Spotlight-Movie of the Year

Rating: 9/10 (19 March 2016)

*****May contain spoilers******
Spotlight follows the reporters of the "Spotlight team" on the Boston Globe in their uncovering of the scandal regarding the Catholic churches cover up of their priests molesting children in the Boston area. The main characters in this movie are Mark Ruffalo as Michael Rezendes, Michael Keaton as Robby Robinson, Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, Live Schreiber as Marty Baron, John Slattery as Ben Bradlee Jr., and Brian d'Arcy as Matt Carroll.
This movie was outstanding. Even though we all know of the story and the awful ending of the story, this movie had me pulled in from the beginning. The story begins with Marty Baron starting as the new editor of the Boston Globe. It seems Marty wants to make a name for himself as the new editor and cover stories that matter. He mentions a case regarding a lawsuit against the Catholic Church for their priests molesting children. He does not understand why this is not being covered by The Globe. Robby Robinson and his team at Spotlight start to investigate this further. While this story is extremely sad and heartbreaking, the writer/director/producer did an excellent job of drawing in the viewer right away and keeping them drawn in.
Spotlight was incredible at compressing time. The director and editor used montages at different times during the movie to make the movie much shorter. Instead of spending an extreme amount of time following the reporters interview people around the community and the victims, they showed us quick little shots of them knocking on doors and speaking to people with a little more time spent on important moments. It made the movie that much more riveting. The same when there was more detailed interviewed, the swapped scenes between one interview and another, it kept you drawn in and made me movie seem to go quicker.
The editing made the movie. It seemed like most of the movie was made with a hand-held camera. I think you can tell that by the shaky cam technique used in the movie. That definitely makes the viewer feel that they are with the actors in the movie. It was definitely a more intense movie watching experience feeling like you are walking with the reporter while they are interviewing people, searching for files, and so on. The sound editor and the Foley artist also did an amazing job. The music behind the scenes with no dialogue was well placed. At the end of the movie when they had a children's choir singing Silent Night and carefully then cutting to each main actor to see where they were in their journey in the movie. The sound effects that were added to the scenes when the reporters were deep in their research really also added to the feeling of being connected with the story. All in all, this movie was editing was flawless.
In the end, I would definitely recommend this movie. It ended with a heartbreaking update of how far spread this scandal was. Even if you are aware of the scandal and the churches knowledge of the scandal, seeing the investigative reporting background of the whole story is fascinating.