UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Inquirer
STEVEN REA, INQUIRER MOVIE COLUMNIST AND CRITIC
POSTED: Friday, November 13, 2015
Church spires jut from the Boston neighborhoods in Spotlight, one of the great movies about journalism, and one of the great movies of our time, period.
The stained glass and weathered stone of these sanctuaries – many of them part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston – often front onto parks and playgrounds full of children.
Inside some of those same churches, for decades, priests preyed on children, molesting them, abusing them, and getting away with it, despite the complaints of family members, despite the knowledge of the archdiocese, the cardinals, the bishops.
In a series of stories that began in January 2002, the Boston Globe’s investigative unit, dubbed Spotlight, exposed scores of pedophile clergymen – and the systemic coverup by an institution whose wealth and power reached into every corner of the city.
With dogged realism – and with a screenplay as clear and compelling as it is complex – Spotlight goes back to the early 2000s and tracks how the publication of this monumental series came to be. Directed by Tom McCarthy from a screenplay by McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight is the best kind of procedural drama, unfolding as facts are uncovered, leads pursued, as witnesses and victims are interviewed (often with great reluctance), as lawyers, politicians, and public relations men try to negotiate, manipulate, manage the truth.
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