Pretty bland

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2016)

Mmm, might make my top 50 of 2015. It's a perfectly good movie about investigative journalism, and it's interesting to see the process of journalists, but it's extremely pedestrian filmmaking and has like zero insight into the subject at hand (which is the cover-up of priest molestations). Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Brian d'Arcy James play the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe. They're all good, but, except for one big moment with Ruffalo, none of them do anything exceptional. The Globe's new editor, Liev Schreiber (somewhat more interesting, but not much), decides to follow-up on some earlier stories about the subject he thinks are incomplete. The best performance in the film belongs to Stanley Tucci, who plays a lawyer for victims. The second best belongs to Neal Huff as the leader of a victims' organization. Both Huff and Tucci are angry that the Globe is just now getting interested in the story. I think even critics in Boston know that Mad Max: Fury Road is a better film than this. Maybe some day the Spotlight team can uncover that conspiracy.