Dear Write Reader(s),
I am sitting at the theater bar in between showings, drinking a seltzer water (scouts honor) and I am using my downtime to finish up these articles so you can read them all and enjoy the Academy Awards tomorrow night as you should. I just left Spotlight, and all I can think is, “Holy Bejeesus.” 
I don’t think that’s a word. But I’m thinking it.
We have not one, but two seemingly documentaries on the list this year, and they are both fantastic. The other film I’m talking about is, of course, The Big Short, and I can’t figure out which one I loved more.
What is Spotlight, you ask? Good question. I didn’t know what it was when I sat down in the theatre either. Spotlight is a film documenting the spotlight team of the Boston Globe, a team who, you may or may not know, is responsible for bringing to light the enormous Boston Catholic Church scandal. These news articles, written by the intrepid Spotlight team, led to huge investigations into the Catholic Church and their handling of the thousands of priests world over who have been molesting young children for decades. It also earned them a Pulitzer for Public Service. Spotlight stars some of my favorite actors, including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James (Go U NU!), John Slattery, and Liev Schreiber as the probing writers of the Boston Globe and Stanley Tucci as lawyer Mitchell Garabedian. It was directed by Tom McCarthy, as well as written by him with the help of Josh Singer. It’s nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Ruffalo, and best Supporting Actress for McAdams.
Here come the spoilers. Skip the following paragraph, as well as ignore Google, as this was a public news story and it’s highly unlikely you haven’t heard about it before today.
In 2001, the Boston Globe brought on a new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber aka Sabertooth from that first X-Men movie so long ago). Because Marty is Jewish (that’s not really why, but all the Bostonians seem to really care about his religion), he wants to investigate a story about a priest charged with molesting hundreds of children. For some reason, this story is currently not a thing. Walter “Robby” Robinson (Keaton) is the editor of the Spotlight team. Spotlight are a small group of journalists who spend months writing deeply investigatory journalist pieces. You know, the kind that Christina Applegate really wanted to write in Anchorman. So the team, comprised of Michael Rezendes (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), and Matt Carroll (d’Arcy James [GO CATS]), get to work on chasing down leads and perfecting their non-regional dialects (okay I promise to stop quoting Anchorman) and they slowly begin to uncover this story, which is so much bigger than one priest. Soon, they have a list of 87 priests who have molested children, and it’s total madness. Of course, Cardinal Law is covering the whole thing up, and pretending he doesn’t know anything about it, and the people of fair Boston don’t want this thing to get out so they’re all trying to cover it up. When I say the people of Boston, I mean all the people featured in the film. I’m sure everyone else is perfectly lovely. Of course, they also get held up because of 9/11 (which is a very legitimate reason) and the story ends up being delayed, but eventually the truth comes out, and they end the film with a list of statistics that will terrify you about the scope and magnitude of this whole thing.
I absolutely loved this film. Usually I love them all, so I don’t know that this statement really means much, but I adored it. I loved watching Mark Ruffalo dash around, being Mark Ruffalo. He makes a great news reporter, all neurotic and passionate about the story he’s working on. His performance was similar to his work in Now You See Me, but he did some interesting physical work with his face that took him in a different direction. Rachel McAdams was good, not particularly mesmerizing, but good. Brian d’Arcy James was also solid. Basically, everyone was. And of course the great and majestic Stanley Tucci was there. I’m beginning to feel as though all a person needs to make a film great is Stanley Tucci. It doesn’t have to be a big part at all; perhaps it’s just his presence on set. I really loved watching them methodically uncovering this story, piece by piece. They all did a really great job in bringing the story to life (see what I did there). I felt like I was part of the action. On a silly note, the dialect work was fantastic! It’s pretty hard to set a story in Boston without bringing in that whole “pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd” thing, and it’s a hard accent to pull off authentically.
The direction was really wonderful and it took this from a wannabe docudrama to a well-crafted film with a particularly honest feel. It felt just as huge as the story was, and the ending really brings it home. The film ends after they’ve run the story and they are fielding calls from survivors, and suddenly you get a list full of statistics about the scope and magnitude of this story. It just feels huge, and important. Which, of course, it is. There’s nothing flashy about this film, it’s just a solid piece of good storytelling from beginning to end. Nothing explodes, no one dies, it just does it’s job, much like a well-written news article.
We’ll see if this film has the legs to keep up with some of the other contenders on this list. It did what it does extremely well, and reminds me of the year Argo stole the show. There are some other heavy hitters, but I think this can hold it’s own. I also think Ruffalo deserves that Best Supporting Actor. He’s been nominated for Oscars before, and I’m hoping this is his year. He should definitely take it over Bale, and now that I’ve given it some thought, if I had to choose between The Big Short and Spotlight, I’d take Spotlight any day.
Live, Love, Learn,
Rebecca & The Write Teacher(s)