The Cobbler

The honest excelling hardworking days routinely passing without deviation, vital know-how and requisite skill generating consistent reliable business.

A modest son taking care of the fam after the sudden disappearance of his father, mom resigned yet persistently hopeful that one startling day he'll lovingly return.

The old school neighbourhood traditional and lively characteristically existing as it has for many years, local citizens daring and politically active in the stalwart fight against gentrification.

Things proceed the days pass by difference is found in random conversations, with a wide variety of inquisitive clients who on occasion discuss things at length.

Their shoes as well the various designs some intricate fashions or dependable customs, so many lying about in his shop at the somewhat dull end of a typical day.

Until one day his sewing machine rebelliously decides to stubbornly break down.

Leading him to use an old model from the basement.

With wild unknown imaginary features. 

It's a bit far-fetched this world weary Cobbler although it's still well-suited to the heroic times, not as flashy or bedazzling as Marvel or D.C but so much more appealing in the gentle undertow. 

The protagonist isn't a crazy rich genius with unlimited resources at his or her disposal, nor a gifted scientist creatively experimenting with research grants which lavishly facilitate, he's rather a regular humble Joe who genuinely cares about work and family, and even comes around to loving his neighbourhood and his shop's old school place ensconced within it.

He is uncertain as to how to proceed after accidentally discovering the miraculous tool, and engages in spirited trial and error with comic results before taking things seriously.

Indeed he cleverly takes the unsung side of an elderly resident who wants to keep his apartment, and is able to strategically embrace multi-step planning in complex resilient underground economics.

It's cool to see the little guy stand up and industriously help out the people in his community.

It's more organic, not a $60 dollar cheque.

Strong local initiatives. 

Beyond oligarch power.

Stillwater

A father whose tumultuous routine led to an awkward relationship with his struggling family (Matt Damon as William), is consumed with obsessive guilt several years later when his daughter's arrested (Abigail Breslin as Allison). 

She's found guilty of resonant murder and sent to prison near the coast of Marseille, her father visiting her there when he can, the flights expensive, work hard to find.

She emphatically proclaims her innocence and on his most recent visit reveals a clue, which gives him reemergent hope as he soon tries to get her case reopened. 

Obdurately blocked however by pressing realities within the law, he buckles-down and radically adjudicates by trying to find the suspect himself.

Problems: he doesn't speak French and is oblivious to local custom, he's also spent most of his life in the rural American mid-west and is generally uncertain as to how to proceed.

Moving forward nevertheless fate soon secures a definitive lead, and provides shelter and cultural refinement not to mention employment and domestic salvation. 

But to find the irascible murderer he may have to pay too high a price.

Caught between cultures and families. 

He instinctually reacts with western-style gusto. 

Expediently extemporary the ethical dilemmas contract and metastasize, no easy answers no glib illumination as a hard-boiled family deals with its own.

As newfound chances wholesomely radiate and enlivened parenthood intricately seasons, bad decisions still surreally occupy a bitter frustrated entombed consciousness. 

He's willing to risk everything he's gained on an assuréd probability which crosses the streams, if things work out, tout va bien toujours, if they fall apart, it's worse than worst case.

Not only that, it soon becomes apparent that his daughter's innocence is not that clear-cut, and that the investigation held in accordance may not have been led quite so far astray.

I wouldn't have taken such a risk new life's far too precious for improvised risk management, it does bring about the sought after ends, but they could have been achieved through less threatening means. 

In terms of a neo-western-film-noir mind*^*& Tom McCarthy's Stillwater internationally succeeds nonetheless.

Nothing quite like amoral gristle.

Destitute detritus.

Mid-winter mayhem. 

Spotlight

A community, bound together by traditional bonds stretching back for tightly knit centuries, growing and changing over time yet remaining loyal to specific ways of life, to institutions, whose reputation for kindness and charity has lovingly guided initiatives structured by compassion and understanding which encourage warm hearted gatherings in order to anchor humanistic trusts throughout, within and beyond the great city of Boston, which is under fire this year in American cinema.

But it's not as fuzzy as all that, as Tom McCarthy's Spotlight points out, a filmic examination of the Boston Globe reporters who brought to light monstrous religious failings, abysmal breaches of trust, and an entrenched sociopolitical culture devoted to covering it up, to overlooking its monumental shortcomings, its violence, its subversion of its fundamental principles.

True believers who attempt to tenderly encourage inclusive communal growth are exceptional people, it's only when they either exclude large portions of the population who believe in something else or commit acts of terror that serious problems arise, augmented by parts of the population who try to exclude them for believing what they do.

But for true believers, the bonds they cultivate between themselves and religious authorities are truly sacred, and if such authorities take for granted the sacred nature of these bonds and viciously exploit them to corruptly satisfy perverted desires, relying on their image and authority to prevent people from coming forward with shocking contradictory truths, they shatter their aura of integrity and obscure their charitable foundations.

Spotlight examines the tough decisions Boston Globe reporters, themselves Christian and citizens of Boston, had to make in order to bring the truth to light, the idyllic patience they required to expose corrupt religious and civic bureaucracies as they furtively waited until they had enough evidence to comment.

A passion for justice challenges the team's resolve at one memorable point, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) demanding action, Spotlight team leader Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) logically refusing, the film having carefully crafted a number of corresponding interviews and investigations the revelations of which frustratingly challenge the cohesivity of their discipline, not to mention that it's their community they're shocking, their heritage they're disillusioning.

It's not like someone took office supplies home here, government information was misplaced, high ranking officials from different cultural institutions attempted to block them, the law prevented truths from being discussed, testimony from scared impoverished victims was difficult to obtain, assistance from like-minded jaded professionals difficult to coax, trust, trust had to be relied upon but the issue they were investigating had resoundingly destroyed the bedrock of trust their contemporaries and interviewees had sought to preserve, making the situation highly volatile, its outputs, highly devastating.

Yet invaluable.

A tough film examining tough issues from tough perspectives with a tenacious resolve.

In search of true justice.

True reform.

For true believers.