Spotlight (2015): Breaking A Scandalous Silence

2015 seems to be the year of the well-crafted “small” film. The recent Bridge of Spies and Brooklyn and the soon to be released Carol and The Danish Girl are critically acclaimed examples.  Spotlight is surely at the head of this pack. At its core, this movie is a journalism procedural, but giving it such a label does not do justice to the filmmakers’ accomplishment here.

Spotlight was directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy, whose previous credits include The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007), both of which were lovely little cinema gems. (He also wrote and directed the Paul Giamotti vehicle, Win Win (2011), which I have not seen, but most everyone admired.)  Spotlight is a bigger deal, in part due to its greatly enhanced budget and star-laden cast, but mostly because of its subject – the Pulitzer Prize winning investigation by a team of Boston Globe reporters that exposed widespread child abuse by Catholic clergy and the scandal of a decades-long, orchestrated cover-up by the church hierarchy.

Of course, at this point, we’ve been hearing about this stuff for years, so the story is not new. But it is still shocking.  One of the marvels of Spotlight for me was the fact that, while I pretty much knew going in how the picture would turn out, I found myself riveted throughout.  The horror of the priests’ conduct and the shame and suffering of their victims even years later, may be experienced second-hand as we watch the reporters dig and delve into the story, yet it is not muted. Nor is the courage and perseverance of the Globe’s “Spotlight” investigative team members. Their efforts to find out what was really happening and who knew about it were resisted and hampered every step of the way not only by church officials, but by Boston's legal, political, and social hierarchy in this notably Catholic city. Those fine folks apparently believed that it was more important to protect the church than to expose the rot beneath the institution’s noble veneer, even if that meant exposing more and more children to possible harm.

The movie is a near perfect drama, featuring a great and true story, remarkable attention to detail - from the period clothing to the attitudes of the journalists, lawyers and even the victims; along with smart pacing and beautiful acting in an ensemble setting by a terrific cast. Spotlight has been compared favorably to that other great investigative journalism film, All the Presidents Men (1976), and I have read that newspaper journalists give it high marks for accuracy and realism. All I can say, as a moviegoer, is that it sure looked and felt real to me. We see the diligent hard work, the brainstorming, the step-by-step piecing together of evidence, the strategy sessions, multiple interviews, and the coming together of a story that shocked the hardened journalists themselves. Between ten and twenty percent of Boston’s more than 700 priests may have been involved.

The movie’s focus stays steadfastly on the investigation itself; it is not sidetracked by reporters’ family troubles, romantic interests, or other digressions.

I can't say enough good things about the actors. Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan [2013 - ]) plays Marty Baron, the soft-spoken but steel-spined incoming editor of the Boston Globe in 2001, an outsider with the guts to tackle a story that the community seemingly did not want to hear. The Spotlight investigative team was headed by "Robbie" Robinson, played here by Michael Keaton (Birdman [2014]). Keaton is known for his intensity, and certainly brings this, but without going over the top. He also credibly presents his character’s personal and moral dilemmas.  Robbie has a nose for a good story and likes a good fight, but initially has well-founded concerns about the profound shockwaves an investigation of the church will bring not only his way, but to his newspaper and to his community as well. Rachel McAdam (Midnight in Paris [2011]) portrays Sacha Pfeiffer, a persistent, seemingly tireless reporter, with the kind of empathy that allows victims to share their stories and open our hearts. McAdam can't help being pretty, but she has dressed down for this part, and is in no way glamorous. Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers [2012]) is Mike Rezendes, a passionate journalist, who becomes more and more outraged as the scope of the problem and the venality as of the church hierarchy comes increasingly into focus.  I've not been a huge fan of Ruffalo in the many movies in which he plays the sort of scruffy but cuddly love interest of various actresses (Reese Witherspoon, Meg Ryan, Julianne Moore, etc.), but he is not cuddly here – he is a revelation.

Also excellent are Stanley Tucci as the lawyer Mitchell Garabadjian, fighting to get compensation for victims and an acknowledgment of wrongdoing by the church; Jamey Sheridan as a socially and politically powerful attorney for the church, and especially Michael Cyril Creighton, as a deeply sorrowful adult man who, as a child, had been molested for years by his priest. Through his narrative, and that of several other characters, we begin to understand just how easy it was for the molesters to find and abuse their prey. It’s less easy to understand how their superiors, and a complacent system of enablers could sweep the problem under the rug for decades.

Still, although a true morality tale, Spotlight is not a horror film. Rather it portrays a special kind of heroism, and is thus, in a way, uplifting. And if you like well-made, well acted motion pictures, you can’t do much better than this one.      

The Good Dinosaur (2015): Gorgeous Alternate Universe à la Pixar

For fans of Pixar feature films (of which I am a card carrying member), The Good Dinosaur is well worth the price of admission, particularly for the incredibly realistic and beautiful rendering of the natural world in which the story is set. The characters and story – about the adventures of a somewhat runty, shy and timid young Apatosaurus (or “Brontosaurus” to those of us in the Medicare generation) named Arlo, who becomes separated from his family, finds a friend/pet in a feral, spunky proto-human boy (called Spot!), and struggles to find his way home in a dangerous world - are also good, although not so exceptional.

Of course, humans did not actually live in the age of dinosaurs; so The Good Dinosaur imagines an alternative universe - in which that big comet did not smash down in Yucatan sixty-five million years ago, and the big lizards continued to evolve and thrive for millions of years.  The herbivores, including Arlo’s family, took up agriculture, and the big carnivores became ranchers – amusingly portrayed in the movie as cowboy-like Tyrannosaurs, headed up by rough, tough Butch (voiced, naturally and beautifully, by the great Sam Elliott).  

Arlo’s adventures include amusing, then scary run-ins with velociraptors (led by the charming but vicious Lurlene (Bay Area actress Carrie Paff) and some very scary pterodactyls – introduced in an initially lovely sequence in which we see only their wingtips slicing through the underside of a cloud bank, like shark fins cutting through an inverted sea. There’s also danger in natural hazards, such as thunderstorms, raging rivers and flash floods. 

Some of this stuff may be too scary for small children, e.g. those under age eight or nine.  A youngster at the afternoon performance I attended started to cry at one point. It’s not just that an important character dies (after all, Bambi’s mother died and we survived that), but the tone changes between lighthearted, funny scenes and the frightening, scary ones can be surprisingly abrupt.. Overall, though, The Good Dinosaur is entertaining.  And it has a warm, fuzzy ending that will appeal to kids and soft-hearted adults alike. (It is a bit schmaltzy, but hey, it’s a cartoon!)

Director Peter Sohn (Pixar’s short film Partly Cloudy) and his artist collaborators chose to juxtapose two contrasting animation styles in the creation of this film. Arlo and most of the creatures are a cross between the evolved Pixar stylized characters of Toy Story 3 (2010) and Brave (2012); but the environment in which they live and breathe is ultra-realistic – breathtakingly so, to the point where I wondered at times whether I was actually watching an animated facsimile of the world or the real thing. Sohn and his crew are justly proud of their achievement in this area, and show off their renderings at every opportunity.  If you’re a fan of animation, you have to see this. I saw it in 3-D which was nice, and the Dolby 7.1 sound was pretty phenomenal.

The character of Spot also deserves special mention. He has no words only grunts, growls, murmurs and an amazing set of alive expressions. Where Arlo is naive and timorous, Spot is a force of nature –bold, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed,  captivating, alive,   I’m hoping for a sequel featuring this character.

In wide release.