Well worth the search...

I'd been wanting to see "Spotlight" since it came out--then "Star Wars" came out (which I saw--wonderful and more like the first movie than any others) and the big cinemas suddenly devoted a dozen screens to it and it disappeared to the smaller theaters.

I finally caught up with it today after being too late for a show in Middletown and not being able to find a theater I thought I knew in Plainville. I saw it at the Cinema 1/4 on Rt 17 in New Haven. Cinema 1/4 is really low budget--nothing like the Cinema Infinities round and about. Only 4 screens playing movies (except for 'Joy') that slipped down to the second tier of cinemas. I went to the early show and they don't start popping the pop corn until people start coming in. They actually 'pop the popcorn' instead of bringing it in in huge plastic bags! The seats don't rock or recline and feel like my desk chair. The previews are for the other three films they are showing. You can hear the muffled sounds of the theater next door through the wall. The bathrooms are a horror! But they had "Spotlight" and I was there for the 11:50 a.m. show. There were 30 people or so for the four films and I may have been the youngest person there! Several walkers and lots of canes....

"Spotlight", if you don't know, is a movie about the Boston Globe's expose' about the abuse of children in the archdiocese of Boston by well over 100 Roman Priests that had intentionally and systematically covered up by the hierarchy of the church, including Cardinal Law. All this happened in the first couple of years of this century and the work was interrupted for months to let the 'spotlight' team of four reports and an editor work on 9/11 stories.

But it all came out. The Globe eventually did 600 articles about the abuse. Cardinal Law resigned. The heavily Roman Catholic population of the Boston area were stunned and horrified. It had been a cover-up of Watergate proportions--but it wasn't burglary but the sexual abuse of over 1000 children that had been hidden.

I love a good newspaper movie and this one goes beyond 'good' to 'great'.

The show, it's director, the screen writers and at least three of the actors--Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keyton and Rachael McAdams should get Oscar attention. It's that good. Really.

Find a way to see it when you can.

It is profoundly troubling but shows the positive side of the media we all seem to criticize--what journalism can do for 'the good'--in a remarkable way. It makes you proud to live in a nation where freedom of the press is part of 'who we are'....