Review of Spotlight (2015) by Jenna I — 05 Mar 2016

I thought this was a riveting, well acted and important story about confronting our societal failures. We damn those who are victimized by claiming they're "too close to the story" to be rational and forget to look at -ourselves- for perhaps being too entrenched in condoning and even perpetrating exactly what these victims are trying to tell us needs to stop. I thought Spotlight also did a great job of not indulging in any graphic scenes of abuse or grief; there was no fetishizing or voyeurism and there did not need to be. You feel the horror of their realizations in real time from second hand or first hand anecdotes, you naturally grow to empathize with the characters who are introduced as 'difficult' or 'crazy.'.

One thing I wasn't crazy about was the cinematography in this film, though on the other hand the 'news footage' style did at least keep the film grounded; the pseudo-documentary style lent it some weight.