Spotlight Review

Awards ceremonies, professional critics and anyone who hasn't seen or remembered All the President's Men and 2006's Deliver Us From Evil too well are eating this up like a chocolate sundae with sprinkles, sauce, cream and three cherries on top, and I can kind of see why? I mean, it's one hell of an apology for The Cobbler, but...

While it assembles its facts well enough to provoke the interest and fear it aims to achieve, and avoids touching any sort of style that could make it come across as overtly unique, Spotlight can't help but warrant comparisons to films of its subject matter that dig deeper into the state of press journalists as human beings, let alone strike fuller fright and caution to the concept of a pedophile priest and how terrifyingly universal it is right now. Perhaps it's my developing taste in scripts that scream "give me a goddamn Oscar" that got this kind of reaction out of me, but I just wish I felt something.

*insert every single award it's ever won here* my ass, but in terms of journalistic thrillers it succeeds in its intentions besides award-nabbing far more than Truth attempted to. How this is constantly getting taken over that other Cate Blanchett film, though, I haven't the slightest clue.