{"id":5078,"date":"2015-12-04T07:01:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T12:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5078"},"modified":"2017-10-30T18:39:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T22:39:34","slug":"weekend-movie-pick-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5078","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Spotlight,

Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, & Brian D’Arcy James in Spotlight<\/p><\/div>\n

Shades of Woodward and Bernstein, the based-on-a-true story Spotlight<\/em> (trailer<\/a>) follows the actions of an investigative journalism team way out on a limb in Catholic Boston. They\u2019re not just in pursuit of the story of clergy child sex abuse, their mission is also to expose the shameful cover-up of abusive priests, and the institutional shortcomings that allowed them to carry on. Unlike today’s social media blowhards (and political candidates), they can\u2019t just make accusations; they need actual proof.<\/p>\n

A nice coincidence is the support the reporters receive from another Ben Bradlee\u2014this one Ben Bradlee, Jr., played by John Slattery, who never has a good hair day. Like his father in the Watergate era, he lets the reporters run, even though he\u2019s initially skeptical they\u2019ll come up with anything.<\/p>\n

Crusading journalists are a social corrective we have largely lost in the era of declining newsroom budgets and staffs and the competition for sound bites and snarky bits. The reporters in this film reporters fill the job description, pushed by a fierce desire to expose the truth. Sometimes, of course, that leads to more truth than they might desire\u2014closer to home truths of different kinds. They\u2019re after the kind of story that wins Pulitzers (and did), but more important to the journalists, they know it\u2019s an important story for the affected families and a sobering story about how evil can hide in plain sight.<\/p>\n

The principals include the Boston Globe<\/em>\u2019s new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) and his investigative \u201cSpotlight\u201d team, led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton of the pursed lips), with reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo, who sticks his head out like a turtle, so eager is he to grab onto the story), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachael McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian D\u2019Arcy James). The actors do a fine job, as do Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup in smaller roles.<\/p>\n

As written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer and directed by McCarthy, the film is a \u201cmagnificent nerdy process movie\u2014a tour de force of filing cabinet cinema,\u201d says Justin Chang in Variety<\/em>. Yet it is never uninteresting. Even better, it is never sanctimonious.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s tension comes from fear that the Church will find out what the Globe<\/em> is up to and exert its considerable influence to put a stop to it or\u2014and almost worse from the reporters\u2019 point of view\u2014the Boston Herald <\/em>will scoop them. If they can delay publication until they have proof top Church leaders knew about the abuse, it would be impossible for them to persist in the \u201cfew bad apples\u201d claim.<\/p>\n

In sum, \u201cA taut story, well-told,\u201d says Jim Lane in the Sacramento News & Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 98%; audiences 96%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shades of Woodward and Bernstein, the based-on-a-true story Spotlight (trailer) follows the actions of an investigative journalism team way out on a limb in Catholic Boston. They\u2019re not just in pursuit of the story of clergy child sex abuse, their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Weekend Movie Pick: Spotlight - \"A taut story, well-told.\" Indeed!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,366,261,57,104],"tags":[203,416,449],"class_list":["post-5078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-drama","category-journalism","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-real-life","tag-the-boston-globe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1jU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6863,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5078\/revisions\/6863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}