#SPOTLIFE MOVIE MOVIE#

This is a film about the methodical process of reporting, not the heroism behind it.īut this isn’t a film that coasts on the work of its actors, who provide few moments of bombast. There was little subtlety to his last role, but as Robinson, Keaton projects his understated torment over the fact that his team could have tackled the story sooner but subconsciously avoided it. Keaton is the star, though, continuing the career renaissance that arguably began with his bravura work in last year’s Birdman. There’s Ruffalo’s live-wire agitator who seems disinterested in having a personal life, and Slattery’s hand-wringing deputy advising caution at every turn, and McAdams’s rigorous interviewer who exudes a warmth that gets strangers to spill their darkest stories to her. (John Slattery) and The Globe’s new editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who’s pushed them toward the unenviable task of investigating the diocese in a largely Catholic city.Įach character feels emblematic of a certain recognizable type of journalist without resorting to caricature. The film boasts a fine ensemble: Michael Keaton plays Walter Robinson, the Spotlight team’s venerable editor, who commands the reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) under the eye of their managing editor Ben Bradlee Jr. McCarthy’s most recent release, the more whimsical The Cobbler (starring Adam Sandler), was a catastrophe, but Spotlight returns him to solid ground. His best films- The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win-told quietly moving stories without leaning on dramatic outbursts.

#SPOTLIFE MOVIE MOVIE#

But the movie returns the director and co-writer (he scripted with Josh Singer) to his greatest area of expertise: characters whose emotional arcs play out almost entirely under the surface. The film takes place largely in the stodgy offices of The Globe’s investigative team, and in coffee shops and lawyer’s offices around the city. McCarthy has never been a visual wizard, and Spotlight lacks much flair in that regard. The central cast isn’t the motley crew of self-destructive drunks and grandstanders you’d usually see-this is a film about the methodical process of reporting, not the stirring heroism behind it, and at the end of the film, it’s the story itself, not the journalists’ personal achievements, that stands triumphant.

But unlike most directors making films about journalists, McCarthy doesn’t indulge in the usual Hollywood claptrap to cast them as flawed superheroes. Like any good reporting job, Spotlight slowly builds momentum from nothing, gathering disparate bits of information into an emotional juggernaut of a story. The Drugs That Built a Super Soldier Lukasz Kamienski