as embarrassingly timely as it is audaciously unfashionable. There's almost no talking in this low-budget indie-a first feature written, produced and directed by Charles Lane, who also stars. The mode is pantomime, with an occasional sound effect and an elaborate, low-key musical accompaniment. Sidewalk Stories leads with its chin; it's (a pure) homage to Charlie Chaplin...But Lane, who is black, has more on his mind than bittersweet pathos. Sidewalk Stories is a radical attempt to make Chaplin contemporary..." (J. Hoberman, Village Voice). Lane plays the Artist (street artist, that is) who finds himself the adopted father of a two-year-old whose own dad is murdered in a back alley. Together they comb the subways and Bowery missions for beds, bringing the humor and the pathos of Chaplin's Tramp into a contemporary light that is not glaring, but hauntingly soft-the better to underscore its unswerving commentary.