The Cobbler
Film Review by Kam Williams

Max (Adam Sandler) is the fourth generation in a long line of cobblers whose family tree can be traced all the way back to a business founded by his great-grandfather Pinchas Simkin (Donnie Keshawarz) in Eastern Europe in the 19th Century. Max presently plies his trade in a modest shoe repair shop located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The bashful bachelor still lives at home and dotes on his elderly mother (Lynn Cohen) once he gets off work. He’s never dated, but that doesn’t stop him from ogling attractive passersby while eating pickles on the street with Jimmy (Steve Buscemi), the barber who runs the establishment next-door.

Max’s fortunes change the day a neighborhood bully (Method Man) enters the store and demands that his alligator shoes’ damaged soles be sewn on the spot. When Max balks because his stitching machine is broken, menacing Ludlow gives him until the end of day, or else.

After Ludlow storms out, Max ventures into the basement where he finds an antique stitcher which’ll do in a pinch. He repairs the tattered, size10½s and slips them on, since his feet just happen to be the same size.

Lo and behold, Max gets the shock of his life when he magically morphs into Ludlow. Then, he starts trying on other customers’ shoes, too, and turns into the owner each time.

Curious, Max decides to test this newfound ability to literally walk in another man’s moccasins. He proceeds to make a mess everywhere he goes, even upsetting his mother by walking into the house looking exactly like her long-lost husband (Dustin Hoffman) after donning a pair of his penny loafers.

Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy, The Cobbler has to be considered a big disappointment, given the high expectations set by his impressive earlier offerings which include The Station Agent, Up, Win Win, The Visitor and Million Dollar Arm. Unfortunately, the fatal design flaw here rests with casting, since Adam Sandler tends to fall flat in a flick if he isn’t going full retard, ala his most successful outings as The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison.

Sorry, Sandler simply isn’t very convincing playing a character with an I.Q. above room temperature.

Fair (1 star)

PG-13 for violence, profanity and partial nudity

In English and Yiddish with subtitles

Running time: 98 minutes

Distributor: RLJ / Image Entertainment

To see a trailer for The Cobbler, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQGpDi5mM-4       

Faults
Film Review by Kam Williams

Dr. Ansel Roth (Leland Orser) was once a world-renowned psychotherapist specializing in deprogramming. Trouble is, his career has been in sharp decline ever since a client’s child committed suicide while still in his care.

Presently, he’s been reduced to renting a ballroom at a low-rent hotel to give a lecture before hawking his new book “Sects, Cults and Mind Control.” He now delivers these talks more out of a need to pay the rent than a belief in the efficacy of his coercive methods of rescuing a person caught in the clutches of a charismatic megalomaniac. But that doesn’t stop Dr. Roth from springing into action when he’s approached for help by a couple attending the talk.

It seems that Evelyn (Beth Grant) and Terry’s (Chris Ellis) daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has cut herself off from the rest of the world for months since being brainwashed by a mysterious cult called Faults. The parents are so desperate they immediately agree to Ansel’s exorbitant fee despite the warning that his odds of success are only 50-50. After collecting a handsome advance, he proceeds to snatch Claire off the street into a van with the help of a couple of goons.

The plan is to restrain her in a remote motel for the five days it should take to undo the indoctrination. And while Ansel is alone in one room with Claire, her folks wait in the one right next-door, anxiously anticipating a happy reunion.

The plot thickens, however, as it becomes clear that increasingly-exasperated Ansel isn’t up to the task. To the contrary, it appears that Claire might even be getting the better of their intense sessions. Yet, the shrink arrogantly threatens to stop the sessions unless he’s paid the balance of his bill.

So unfolds Faults, an intriguing treat that walks a fine line between dark comedy and psychological thriller. The picture marks the feature-length writing and directorial debut of Riley Stearns whose real-life wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, squares-off here as Claire opposite her gifted co-star, Leland Orser.

Cooped up together in very close quarters, the two gradually ramp up the intensity in an ever-escalating game of cat-and-mouse vaguely evocative of Linda Blair and the Exorcist. Don’t be surprised if the tables are turned and the hunter is somehow bested by the game.

A mind is a terrible thing to lose!

