Director: Tom McCarthy. Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams and John Slattery. Distributor: Open Road Films. Film length: 2:08. Release date: November 6, 2015.
I believe I’ve seen the best movie of the year yesterday afternoon. It was “Spotlight” and the script for this film was just about perfect!
It is both relevant and hugely important in our current world where the Roman Catholic Church has been shaken to the core with its concealing and protecting serial pedophile predators. Having lived as I have in Boston now for half my life, I think Spotlight is the single best big budget Hollywood film shot in Boston yet. Forget previous films about the mob, Whitey Bulger and the rest. Spotlight deals specifically with the ninety Boston area priests who were proven to be serial pedophiles. Remember how Cardinal Law and all the others let down all those parishes and their children? Consequently, this film deals with the real folks in Boston living in poverty, often without fathers, affected by this tragedy. And it suggests how those families were permanently damaged by the suicides and drug abuse in the affected families afterward.
Michael Keaton most definitely deserves Best Actor this year. He does not grandstand or hog any scenes he appears in. His acting chemistry with the other members of the ensemble here is superb, and in particular with fine actor Mark Ruffalo as another Boston Globe Spotlight writer. Performances by Liev Schreiber as Marty Baron formerly of the New York Times, Stanley Tucci as lawyer Mitchell Garabedian and Rachel McAdams as Sasha Pfeiffer are all powerful and well done. I think Mr. Tucci’s acting in this film may be his finest performance to date and I have seen many of his recent film roles.
This is a luminous movie about the best kind of writing that goes on with the Boston Globe and that won the Spotlight team Pulitzers for journalism. And its subject matter is about the abuse of power and the institutionalization of pedophile priests in a major American city. The end credits reveal that this brilliant investigative reporting led to the shakedown of the Roman Catholic Church around the world. It deserves to win not one but several Oscars!
