Spotlight (5/5 Stars)

“Spotlight” is not so great as it is important. This reviewer attends the school that any subject matter no matter how unimportant has the potential to be elevated to perfection by a great artist. But there are some subject matters that are so important already any perceived effort at elevation may seem unduly indulgent or distracting. When Roger Ebert reviewed Steven Spielberg's “Schindler’s List,” he made a point to praise the absence of any of Spielbergian usual directorial flourishes. The movie was about the Holocaust. It would have been disrespectful to do anything fancy with the camera. Such is the same category “Spotlight” finds itself in. It is a movie about the group of reporters at the Boston Globe who broke the Catholic Church paedophilia scandal in 2002. Again the best praise I can give to the director/writer Thomas McCarthy is that he does not seem to be there at all. The direction is as straightforward as possible and nothing is heightened with unneeded suspense or dumbed down when a complicated explanation of court motions or journalistic procedures is needed. 

There are actually two stories in this movie and they complement each other. The Boston Globe in the late nineties was facing like every other local newspaper in America a crisis of falling readership and vanishing advertising revenue due to free digital content. There are layoffs and then there are more layoffs. The Globe is bought by the New York Times and they import a new head editor named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). The man is a Jew from Florida. That is to say he is not Irish Catholic from Boston like everyone else at the newspaper. It is his idea to look closer at a couple of stories the Globe has already done about a priest named Gagin accused of child abuse. A lawyer named Mitchell Garabedian said Cardinal Law of the Boston Archdiocese knew about Gagin for a long time and did not defrock him or turn him into the authorities. The court documents that may prove this accusation are sealed and Marty Baron wants to sue the church to unseal those documents.

There is not some great hurry to get onto this story by the people at the Globe. Nobody is really against it as much as it seems like they just don’t want to do it or even think about it. Only Mike Rezendes, the hungry young reporter played by Mark Ruffalo, is eager for the assignment. He is on screen about a minute before he already becomes everybody’s favorite character. Anyway the newspaper’s investigative team, Spotlight, takes on the task of delving a little bit deeper. The first task is to find the lawyer played by Stanley Tucci. Now this guy is a character and it matters too. His insight in one scene is enlightening to say the least.

He is talking to Mike and asks about the new editor. It is noteworthy that it is a Jew from out of town, he says, I should know I’m Armenian. (Mike is Catholic, but Portugese and lapsed). “It takes an outsider to put a light on this sort of thing. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse a child.” In other words, everybody is guilty in some respect.

What is perhaps the most astonishing thing for the reporters is how little needs to be done before the story becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And whenever they push a little harder and perhaps put a little more pressure on their targets, they get accusatory blowback about themselves. At one point the editor of Spotlight Walter 'Robby' Robinson (played by Michael Keaton) confronts a lawyer who has settled many cases with the church and demands a list of names. He provides one of the best “tough journalist” lines in the movie. “We got two stories here. One is about degenerate clergy. The other is about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which one do you want us to write because we're writing one of them?” The lawyer is taken completely aback before he retorts with some emotion that all Robby has to do is check back issues of the Boston Globe. He sent them a list of twenty names five years ago. When Woodward and Bernstein were immortalized in “All the President’s Men” it made those two journalists look like super sleuths. This story is as much about a failure of journalism as much as it is a triumph of it. But even looking at it both ways, it becomes clear why local newspapers are very important. If the Boston Globe did not finally report this story, nobody would have. The national networks on TV certainly would not have come anywhere near this story. It is a very bad thing that investigative teams within local newspapers like Spotlight are becoming an extinct species.

