This Must Be The Place (2011)

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Written by Paolo Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello
Starring Sean Penn, Judd Hirsch, France McDormand and Eve Hewson

Cheyenne, a retired rock star living off his royalties in Dublin, returns to New York City to find the man responsible for a humiliation suffered by his recently deceased father during W.W.II.

In a role that seems to contradict itself, Sean Penn plays a quiet, mild-tempered former rock star who seems to be trying everything he possible can to not be a cliché. This alone makes for an interesting character, but the filmmakers try to add more, unnecessary elements to make the movie more deep than it needs to be.

The first act is remarkably engrossing. The mannerisms and voice of the character Penn created was an astonishing change from the norm. The study of who this rock star really was after all of the lights and cameras were away and after he grew out of his drug habits was worth making a full-length movie. But they didn't focus on that too long.

In an attempt to make a statement that had already been made in the first five minutes, the writers decided to add the element of a dying Father who was held at Auschwitz during WWII. This played less like a genius twist in the story and more like a cry for an award. The plot had already been set and with the destination not having changed at all, the entire middle forty-five minutes just seemed gratuitous.

Sean Penn gives a killer, toned down performance that rivals many of his other roles. It's just a shame that it is wasted on half of this film. Despite a few technical editing problems (that are more of a personal opinion), I really enjoyed the beginning of this movie. It felt a lot like a Coen Brothers film. But the last half just killed it for me. It was trying to be something it just simply wasn't.

My Rating: 5.5/10

The Cobbler (2014)

Directed by Thomas McCarthy
Written by Thomas McCarthy and Paul Sado
Starring Adam Sandler, Method Man, Steve Buscemi and Dustin Hoffman

Max Simkin repairs shoes in the same New York shop that has been in his family for generations. Disenchanted with the grind of daily life, Max stumbles upon a magical heirloom that allows him to step into the lives of his customers and see the world in a new way. Sometimes walking in another man's shoes is the only way one can discover who they really are.

Throughout the run-time for this movie, the entire thing feels like it was conceptualized to be a short film, but some Hollywood big-wig got a hold of it, slapped Adam Sandler's name to it and told them to stretch it out to forty-five minutes longer than it should be. Or perhaps they just added too much to the plot.

Rather than changing the focus of the movie as many times as they did, they should have kept to the plot of the first two acts. A cobbler finds that one of his machines has these magical powers, then uses said machine for his own advantage, but soon finds himself in over his head. 

Had they stuck to that script instead of making him use his powers for good in a completely convoluted and unnecessary way, this could have been a better movie. But they decided to over complicate things to the point where it felt like the director didn't know what it was about.

Regardless of all the problems I had with this movie, I feel we remember Adam Sandler movies as being worse than they are. Now I'm not talking about "Jack and Jill" or another painfully bad movie. But on average his movies are -- well, average. 

I feel that there is so much hate thrown towards them because they aren't as good as "Billy Madison" or "Happy Gilmore". Would I watch "The Cobbler" again? No, unless it was on TV and every other channel was some TLC reality series. But I wouldn't go so far as to say this was a terrible movie. It's just average.

My Rating: 5.5/10