Spotlight [Blu-ray]

Reviewer: Christina Reynolds
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: expertly crafted, expertly researched, and expertly contained
Review: 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒌𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒏!𝑰𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖,𝒊𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒎𝒆,𝒊𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒖𝒔!The topic of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the United States was first formally publicized in 1985 when a Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to 11 counts of molestation of young boys.A study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice )which analyzed these allegations of sexual abuse from 1950 to 2002) indicated that over this span of time 11,000 allegations had been made against 4,390 priests (which is approximately 4% of these priests) in the United States.To read this report and its subsequent findings please refer to this link:https://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/index.htmlSpotlight is a 2015 American biographical drama film directed by Tom McCarthy and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. It film follows The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team, the oldest continuously operating newspaper investigative journalist unit in the United States, and its investigation into cases of widespread and systemic child sex abuse in the Boston area by numerous Roman Catholic priests. It is based on a series of stories by the Spotlight team that earned The Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The film features an ensemble cast including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci, with Brian d’Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup in supporting roles.Covering the span of approximately 30 years worth of interactions ‘Spotlight’ is in the perfect position to be considerably incomprehensible; with the exception of some dialogue centered around name drops (𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒚 𝒂𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒏𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒔 🙄) and those in which characters are expected to read between the lines Singer and McCarthys’ writing and direction makes for an investigation that is gripping and easily digested. Still a tough pill to swallow regardless: there is a deeply intimate intermingling of elements throughout that threatens convolution, but the networks of communication and their subsequent influence on the main conflict are maintained as priorities. At times there are characteristics that seem persistently internalized (like motivation), the lack of cognizance in these regards doesn’t distract from the bigger picture at hand.In preparation for their specific roles both Keaton and Ruffalo met with their real life counterparts (Walter Robinson and Michael Rezendes, respectively). The interviews conducted between them happened over the course of several months (with both Robinson and Resendez often on set) and involved lengthy attempts at replicating and adapting their various patterns of behavior (including vocal patterns!). Their subsequent representations on-screen were reacted to approvingly and they went as far as separately agreeing that watching Ruffalo and Keaton was “like looking into a mirror”. What’s most impressive is the humbling dramatization of their performances and the fact that they remain statically dignifying: they never rise above the seriousness of the enclosed subject matter while still packing a punch. As equally important is the presence of those representing victims interviewed – with Jimmy LeBlanc being an actual survival of clergy abuse- and the extent at which they deliver dialogue that is both tear worthy and contextually insightful.Due to the fidelity to its subject matter and commitment to authenticity this is the first movie to win the prestige of a Veritas Award. This devotion goes above and beyond flashy aesthetics and gritty screenplay through the use of reporters (including those from 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑮𝒍𝒐𝒃𝒆 itself) being regularly referred to for their input regarding artistic and alternatively pragmatic related decisions. As a result of this sensitive pieces of information are leafed through, but they’re parsimonious summaries are executed without sacrificing the overarching integrity of ‘Spotlight’ as a whole. It is worth noting that some characters have been noted as being misrepresented (like Paquin’s openness to admitting to abusing anybody being exaggerated and happening much earlier than it did in real life), but these alterations elaborate on the systematic nature of this investigation and the enormity of roadblocks compromising its success.Me? I have no way of personally connecting to scandals regarding sexual abuse happening within the context of a religious institution, but ‘Spotlight’ makes no presumptions about its audience to the point of apathy or indifference. This certainly isn’t the most exciting watch, but it’s expertly crafted, expertly researched, and expertly contained.Above all else: any film tackling a culture of silence in this regard has my utmost gratitude, and the Vatican recently announcing the appointment of a tribunal in an attempt to hold accused Bishops accountable speaks to the transformative nature of films like this that are often hiding in plain sight.For those of you out there struggling with this form of exploitation I always like to explicitly say that I am here for you.That I don’t need to live your truth to enthusiastically engage with it.That your truth is always worth listening to: I guarantee that For anyone interested in knowing more about clergy abuse and to anyone that needs to file a report please refer to the following resources as necessary:https://www.camdendiocese.org/clergysexabuseresources/https://reportbishopabuse.org/