For those interested in the subject matter (or all Catholics), this movie would make a great double feature with the documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil,’ which is about the church sheltering predator priests in California. (There is also a really good double feature in the journalism side. There I would recommend The Wire: Season 5). The complicity of the church is absolutely astounding and although there have been apologies and court settlements, very little has actually been done about the underlying policy that generates such an enormous amount of abuse. After all, what the Boston Globe took pains to explain is that this is not a few bad apples, it is a psychological phenomenon that springs from the celibacy requirement of priests and affects about 6% of the priest population. When the reporters learn that, they do the math. They were looking at 13 priests. Boston has 1500 priests. 6% of that population is 90 priests. Disturbingly they actually find 87 priests in Boston and confirm the number with an inside source from the church. It is a number that is absolutely stunning and there is a haze of silent desperation that hangs over the end of the movie. Sure it is good that the Globe finally uncovered the story, but if there were 87 predator priests in Boston, how did they miss it for so many years? The answer to that may lie in a conversation between the archbishop and the new editor. The archbishop states that it is in Boston’s good for its institutions to work together. Marty Baron disagrees. “Actually I feel for a paper to fulfill its function, it should stand alone.” Society needs its outsiders.

Spotlight should be any easy nomination for Best Picture and Best Writing (Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy). I would also like at least one actor to be nominated from the ensemble as a supporting actor. The movie has great performances by Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Keaton. Take your pick. 

Salt (3/5 Stars) July 29, 2010

Well, it didn’t suck. 

SALT is the new Angelina Jolie thriller. It was directed by Phillip Noyce and co-stars Liev Schreiber (Sabretooth from “X-Men”) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (“2012”). It was “written” by Kurt Wimmer. I put “written” in quotations because the screenplay, which involves Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent who might also be a Soviet spy, sort of functions on the level of an outline for a better thriller. All the dialogue is distinctly devoid of any colorful embellishment, creative synonyms, jokes, or the usual eccentricities that help enable actors to create distinct characters. If I’m not mistaken, only five characters in this movie actually had names. One of those five was contained to a single scene in the beginning and another is mainly seen through flashbacks. The President and the Russian Vice President are also around, but they serve mainly as assassination targets not people. This leaves Jolie, her CIA boss Schreiber, a counterterrorism dude played by Ejiofor, and countless unnamed security guards, spies, and thugs who are about to be dispatched very effectively by the aforementioned. There are twists in the story but they are about as unpredictable as you can expect from a story with only three characters. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how clueless the movie was willing to make the Americans look in order to further the plot. The USA looks like those poor pathetic white guys that find themselves in games with the Harlem Globetrotters. I mean, we are just getting schooled in this movie. Don’t worry; we still win, kind of. 



There’s a worn-out movie critic cliché that describes autopilot Hollywood plots as “interrupted by action sequences and the inevitable car chase climax, etc. etc.” This much used sentence infers that the movie would be better if the makers didn’t feel the need to supplement an interesting story with a car chase just because action movie needs at least one. That cliché doesn’t work here; in fact it is the other way around. The substandard plot, dialogue, and characters in this movie are distractions from otherwise decent action sequences and chase scenes. The movie moves when the action moves and comes to a standstill when people stop to talk. Given that it is probably easier to write witty dialogue than coordinate a decent action sequence, it is odd how this movie didn’t just throw the script through the writer’s mill again or ask the actors to improvise some lines on the spot. I mean come on, there’s got to be at least one Russian spy out there with a sense of humor. Right?

This movie does something exceedingly wise and practical. It limits Salt’s physical stunts to what is humanly possible. Whether she is improvising a rocket launcher, jumping back and forth between trucks on a highway, or scaling the side of a building, the character is never doing something that is completely impossible. I can’t tell you how much more exciting it is when the action limits itself to reality. We are at point in the history of special effects blockbusters where almost anything is possible and everything is being done. But the movies tend to forget that large explosions that can be outrun and machine guns that don’t hit anything are not nearly as effective as a simple knife efficiently used. When special effects don’t conform to reality they do not excite, they desensitize. SALT, though ludicrous in plot, does essentially belong in the real world, and in that sense is better than most action movies

It could be better of course. One particular way it can be is by using longer shots. There’s this particular sequence when Jolie’s stunt double is descending an elevator shaft by jumping from steel beams one story at a time. This would be a pretty cool thing to see in the entirety, but the movie cuts the camera angle just before the entire jump is cleared. What this basically means to the astute viewer is that an actual stunt jump was never really completed. The fat dude in the editing room did the trickery not the actor. Now I’m not saying that Jolie’s stunt double should have risked her health and safety to get the shot; I’m just saying it would be really cool if she did. All the great action movie stars take those chances. It is what separates a bona fide athlete like Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa from the fakesters that stand around with their big muscles and big guns and look really pretty while shooting enemies from a comfortable distance. (I have a feeling that “The Expendables” coming later this August is going to be sooo pretty). 

