It is the story of how the Boston Globe's Spotlight investigative team, a four person team at the Globe that historically conducts long form, and long term, investigative journalism, proved that the Arch-Diocese of Boston, under Cardinal Bernard Law for decades covered up more than a thousand counts of sexual abuse by roughly 90 of the cities 1,500 Catholic priests.
Directed by Tom McCarthy, a man of profoundly uneven talents. McCarthy wrote Up, perhaps the greatest of all the Pixar animated features, now he has directed Spotlight a film which rivals something like Zodiac and All the President's Men as perhaps the greatest newspaper movie of all time. In the middle, he made The Cobbler and Adam Sandler disaster about which the nicest thing I can say is that it would have been vulgar pandering unworthy of viewing even IF it hadn't been so racist as to be totally rejected as an object of art on that grounding alone. I don't know what the deal is with McCarthy, but let's hope Spotlight is an indication that the man is coming into his own as a film maker.
The acting in this movie is bananas good.
Liev Schreiber has never, in his life, been better than he is as Marty Baron, the executive editor of the Globe. The performance centers around Baron's quiet decency, his refusal to compromise, and his absolute insistence on the role of the newspaper as an engine of change. He is a kind of existential detective, and towards the end of the movie he gets a speech where he says to his investigative team, "most of the time, we are scrambling around in the dark, and when the lights suddenly come on there is a lot of blame to go around." This line reflects what we have seen all through the film. Records rooms are dark, conversations happen on lit porches surrounded by dark so intense that if one of the characters were to reach out their arm it would all but disappear. I doubt that Schreiber will get a nomination for his performance here, if only because it seems impossible to imagine a world where Spotlight picks up four acting nominations (and McAdams, Ruffalo, and Keaton are virtually certain to be nominated for their performances).
And how about Mark Ruffalo, huh? Whenever this guy wants he can turn it on and remind you that in addition to being Bruce Banner, he is running shoulder to shoulder with Brad Pitt as the best actor of his generation.
Michael Keaton has never been better. I said the same thing last year about Birdman, and I have to say it again now.
McAdams is good in this film, she is given more to do as an actress than she usually is, but still not enough. I feel like her entire career, and this film is no exception, is like a high powered car kept perpetually in first gear. I want to see what can happen when she is really given something interesting to do. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.
Ultimately, though, the real star of this movie is editor Tom McArdle. The film's pacing is brilliant, economical, and exhilarating without ever once sacrificing clarity or narrative vision. Because the film includes virtually no virtuoso camera work, McArdle is shouldering the whole load for that sense of pace and movement and he doesn't flag under the pressure. In fact, at one point, Schreiber's Marty Baron is editing the draft of the story before it goes to print, circles a mistake, and when Keaton asks what is wrong simply replies "adjective." The editing of this film, like Baron, has removed all the adjectives. What is left is perfect newspaper writing: clean, crisp, and fit to print.
Rating: 4/4
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