A Modern Day "All the President's Men"

Rating: 10/10 (21 November 2015)

The politics in this movie will probably earn it some Oscar nominations, because if there's anything we know about the Academy it's that it loves historically or politically significant movies (The Imitation Game, American Sniper, The Theory of Everything as nominations for Best Picture just from last year). This movie will be a shoe-in for the nomination, but more importantly it deserves the nomination.
The issue depicted in the film may seem a little dated (the story takes place in 2001) but it is nonetheless an important issue to discuss. The movie is somewhat aware of this as there are constant references to the fact that The Boston Globe could have exposed this issue of priests molesting children years ago and it is a mystery why they did not.
Most people would probably describe the film as being slow-paced, to which I would respond that the movie wouldn't accomplish anything more than if it was edited to have a faster pace. This film needs to fill the audience in on details, and the audience is aware of that. It allows the audience to get the full impact of what is at issue here if we follow the journalists' investigation step by step.
Spotlight has an ensemble cast of A-list actors including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and John Slattery, who all deliver great performances. I predict that Ruffalo will be nominated as Best Supporting Actor for the second year in a row. There is a moment in the film when his character has to show determination and frustration simultaneously as his suggestion is denied by Keaton's character, and at this point in the story we are forced to side with Ruffalo and the scene is heartbreaking.
While the cast as a whole is great, we only get tiny insights into other characters' motivations and perspectives, but these glimpses still illustrate who the characters are perfectly. For example, one of the team members realize there is a pedophile priest living just a block away from him, and his first thought is to protect the children of the area. He cannot warn the children, however, until the story is released, once again making us question the decisions made by the executives at The Boston Globe.
My last comment is that this film is never visually interesting, but political dramas like this are not meant to be great works of art; rather, they are meant to create a cohesive story with well- developed characters to root for, and the film does exactly that and more. These types of film rely on realism, and while they are not necessarily documentaries, they need to inform us of real-world issues, and Spotlight never fails at doing so.
4.0/4.0