Spotlight 🗞
Happy Thursday! I hope you’ve been having a great week.
Today’s movie is Tom McCarthy’s drama Spotlight (2015)—streaming on Netflix. After great movies like The Station Agent, Win Win, and Up, director Tom McCarthy wrote and directed the worse movie of his career, The Cobbler. It’s only fitting that he followed it up with Spotlight, the film that would win him the Oscar for Best Picture in one of the most competitive Oscar races in years. Here’s the trailer.
Melancholia is the true story of how the Boston Globe investigative team uncovered a massive scandal of abuse in the Catholic Church. It is 129 minutes.
What I love about Spotlight is its measured and procedural approach to telling this true story. Without unnecessary cinematic flourishes or grandstanding speeches—save for one—we’re able to focus on the very real and very compelling process of investigative journalism. Yet, it still feels cinematic.
Like All the President’s Men and Zodiac before it, Spotlight tells an interesting story by focusing on the people discovering the story—and we get to discover it along with them. It’s always engrossing to watch people that are good at their jobs. Spotlight may be one of the great movies about the power of journalism and how empathy may be a journalist’s greatest tools.
Spotlight is available to buy or rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.
Additional reading (or watching) 📚
Make it a double feature: Doubt
In 1964, a Catholic school nun (Meryl Streep) questions a priest’s (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) relationship with a struggling student, suspecting him of abuse. Through various intense conversations, she tries to uncover the truth. [Streaming on HBO Max]
How Spotlight captures good journalism
Nerdwriter1 explores how Spotlight tackles the very difficult task of making journalism cinematic. Watch here.
One trailer you should watch: Ammonite 🌊
Have a terrific weekend.
See you Monday —
Karl (@karl_delo)