As you may know Spotlight won best picture and best original screenplay at the 88th Oscars. What else can really be said about it. For once in all the years that I have been watching the academy awards, I think they got it right.
Spotlight does for reporting what The Fast and the Furious do for car chases. That is take something that we think is mundane, and often times is. Research for the sake of learning information. This movie made me relive all the time spent in school study for finals and I know it was intended that way. It takes a complicated thing like the catholic church covering up abuse by clergy and turns it into a slow boil of a drama.
We all take things that that for granted. Every time in a movie or TV show that a director wants to show us something flashy or amazing there is usually some kind of slam cut or big speech about how it's the right thing to do. This movie does what most movies won't do and use restraint. You see the pain in people's eyes as they read clippings of a place or person they know that has been affected by the events in their very own town.
During the end credits of the movie the filmmaker offers an epilogue of the reporting giving info on how many stories were written about the cases, and the cities affected. It takes three title cards that cover three whole screens. It's troubling to say the least. The scariest part is there is so many towns listed in the end you will probably see one near you or close to where you live. This makes the tragedy that much more real.
Spotlight is now on Netflix.