Spotlight

Some people are saying that Spotlight is the best journalism movie since All The President’s Men.  I actually think it’s better.

Spotlight tells the story of the Boston Globe‘s breaking of the story of priest pedophilia and sexual abuse in Boston — a story that helped trigger the worldwide focus on priestly child abuse in the Catholic Church.  It’s got all of the elements of the classic film about reporting:  the team of tough, hard-bitten reporters and editors, the shoe-leather reporting work of trying to convince reluctant sources to talk, the efforts of powerful people and institutions to bury the story, the tough decisions on when to publish . . . as well as the inevitable footage of the newspapers rolling through the printing presses and being bundled and delivered when the story finally hits the front page.  The film is a riveting story of criminal cover-ups and secrecy and dogged reporters finally getting to the truth.

But what really lifts the movie into the realm of greatness, in my view, is the rawness of the story that the reporters were trying to exposed.  In a film chock full of terrific performances, some of the most powerful are given by the actors playing the devastated, humiliated, emotionally crippled abuse victims . . . and, interestingly, by the defenders of the Catholic Church struggling to rationalize their unrationalizable efforts to maintaining the silence about terrible, unpardonable criminal conduct.  And when the movie comes to its potent final scene, and on the day the story hits the newspaper the investigative reporting team is bombarded with phone calls from victims that reveal that the priestly abuse problem is even more severe than they dreamed, the viewer can’t help by be amazed and sickened that so many people allowed such inexcusable conduct to go on, victimizing new generations of children, for so long.  The movie’s message hits like a sledgehammer to the gut.

The script for the movie is terrific, the actors playing the investigative reporting team — Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James — are all excellent, and I particularly liked Liev Schreiber as the taciturn new editor who cues the reporters in to the story lurking under their noses and Stanley Tucci as the lawyer for the victims who has no expectations that the Globe will actually tackle the dominant religious institution in town.  The finest performances, though, were of the actors playing the emotionally wrecked abuse victims.  Their characters shift Spotlight from a traditional fast-paced reporting movie into an emotional powerhouse.

This is a must-see movie.

The New True

The new season of True Detective premiered on HBO Sunday night.

It’s got an impossible act to follow.  Last year, with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey playing two mismatched detectives on the trail of a twisted killer, True Detective was a riveting powerhouse.  McConaughey’s character, Rustin Cohle,was so finely crafted and unique, and the chemistry between Harrelson and McConaughey was so powerful, that you wondered how the producers of the show could possibly follow it up.

And the answer is . . . they can’t, and they aren’t really trying to do so.  This year, the cast is different, the setting is different, and the storyline is different, with no quasi-religious serial killer lurking — at least, not so far.  Unlike last season, where the discovery of a disturbing mystical killing, the use of constant flashbacks, and Cohle’s unexplained change from straight arrow cop to alcoholic longhair made the first episode immediately riveting, this year the storyline threads are more diverse and drawing them together will take some time.  We knew it was still True Detective, though, when one key flashback was shown.

There’s a common, deeper theme between this year and last year, too:  the world is a sick, messed-up place.  This year we’ve got another weird killing to solve, when the bag man in a corrupt California town is found with his eyes missing and a visit to his home shows he was in the grip of multiple sexual fetishes.  The cast includes Vince Vaughn as Frank Semyon, the outwardly glad-handing but obviously ruthless boss of the town, a creepy Russian who Semyon hopes will help fund his latest scheme, and three police officers who will investigate the bag man’s murder.  All three have obvious problems:  Ray Velcoro, played by Colin Farrell, is a drunken, hyper-violent drug abuser who willingly participates in the town’s corruption and is glad to beat up either reporters trying to expose the town’s criminality or the father of a bullying kid who cut up his son’s expensive shoes; Ani Bezzerides, played by Rachel McAdams, whose Dad is a guru and whose sister performs live sex acts on porn website, has her own difficulties in establishing personal relationships; and Paul Woodrugh, played by Taylor Kitsch, is a suicidal veteran and California Highway Patrol officer who needs to take a blue pill to become intimate with his girlfriend.

It’s a rich stew of graft, violence, booze, and drugs, stirred by some very troubled people.  That’s apt, because True Detective traces its roots to the pulp  crime magazines of days gone by that thrilled barber shop patrons with their tales of murder and seduction.  This year’s version is off to a promising start in my book.