Spotlight (2015)

Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup

Director: Tom McCarthy

Spotlight is a team of four reporters for the Boston Globe, who, in 2001, started to look into allegations of child sexual abuse against members of the Catholic Church and uncovered a system of cover up and repression on a huge scale.

Winner of this years Academy Award for Best picture and Best Original Screenplay, the film is one of the best that I have seen for a while and is both shocking and moving. Though there is an ensemble cast sharing the screen time, each character is well researched and three dimensional. The performances are all solid and the facts laid out without slowing the plot or bogging the story down in long exposition. It’s well paced and sensitive to the emotions behind the abuse without being sentimental or sensationalist. I think that in this way it avoids being depressing without diluting the horrible truth. 

And it is all true.

Watch this film.

See It If: You’ve been missing intelligent filmmaking or are tired of comic book movies. This film is really something.