Buster Keaton wasn’t a big guy nor did he ever carry around a big gun, but he did always tell his camera man before every big stunt: “No matter what happens, don’t stop rolling unless I get killed.” And then Buster would do a take and almost get killed. He didn’t have special effects to help him. All he had was an acrobat’s training and mathematics. He either stood in an exact spot or else the falling side of a house would flatten him like a pancake till he was dead. There isn't any color or sound in a Buster Keaton movie but it nevertheless always exciting because when you see Buster Keaton almost get hit by a train in a movie, you know that in reality Buster Keaton was also Almost Hit by a Train. Angelina Jolie may have done a pretty good impression of courage under fire, but she is not a bona fide athlete. She simply looks pretty while pretending.

Is that unfair? Only if the audience doesn’t care. In Asia they certainly do, and they even go so far as turning the depiction of ordinary violence into pure works of art, hence the term, “Martial Arts.” The last great action movie I’ve seen is “Ong Bak,” starring Tony Jaa. Now that’s what I mean by a kick-ass movie. Literally, no strings attached, if you can believe that.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (3/5 Stars) June 17, 2009

A great amount of the joy of superheroes with mutant powers is to watch them go head to head in one-on-one combat like some sort of glorified gladiatorial match. When I was a kid, I used to do this all the time with my G.I. Joes. I set up the characters, made up the storylines, supplied the desired sound effects, and then made the figures beat the hell out of each other. To dismiss that, and consequently this movie, as childish is sort of missing the point. Comic book movies are inherently childish. Sure every now and then comic-book movies can be elevated to great art (like say The Dark Knight or Sin City) but they never stray from their original appeal as childish action flicks. X-Men Origins: Wolverine seems to understand that. What I liked about this movie is that it avoided the pitfalls that made X-Men United (The third X-Men film) one of the worst comic book movies ever made. Sure Wolverine doesn’t have the artistic gleam of Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men films, what with developed characters like Rogue, Pyro, Magneto and Xavier. But it also doesn’t have the boatload of heavy-handed moral and political points that are unnecessarily brought up in the third X-Men and left spinning going nowhere in particular. Furthermore, and probably more importantly, unlike the X-Men United, Wolverine doesn’t kill off great characters in unimpressive, badly organized battle scenes. The fight scenes in Wolverine are much more sharply focused than the previous effort. There are no chaotic turf wars between armies of mutants here. Instead we have choreographed duels, which in my opinion are much more exciting and worthwhile. Like a kid playing with action figures it is hard to keep up a large-scale invasion while paying homage to awesome superpowers with only two hands. It is better to limit the battle to only a few figures and several duels. This keeps the fights exactly how they are supposed to be: Personal duels between heroes with powers that are somewhat equal to each other. (Like for instance, a fight between Wolverine and Magneto wouldn’t be good to watch. Magneto, who can control metallic objects, would kick Wolverine's adamantium ass in an instant. It’s much better to match Wolverine up with his brother Sabretooth, who basically has the same powers only he has claws instead of blades. ((My God, I am a huge dork. I swear X-Men is the only Comic franchise I know a lot about. I used to watch the TV show on Saturday mornings.)) The story should always come first of course, but the best story in an X-Men movie will involve duels, hopefully several of them. That is the best thing about superheroes, and the X-Men in particular.
This movie recognizes this and within its convenient storyline there are duels between Wolverine and Agent Zero, the Blob, Gambit, Deadpool, and his brother and nemesis Sabretooth. I especially liked this movie because they finally introduced some of my favorites: Particularly the Blob and Gambit. I had been looking for Gambit for the last three movies. Here he finally is and although I would have liked to see more of him, the part they gave him was cool enough for now (Give him his own movie!). This movie isn’t a must see movie but it does contain some good fights between some of your favorite X-Men. Sort of like the stuff I would come up with as a kid. Oh yeah, and just like when I was a kid, Wolverine usually always won.