Spotlight

Released: November 6, 2015

Studio: Open Road Films

Genre: drama

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 45.06 Worldwide: 98.69

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: -- Worldwide: --

Directing: Tom McCarthy

Screenwriting: Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Live Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci

Review:

This 2015 movie is based on a series of stories reported by the investigative journalist unit (known as the “Spotlight” team) of The Boston Globe that earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. The movie focuses on the team investigating a decades-long coverup of widespread sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. Screenplay writers McCarthy and Singer display “an investigative reporter’s flair for seeing beyond the headlines and getting the story behind the story.” ^GN

The “Spotlight” team, led by Walter “Robby” Robinson (Keaton), delves into an old story about accusations of child abuse against retired priest John Geoghan at the behest of Marty Baron (Schreiber), the new out-of-town editor.

In regards to the rest of the cast, Ruffalo, as Michael Rezendes, is “the closest thing this ensemble cast has to a star turn, a long-suppressed outburst of emotion providing one of the film’s few grandstanding showstoppers.” ^GN As Sacha Pfeiffer, McAdams “has one of the very best scenes in the movie, a moment that balances a distant crisis of faith with the real and present courage of conviction.” ^GN

“The journalists soon find themselves locking heads with both the religious and legal institutions at the heart of a wide-ranging, systemic cover-up.” ^GN Spotlight explores “how an entire community may become complicit in an unspoken crime.” ^GN In addition, the newspaper “must face up to its own shortcomings in failing to follow up a story that should have been front-page news several years ago.” ^GN