Reviewer: RobertaMc
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: It’s hard to watch, but so good, and so important
Review: I had this movie in my Netflix queue for well over a year, and then I guess it disappeared because Amazon claimed it. I could never get myself to watch it, because I knew it would be hard to watch.Though I am far beyond being a lapsed Catholic–really even questioning the existence of any god, let alone the one I learned about from birth–something kept me from seeing this since the film was made. We had two Franciscan priests in my mother’s family, and we were very active supporting the teen center, held in a parish building, for several years. Two seminarians attached to the parish worked closely with my mother, and then both my parents, as the family mounted a production of a musical that would have its premiere in my small city, to benefit the teen center.Though nothing about the teen center or the show was restricted to Catholics, those seminarians and several other clergy worked with all of us to put on the show and support the teen center. Because my family was very social and I guess pretty unusual, due to our involvement in theater and music, the seminarians were happy to come to dinners and parties at our house. They and one other seminarian treated our house as a second home, which was fine with us. They were great guys. We attended the ceremonies where they became deacons and later their ordinations as priests.As time passed and my family moved out of that small city and broke up, we all lost lose touch. But one evening, when I was out of college and working as a cocktail waitress at a restaurant, my mother called and asked me to go over to her house when I finished my shift. It was an early shift, so I didn’t get there very late, but when I did, the priest (one of the “boys” I’ll call “G”) who was visiting had already had quite a bit to drink.Mom was so excited to have him visiting. She left us downstairs as she went searching for some photos from that era, and G was pouring himself another drink. I went to put the kettle on for myself, and I was appalled when he cornered me in the kitchen and stuck his tongue down my throat, along with going crazy with his hands. I pushed him away, saying something like, “Jesus, G! What the hell?” I’d never seen “the boys” as more than guys not much older than my brother who had gone into the priesthood. And G had never struck me as particularly holy, though I had felt a level of commitment to the calling from the other seminarians.Mom found her photos, and we spent the rest of G’s visit remembering some very happy times. He and I left Mom’s house at the same time, and even though it was a 50-50 chance he’d be pulled over for a DUI, it was 1980, and even someone as drunk as he was wouldn’t have any penalties attached to the stop. After all, he was a local boy and a priest–decked out in his black suit and dog collar.As the stories about priests molesting and raping children started to come out, my Catholic friends and I talked about our experiences with priests and nuns throughout our lives. I had attended Catholic elementary school, not Catholic high school, but happily ended up at a Catholic college, where I made friends I have to this day. One friend was not himself abused, but he knew of its happening to younger kids he’d attended Catholic elementary school with and some at his Catholic high school, while he was there.No matter that I had lost most faith in the religion, there were priests and especially nuns whom I loved and respected, especially for their commitment to teaching and their students. I never heard of a sexually abusive sister, but I knew of physically abusive nuns, and was on the receiving end of some heavy verbal abuse from one when I was in sixth grade. But I got “vibes” from some priests. Just that there was something “wrong” about them. It was the same feeling that several of my cousins and I had about an uncle, which we only ever discussed well after we were adults.It’s almost a cliche that men in authority are as likely as not to abuse that authority, and when it’s a boss, that’s hard enough to deal with. What about those children whose families–broken or just not functioning well–who have believed that the priest giving them attention they crave couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt them? What an incredible betrayal of trust to have something that doesn’t feel right and you know ISN’T right done to you by someone who should have only helped, never harmed you.I no longer have any clergy in my life, and I’m just as glad that I don’t. I don’t know how I would be able to have a conversation with them about this abuse–which isn’t gone, by any means, because the Catholic church believes itself to be inviolate as an institution–and hear anything less than utter condemnation from them. Religion has never protected its believers from the harm itself propagates, whether spiritual, emotional, physical, or financial. That’s because people are involved, and some of them have power of others. And that’s all it takes, really. Power makes people feel entitled, and entitled people will too often abuse their power.

Reviewer: NB
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One of my favorite movies
Review: Love it

Reviewer: Reagan brown
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great movie
Review: Sad, twisted, sick.

Reviewer: Kim
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very interesting based on disturbing facts
Review: Great cast. Interesting details. On the edge of your seat waiting for details.

