Spotlight (2015)

When you think of Oscar winners they usually celebrate Hollywood in some way or the other, besides digging into the same melodramatic groove which is familiar to us all. Recent years the trend has finally turned (like a slow rusty cog, it has got to be said), and what was once an obvious shoehorned winner doesn't get its price. Like Spotlight, nobody could swear it would win, though they hoped. It doesn't glorify the villainy that is talked about, its quiet, its honest, its true. This is a real story, these are real people and victims.

The Boston Globe has a little group of journalists who collectively make up a single department called Spotlight and focus on a story at a time, doing months of research before publishing. When a new editor steps in, there's a bit of fear that Spotlight will get cut, but they're surprised when finding their new editor wants them to pursue a story that has become easily overlooked articles in the newspaper as a whole.

It's about the catholic priests who've been accused of molesting young children during the 60's to the 80's, a sore topic in a very catholic city, and one people would rather ignore than really talk about. The Spotlight group charge head-on, digging what some of the team presume will be nothing, but they find that there's quite the scandal at their hands.

You could easily look up the article itself, and read up on all the history, but this film is about the process, the shock. Parts of you don't want to believe that such a thing could happen, but it has. It's a film that made me cry not because it tried to showcase the horror or push any emotional button, but because it just felt raw, honest. It told it like it was. That's whats horrifying. There's something incredible in knowing that the same director made The Cobbler with Adam Sandler the same year. It's laughable really, but here he managed to handle the topic expertly.