Review of Spotlight (2015) by Johnny T — 03 Mar 2016

Spotlight gracefully handles the lurid details of its fact-based story while resisting the temptation to lionize its heroes, resulting in a drama that honors the audience as well as its real-life subjects. Spotlight is a rare movie about the profession - and just enough about people in it - that simply feels right, speaking from the inside. McCarthy and his brilliant cast make hard work and truth-telling inspiring. One of the reasons that Spotlight is so deeply, absurdly satisfying to this newspaper writer - is that Tom McCarthy's movie doesn't turn its journalists into heroes. It just lets them do their jobs, as tedious and critical as those are, with a realism that grips an audience almost in spite of itself. Spotlight one of the best movies about journalism ever made, at once gripping and accurate. It doesn't just get the big things right, such as how news stories evolve, but the small things, such as what offices look like and how staff tends to react to a new boss. Near-breathless high-tension performances from a fully immersed ensemble, each member conveying an unflagging determination to right a terrible wrong, to uncover crime where it should never be. Spotlight doesn't call attention to itself. Its screenplay is self-effacing, its accomplished direction is intentionally low key, and it encourages its fistful of top actors to blend into an eloquent ensemble.

VERDICT: "High-Quality Stuff" - [Positive Reaction] This is a rating to a movie I view as very entertaining and well made, and definitely worth paying the full price at a theatre to see or own on DVD. It is not perfect, but it is definitely excellent. (Films that are rated 3.5 or 4 stars).