Reviewer: RJR
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great film!
Review: This is an important true story. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Screenplay in 2016 and brings focus on a

Reviewer: Marla
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I had never heard of this movie until I watched it recently on TV and wanted to have my own copy. The movie tells the true story by the Boston Globe in 2002 and their investigation team “Spotlight” into the sexual abuse by Catholic priests of children and the cover up by the highest levels of the Catholic Church the throughout the Boston Catholic Churches and finally around the world. Well worth watching.!!

Reviewer: John Barnes
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: home use

Reviewer: V
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Ce film est juste énorme! Il mérite parfaitement son Oscar du meilleur film! Cette histoire qui nous entraîne en plein cœur de Boston, et d’une équipe de journalistes qui vont enquêter sur l’un des plus gros scandales actuels, “les prêtes pédophile”! Un très bon casting ce qui rend le film d’autant plus intéressant. Superbe rendue pour une histoire importe et qui permettra d’ouvrir les yeux de certains.

Reviewer: J. L. Sievert
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The Washington Post has a new motto on it masthead:“Democracy Dies in Darkness”Those of us who’ve been paying attention understand what it means and why it’s there. In another context the astronomer Carl Sagan once said science is “a candle in the dark”. The same applies to a free and independent press. Without it authoritarianism reigns, or, just as bad, anarchy, which is the direction the U.S. now seems tending toward, a time of false equality and relativity where every tweet and opinion is considered just as valid as the next. But the bedrock of awareness and comprehension is still books and knowledge, education and understanding, facts and truths. Without these, no coherence, clarity, understanding. Without them, bedlam, anarchy. Just because Tom, Dick and Harry have opinions doesn’t mean they know anything, and if they’re using Twitter or the equivalent as the main source of their self-expression (140 characters or less) they probably don’t.The Watergate scandal is now vanishing into the fogs and mists of history. If you’re 30 or even 40 you may not know much about it unless you are interested in political history. But it’s worth mentioning now as an object lesson in why a free and independent press is vital. Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters at the Washington Post who broke the story, were allowed to do their jobs. They became known as investigative journalists because their boss and editor (Ben Bradlee) had the support of the paper behind him. Crimes had been committed — crimes authorised by the President of the United States. How to proceed? With tail between the legs or guns blazing, so to speak? Woodward and Bernstein took the latter approach, manned up for a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.How did these reporters succeed? With dogged determination, hard work, tips, leads, phone calls, fact checking, follow-ups and clandestine meetings with an informer whom they code named Deep Throat, in cheeky tribute to a popular porn film of the same name at the time (circa 1973-74). They were professionals. They went to journalism school and graduated. They knew how to do their jobs. They were members of a free and independent press. The crass mentality of the mob these days will call them part of an elite. Fair enough. What’s wrong with that? They earned their stripes. They had credentials. They were qualified. They didn’t write about reality in 140 characters or less.Another object lesson from the above is provided by this important film under review, an Academy Award winner for Best Picture last year. In it we see, up close and personal, the process of investigative journalism as it is unfolding. The investigation concerns criminal acts perpetrated by members of the Roman Catholic Church in the American city of Boston — sex offences committed against children in its care and protection. Three cheers for irony.Spotlight in the film is a term used inside the journalistic structure of the Boston Globe, Boston’s largest daily newspaper. The group was small, four main reporters working under a senior editor. Their objective within Spotlight was to dig into stories hard to get at. In short, like some in the law enforcement professions, they were investigators. As such, by the sensitive nature of what they were tasked to do, they had to be highly skilled and experienced.The story hinges on a crucial personnel decision made by management at the Globe in 2001. A senior editor was brought in from the outside, a person with no history in and ties to Boston. His name was Marty Baron. He grew up in Florida and started out with the Miami Herald, but had recently come over to the Globe from the New York Times. As senior editor he was responsible for the metro section of the paper, which included work by Spotlight.When he arrives Spotlight is pretty low key. The team is dealing with a lingering story that