Anonymous Content, First Look Media, Participant Media,
Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, John Slattery
Based on a true story, Spotlight is a special team of of investigative journalists working at the Boston Globe. They take on stories that take extra time and effort, sometime up to a year to seek out all the facts and prepare a special story or series of stories. Led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) the Globe get a new manager from Miami who wants to improve sales. One his ideas is for Spotlight to investigate the policy of the Catholic Church to reassign priests who are known pedophiles, molesting young boys and girls. As the dig into the story, the find much more than they ever expected. This is true story of how they managed to go against all the odds to bring this story to light in one of the most groundbreaking stories of all times.
This movie won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2016. Surprisingly, this is the second film in a row starring Michael Keaton to win Best Picture. This is a very well done Docudrama and won an award for being most accurate portrayal of a real story, and the actors certainly put a LOT of effort into making the depictions of the real characters very lifelike. In fact, many of the reporters hung around the set and were amazed at how accurate the settings and depictions were done. Best film of 2015? I doubt that, but it is a good film. Hollywood types have a strange way of jumping on the bandwagon to to vote for a cause instead of a film, but this is not the worst Best Picture I have seen them choose. But it is popular to bash the Catholics these days. Most of the reporters who investigated the real story were, in fact, Roman Catholics, and they went to great lengths to show the hard choice of telling the story, even if it harms the church that has done a lot of good for the city. This is a conundrum, for sure. The agony in the faces of the folks is very well portrayed. From what I read, the actors did so well in portraying the people, that many of them remarked that it was like looking in a mirror. Robbie Robinson said that if Michael Keaton robbed a bank, the Boston Cops would be standing by ready to put the cuffs on Mr. Robinson in a blink of an eye. It was a nice compliment to the performance Michael pulled off. Basically, the subject matter is hard to take, and they may have been able to spend a little more effort on the victims, instead of all about the reporters, but that is how they chose to show it. All in all, this is a very well done movie and well worth watching. It’s a very serious topic, but very well done.
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