Spotlight Review
- Brandon Thompson
- Feb 8, 2016
- 4 min read
Today I review the made for TV movie nominated for six Oscars. Spotlight covers the story of the Boston Globe Pulitzer prize-winning report which uncovered the extensive child molestation cover-up in the Catholic Church, mainly in Boston. This is a story that needed to be adapted into a movie to reach a greater audience and I'm glad this story is but was it well presented?
TV is an entertainment industry that is better to showcase writers and actors and that is exactly what muscles are being stretched here. Most of the acclaim for this movie has been for the acting and it deserves to. The main cast consists of...
Michael Keaton without a doubt proves Birdman wasn't a one off performance. He plays the leader of the Spotlight team and while he didn't do much physically to act (gimmicky) he seems like a completely different character to anything he has done before (especially as Riggan Thomson in Birdman). This isn't surprising as the real life person who he plays in the movie claims "that if he robbed a bank they would've arrested me".
Mark Ruffalo is another member of Spotlight and he proves that he is one the great actors of today. Physically Ruffalo plays the role with a lot of subtle body expressions (the way he puts his hands in his pockets and belt loops) which like Keaton reflect the person he's playing.
Rachel McAdams turns out a career best performance proving she's more than just a mean girl. McAdams character is probably the sympathetic character in the movie and this is best represented in the scenes when she interviews victims, which is also when her performances are at her best.
Brian d’Arcy James is the last core member of Spotlight but he never receives the limelight the way his team members do. This doesn’t prevent d’Arcy James from giving a strong performance here as he brings in a performance that helps elevate the performances as a whole the way everyone in this movie does.
Outside of the Spotlight team Liev Schreiber is the editor of the Boston Globe and he takes the lead in the movie early on but as the movie goes on his appearances dwindle which is odd for the pacing but Schreiber turns out a career best performance. While it can’t be attributed to Schreiber it would’ve been good to see more of the conflict between his Jewish heritage and the scandal which he wanted to be look into with more depth.
The rest of the major cast includes John Slattery, Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup. There is no stand out performance in Spotlight but it only helps the movie as a whole and it becomes one of few Hollywood of its kind. The movies Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for Best Ensemble was well deserved.
The other major player in TV is the writing. If on the night of the Oscars Spotlight wins Best Original Screenplay it won’t bother me as it truly is a fine screenplay. However it lacked the amount of depth some of the other nominations have. With a runtime of just over two hours it doesn’t give us much time to know these characters in great detail and thus if this was a made for TV movie in two parts over two nights we would be able to know these characters even further. Most character relationships are only explained in dialogue and some aren’t explored outside the offices of the Boston Globe.
The most over-rated factor of Spotlight is the directing from Thomas McCarthy. Most of the movie is presented in ‘shot, reverse shot’ conversations. This is only highlighting the acting and not much else. There are some scenes where the camera does something different like subtly pushing in or out and in one case a long tracking shot. These kinds of shots are few and far between and doesn’t make the movie very cinematic and more of a TV movie.
The quality of shots are boring to look at and don’t do much outside of presenting of the actors. Being set in Boston there are obviously other movies set there which add more life to the city (The Fighter, Mystic River, The Departed and Black Mass). Those movies show the city from the streets but in Spotlight it’s only talked about and we don’t often go outside. The same can be same for the sets which seem flat and boring to look at and explore in detail.
Spotlight is a must see for its subject matter and performances, but where you see it? It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s not on a phone or tablet and that you don’t download it. If this wins Best Picture at the Oscars it will be a disappointment as it should’ve won an Emmy. One thing I hope this movie does is show the importance of investigative journalism and the influence it can have.
Overall Score: 6.5/10
What did you think if you have seen this film? Did it make you buy a newspaper for a change?
The Movie is in wide release around Sydney.
Dir. Thomas McCarthy Written by - Thomas McCarthy and Josh Singer
Starring - Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James, Liev Schreiber and Stanley Tucci
Cinematography - Masanobu Takayanagi
Editor - Tom McArdle
Music/Score - Howard Shore
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