has lost its legs, if it ever had any. Baron wants the team to be bolder, to look into something highly relevant to the local community. Through his own work scanning past metro columns he has noted some cursory references to a tainted priest in the Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church. A short article says a lawyer named Mitchell Garabedian made public his claim that the priest (John Geoghan) had been protected by Cardinal Bernard Law, the highest ranking bishop in the Boston archdiocese. Geoghan was a sex offender, a pedophile. The story went nowhere, killed off by the Church. Baron wants Spotlight to investigate.The Spotlight reporters — Walter Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll — know what this means. They’re all Catholics, mostly lapsed but still Catholics, as Boston is largely a Catholic town. They gulp collectively. The beauty of Baron, though, is that he doesn’t have to gulp. He’s nothing like them. He’s Jewish, from Florida, not Catholic from Boston. The Church is just another entity or subject to him. It may be powerful and influential, but it isn’t almighty. It may operate above the law or try to, but it’s subject to it like any other group or institution. As outsider, Baron has no vested interest, no emotional stake and history in the Church. He is fresh, unblemished, objective, dispassionate. He’s a pro, the only sort that could have tackled the story and done it successfully.So, the reporters begin to dig. It’s tough going, hard work. Nobody wants to talk. Lawyers, priests, families, victims — most are mute. Those who have spoken out, or have tried to (for instance, some families of victims) have been silenced by the Church, bought off with payments made by crooked lawyers who are also bought off. Offending priests have been reassigned within the diocese, given “sick leave”, or are shipped out of town. The scandal is hidden, the elephant huge but unseen in the room.The work is tiring, taxing, tedious. It takes tenacity to follow leads, make phone calls, search directories, find scarce documents, knock on doors slammed in their faces. It’s not easy either to make damaged people (victims) or corrupt ones (priests, lawyers, educators) open up. But some do, especially the victims. It starts with them, with their childhood memories of confusion, guilt, shame and pain.As professionals, as journalists, the main duty of the reporters is to find and report facts, to get at and publish truths. But these things do not exist independently from the people they affect. The reporters understand this. So their work also humanises them. Out of human decency they befriend their suffering subjects, acting as therapists.Digging deeper, they discover a dozen or more priests who may be guilty of sex offences against children, both boys and girls. But this estimate, in fact, is low. It’s closer to 90, a full-blown scandal happening under their noses. And, as will be revealed in the film, the Globe is one of the last to know about it (with good reason).The priests were predators, targeting the most vulnerable individuals, mainly children from low-income, broken homes where fathers were absent. They acted as proxy fathers, and in fact the Church refers to them as Fathers, so the Church can’t be accused of lacking a sense of humour, wicked and cruel though it may be.If the film has a weakness, it’s in the judicial follow-up to these crimes. They went on for years and involved nearly a hundred priests, roughly 6% of the priesthood in Boston. As valuable as investigative journalism is, the judiciary is even more important: judges, attorney generals, prosecutors, grand juries — those with the power to subpoena, examine evidence, pass judgements, reach verdicts, determine sentences, demand punishments. I would like to know how many priests were excommunicated and incarcerated for their crimes. How many were rehabilitated as persons, not as priests? Where are they now? How are they atoning for their sins?Cardinal Bernard Law is not one who is atoning. He’s still protected. Like a Nazi elected mayor of Asunción in Paraguay, he’s now a cardinal in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. What a laugh. Why doesn’t the whole creaky edifice of Catholicism come crashing down? This is the 21st century, not the 12th. Inadequate, partial answers: history, tradition, inertia; ignorance, superstition, fear. It’s the old problem, well documented in “Life of Brian”, still the greatest parody on religion ever filmed — people enslaved, conditioned by authority instead of challenging it by thinking critically, rationally, independently for themselves.Enraged at the Papacy, King Henry VIII destroyed the Roman Catholic churches and monasteries in 16th century England. The measure was extreme, but he had a good point, or thought he did. Sometimes I think so too, and this is one of them, having just watched this magnificent, disturbing film. The Church is a museum relic. Rescue your Sundays and life from it.

Reviewer: Mariana
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Indispensable para entender el valor del periodismo en la sociedad como herramienta para denunciar abusos, ejercer derechos y cambiar estructuras.