Tom McCarthy

  • The Cobbler (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, January 2022) If The Cobbler is remembered for anything these days, it’s for having earned some disastrous reviews for both star Adam Sandler and writer-director Tom McCarthy. The bad reviews thing is not new for Sandler, but for McCarthy, it was a rare misfire in-between Academy Award nominations. As a reviewer, my first order of business in (belatedly) tacking The Cobbler was to determine if it was as bad as they said, and then (when the first point was proven) understanding how things went wrong in this story of a cobbler discovering a magical way to become those who leave their shoes with him. To sum my thesis up in a pithy statement, what happened was a classic mismatch between star and material, as well as between expectations and delivery. The Cobbler, at its heart, is meant as a piece of fantasy, taking a look at the local heroes that become part of the landscape—such the small shop owners that give heart to a neighbourhood. It’s a drama with odds twists and turns that would have made more sense had the film been executed as a low-budget independent film with character actors and low expectations. But putting Sandler in such a framework creates a monster—Sandler being Sandler, he can’t help but put his own stamp on the result, upsetting its balance. The other monster being created is that expectations for the film scale up to an unsustainable level, and in a broad comedy genre that the film had no intention of aiming for. I’m not calling The Cobbler a misunderstood classic, mind you: even in the best possible circumstances, it’s an odd assortment of moments that don’t work and can’t work in anything approaching mainstream sensibilities. There’s a blend of comedy, fantasy, crime, drama, tragedy and blunt-force emotional manipulation that feels like an assortment of leftovers blended together more out of daredevil glee than flavour consistency. Still, what we have here are not ideal circumstances: Sandler doesn’t fit as a humble Brooklyn shopkeeper, and he always jumps at the chance to broaden the film’s comedy beyond its shape. It doesn’t help that the premise feels too dumb to suspend disbelief, and that most of the plot developments barely make any sense. Whatever the film was going for by literalizing “walking in other people’s shoes” is lost when everyone attempts to do a Sandler impersonation. (Or worse: Sandler’s character using other bodies as ways to be mischievous and possibly a rapist.)  And the ending—ho boy, the ending. It doesn’t amount to an unjustly overlooked film: it amounts to a bad film, but a bad film whose flaws were made unforgivable by Sandler trying to get some serious creds from McCarthy (admittedly a ploy that was worked at least three other times) and McCarthy trying to get box-office clout from Sandler. The result is still a mess, and one that teeters on the edge of “You have to see this” if only to suffer through the ticker-tape parade of bad decisions that led to the final result.

  • Spotlight (2015)

    Spotlight (2015)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2016) At first glance, Spotlight doesn’t look like the most exciting movie of the year. It’s meant to tell the true story of investigative journalists who spend months uncovering a systematic pattern of child abuse by Boston-area priests and attempts to cover up the scandal. That’s not exactly gripping stuff, and the first few minutes of the film don’t promise much more by focusing on a newsroom and Tom McCarthy’s sober (i.e.: not flashy) directing style. But here’s the strange thing: after a while, once the introductions are out of the way, Spotlight starts getting better. Much better. Along with the journalist heroes of the film, we start getting absorbed in the scandal they’re uncovering. As they chase down clues, we start sheering for those characters in all of their quirkiness, drive and doggedness. In its own quiet way, Spotlight has a few devastating sequences, whether it’s interviews with abuse survivors, encounters with the guilty priests, or a disembodied voice suggesting that the magnitude of the scandal is far, far higher than anyone would suspect. It builds and builds, passing over 9/11 and accusations being hurled back at the investigative journalists, until a satisfying revelation of the scandal … followed by a few devastating title cards as epilogue. Spotlight may discuss a church scandal, but it’s not an anti-religion film: Not only does it give voice to practising Catholic characters, it’s far more vital as a celebration of the power of investigative journalism. In its own low-key way, Spotlight is a terrific spiritual successor to All the President’s Men: In a fair world, this film would lead to scores of young people enrolling in journalism school in order to make the fifth estate even stronger, better and more relevant to the nation. Instead, we’re left pondering the devastating impact of the Internet on newspaper closures, the drive away from in-depth journalism and toward click-bait media. Spotlight isn’t flashy, but it does have a fair number of compelling performances, for the always-excellent Mark Ruffalo as an intensely driven journalist, to Michael Keaton further enjoying a later-career renaissance as a sympathetic editor, to Rachel McAdams as a sensitive investigator and Liev Schreiber as a surprisingly enlightened manager. The script is a wonder of efficiency, as it manages to make document analysis compelling and lays down its scandalous revelation like a nightmarish horror movie. Best yet: the film reportedly stays faithful to the facts of the events. Spotlight may or may not be the best movie of the year as exemplified by the Academy Award it got, but it’s in many ways one of the best-controlled of them, one of the most quietly engrossing and one of the most surprising. It certainly qualifies as must-see viewing.