Very Good (3 stars)

Unrated

Running time: 89 minutes

Distributor: Screen Media Films

To see a trailer for Faults, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ylsmarMnE      

It's official (and has been for a while) but if you are at SXSW and interested in learning about finding a TV partner in a digital world, come to my panel:

Web Junkie
DVD Review by Kam Williams

How long do you think you could you survive without access to a cell phone or computer? A few hours? A day? A week? How about three months? That’s the degree of deprivation awaiting adolescents diagnosed as addicted to the internet over in China, the first country to officially recognize the burgeoning malady as a clinical disorder.

The Rx for the afflicted is 90 days of rehab at one of 400 paramilitary boot camps where one must adhere to a Spartan daily regimen sans any electronic stimuli. Going cold turkey is not an easy thing to adjust to for kids used to playing video games for hours on end.

But that is precisely the goal of the shrinks in Web Junkie, a cautionary tale making one wonder whether America might not be far behind. The documentary was this critic’s pick as the #1 foreign film of 2014. It was directed by Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia who were afforded extraordinary access to the intervention and treatment of a trio of teenage boys whose exasperated parents sought help from a facility in Beijing.

The film traces the transformation of Hope, Hacker and Nicky from insufferable, anti-social jerks who barely communicate with their families, teachers and classmates into sensitive souls truly changed by therapy and the period offline. It’s nothing short of miraculous to see the same kid who couldn’t be bothered to talk to his father eventually melt into a touchy-feely hugger who upon reuniting tearfully says, “I love you, Dad.”

Overall, the movie makes a convincing case that cell phone use ought to be limited during a child’s formative years when the social part of the brain is still developing. For, the subjects of this telling expose certainly seem to suffer from stunted development due to too much time spent playing computer games and surfing the ‘net.

A tough love remedy from the Orient designed for impressionable young minds which prefer virtual reality to relating in the flesh.

Excellent (4 stars)

Unrated 

In Mandarin with subtitles

Running time: 75 minutes

Distributor: Kino Lorber

DVD Extras: Deleted scenes; and podcast interviews with directors Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia.

To see a trailer for Web Junkie, visit

McFarland, USA
Film Review by Kam Williams

In the fall of 1987, Jim White (Kevin Costner) was fired as head football coach of a high school team in Boise, Idaho when he lost his temper and hit one of his players in the face and drew blood. With a wife (Maria Bello) and two young daughters (Morgan Saylor and Elsie Fisher) to support, the hot-headed perfectionist found himself in urgent need of another job.

So, he accepted a demotion to assistant football coach at the public high school in the predominantly-Latino, working-class town of McFarland, California. However, once it became clear on the gridiron that being second-in-command wasn’t working out, the versatile veteran came up with the idea of fielding a cross-country track team instead.

Though initially skeptical, Principal Camillo (Valente Rodriguez) grudgingly agreed, and White immediately started scouting around campus for fleet-footed prospects. As it turned out, many of McFarland High’s Chicano students were already in shape, being accustomed to darting the long distance from the field to the classroom, after picking fruit and vegetables alongside their parents from the crack of dawn.

Upon settling on seven promising protégés, the dilemma yet confronting Coach White was whether or not their cash-strapped clans could afford the luxury of letting them run track in lieu of laboring as farm workers in the wee hours of the morning? If so, the boys might also be afforded an opportunity to expand their horizons, since a standout’s landing an athletic college scholarship was definitely a distinct possibility.

Directed by New Zealand’s Niki Caro (Whale Rider), McFarland, USA is much more than your typical, overcoming-the-odds sports saga, in spite of the fact that it might sound fairly formulaic at first blush. Yes, it’s a classic case of a disgraced coach making the most of a shot at redemption with the help of a motley crew of underestimated underdogs. Nevertheless, this true tale of overcoming-the-odds proves oh so touching because it simultaneously sheds light on the plight on of an invisible sector of society, namely, the masses of mostly Mexican immigrants who harvest our produce in obscurity for a mere pittance.

Kevin Costner has never been more endearing than in this outing as a devoted mentor and family man. And he’s surrounded in that endeavor by a talented supporting cast convincing enough to make it easy to forget you’re watching actors, at least until the closing credits roll. That’s when we’re treated to photos of the real-life people just portrayed, plus positive updates about their present lives which serve to validate all the sacrifices made.

Heartwarming!

Excellent (4 stars)

Rated PG for violence, mild epithets and mature themes

In English and Spanish with subtitles

Running time: 129 minutes

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

To see a trailer for McFarland, USA, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-VAOlHGE6Q