After taking awards season by storm, this year’s Best Picture Spotlight is finally available on DVD and Blu-Ray.
I absolutely loved Spotlight and think it’s a sensitive, yet tense portrayal of the investigation into the extent of child abuse committed by the Catholic church in Boston.
During the film, we follow the Spotlight team, a group of investigative journalists who find themselves embroiled in the seedy world of paedophilic priests and the Church’s complicity in hiding the extent of their crimes.
Michael Keaton’s hard nosed editor, Robby, leads his team Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Caroll (Brian d’Arcy) down the rabbit hole, as the investigation begins to consume the group.
Spotlight manages to tell this true story extremely thoughtfully, and deserves all of the accolades it’s been getting.
I’ve watched it several times now and, each time I’ve seen it, I’ve been gripped by this tense and well paced story.
The film should be lauded for its delicate handling of the historic child abuse story, managing to balance the drama of the situation perfectly, without ever crossing the line into melodrama.
The ensemble cast are all beyond magnificent – there are almost no words for how well each actor understands their character and their role within the story.
Take Liev Schreiber’s character, for instance – he makes the brave choice to underplay his role and it works incredibly well, playing off some of the more bombastic characters wonderfully.
It says something about the skill of the director Tom McCarthy and his cinematographer, Masanobu Takayanagi, that scenes of people reading files and photocopying documents can be more exciting than Hollywood gun fights.
The only problem with the DVD is that the special features are a bit lacking. You get three extremely short featurettes – the most interesting of which is Uncovering the Truth.
This interesting feature has the real Spotlight team discussing their investigation, which was brilliant. However, it’s only six minutes long which is bit disappointing.
All in all though, this is a magnificent picture which deserves a spot on your DVD shelf for the film alone.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.