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

Set Fire to the Stars (2014)

Directed by Andy Goddard
Written by Andy Goddard and Celyn Jones
Starring Elijah Wood, Celyn Jones, Steve Mackintosh and Kelly Reilly

An aspiring poet in 1950s New York has his ordered world shaken when he embarks on a week-long retreat to save his hell raising hero, Dylan Thomas.

Based on a true story and filled with exerts from the poems of Dylan Thomas, this is one of the more beautifully written films I have seen. Unfortunately that is only because of the subject matter. In regards to the screenplay, it felt as though the writers would throw in a poem whenever they were out of ideas. They were, however, clever enough to make the poem being recited relevant to the scene.

It was apparent that the theme the director was trying to get across was feeling your emotions before you try to break them down and understand them. Being the life philosophy of Dylan Thomas (at least in this film), it attempted to explain why he would act out and had no filter. Rather than accomplishing this, it felt more like a cheap attempt to make this story that didn't really need to be told mean something.

The only real positive points about this movie are the poems, the reciting of said poems and the cinematography. Everything else just bored me. Had this been twenty minutes longer, I'm not sure if I could have finished it without taking a break. 

This movie has been getting very mixed reviews. The audience is almost perfectly split down the middle. So who know. You may love it. Check it out and let me know what you think.

My Rating: 5/10

The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014)

Directed by Phil Alden Robinson
Written by Daniel Taplitz, based on the film "The 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum" written by Assi Dayan
Starring Robin Williams, Mila Kunis, Peter Dinklage and Melissa Leo

A perpetually angry man is informed he has 90 minutes to live and promptly sets out to reconcile with his family and friends in the short time he has left.

Throughout the 83 minutes that this movie plays, the quality goes up and down from being bad, then flirting with the line of being good, only to fall back down again. It never fully satisfies with it's story telling.

Opening with a nice, picturesque scene of a family having a picnic, your image of the father is immediately shattered when they cut to him stuck in traffic 25 years later. It is obvious that this was done on purpose, but I felt that Robin Williams character never fully goes back to that original state of happiness, rendering the entire movie meaningless.

Why would you go to the hospital without a shirt?

With little humor and a lot of yelling, perhaps this film was made more for those who actually live in New York and could relate to the protagonists experiences. But to the rest of us, at least for myself, it fell flat.

That's the perfect word to describe this movie. It wasn't good or bad. It was just flat. Although some scenes peaked my interest and others pushed me away, my emotional connection with the film stayed the same throughout, never changing from the "Yeah… I'm watching a movie…" emotion.

The best part about the movie was seeing Robin Williams. Perhaps this is a new phenomena since his death, but it is quite enjoyable just to see him on screen. It's hard to miss him, even when he's yelling at everyone.

My Rating: 5/10