Spotlight (2015)

From left: Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy
Adams, Michael Keaton and John Slattery in "Spotlight."

The most ironic moment in “Spotlight” takes place when a priest, worried that the internet might be providing too much information, laments during a sermon. “Knowledge is one thing,” he cautions, “but faith is another.” Most among his congregation nod along approvingly, but Sacha Pheiffer, a reporter for the Boston Globe, looks on with a mixture of disillusionment and incredulity. She knows hypocrisy when she sees it.

By this point, Pheiffer and her colleagues have figured out that the leader of the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard Law, reportedly knew that one of his priests, Fr. John Geoghan, had a history of predatory child molestation. But rather than removing Geoghan from the priesthood, Law shuffled him from parish to parish for years, where his abuse continued.

Directed by Tom McCarthy from a script by McCarthy and Josh Singer, “Spotlight” takes its name from the team of investigative reporters—including Pheiffer (Rachel McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James) and editor Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton)—who broke the lid off the watershed case with a comprehensive and blistering series of articles in 2002.

Using the Geoghan case as a springboard, the Globe ultimately revealed that more than 80 priests in the Boston Archdiocese committed various acts of rape and pedophilia on hundreds children over three decades, crimes the Church carefully kept out of public view by paying out hush money to scores of victims and seizing official documents. The newspaper eventually published over 600 articles about the scandal and won the Pulitzer Prize.

“Spotlight” is really like two great movies—one is an infuriating, spellbinding document of the most deeply immoral and sinister chapter in the Catholic Church’s history; the other is a soaring, rapturous love letter to the newspaper business itself and a celebration of passionate, professional journalism.

Watching the smart, savvy reporters in this movie painstakingly doing their work—in the office on a Sunday, working from home, researching in the library until it closes, jotting down notes, making phone calls, checking facts, knocking on doors, interviewing subjects, taking more notes—one is reminded of Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane” when he took over at the New York Inquirer and justified turning his new publisher’s office into his personal apartment by declaring, quite succinctly, that the news goes on for 24 hours a day.

There's a wonderful shot that celebrates the subtle, vibrant pulse of a daily city newspaper. Walter is chatting with editor Ben Bradlee (John Slattery) about the story. In between them, at the far end of the newsroom, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber)—the Globe’s intrepid, unpretentious new chief editor—sits in his office late in the day, still working.

Baron, a strikingly composed, baritone-voiced outsider who daringly suggested the Globe take on the church in the first place, is perhaps the unsung hero of the film. At a time when the internet was already beginning to chip away at advertising revenues and the newsroom was staring at cutbacks, Baron committed resources to an important story and showed his faith in the value of essential journalism.

“Spotlight” is a reminder of the measure of stories the public gets when honest and talented reporters are doing their jobs. It’s also about what happens when a venerable daily newspaper functioning at a high level—telling important truths, letting people know what's going on, holding suspects accountable, and just being a responsible citizen—becomes the eyes and ears, the legitimate moral center, of an American city.

Inside Out (2015)

Mind Games: Core emotions--Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust
and Joy--at the controls of a young girl in "Inside Out."

For any befuddled parent that has ever been curious as to what’s going on inside the head of their child, “Inside Out”—the funny and furiously inventive latest entry from Pixar Animation Studios and director Pete Docter—intrepidly journeys behind the eyes of a smart, sensitive 11-year-old girl and opens up the curtains on a warm, wondrous new world full of splendidly offbeat characters, colorfully strange places and endlessly imaginative gadgets.

The main character, Riley (voice of Kiatlyn Dias), is an average, energetic kid from Minnesota whose days revolve around school, friends, hockey practice and spending time at home with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan). Her life by itself seems pretty mundane, but the magic of “Inside Out” is that what’s happening outside Riley’s head isn't half as interesting as what's going on inside.

That’s where Riley’s distinctly tinted core emotions have taken form. There’s Joy (Amy Poehler, perfectly cast), a yellow bundle of optimism who literally glows like sunshine; Sadness (Phyllis Smith, also terrific), a short, blue figure of depression; Anger (Lewis Black, very funny), a small, red box of grimaces and frowns whose head bursts into flames whenever he gets mad; Fear (Bill Hader), purple, fretful and bug-eyed; and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), green, sardonic and repulsed by anything gross.

The core emotions take up residence in a huge control room in Riley’s mind. There, they anchor and organize her thoughts, collecting memories in small, crystal balls colored for what mood they represent and storing them on towering shelves in cavernous spaces meant for short and long term memory. Beyond the control room are more wonderfully inspired places—floating lands called personality islands (there’s one each for imagination, honesty, and goofiness) symbolizing elements of Riley’s individuality; a deep, yawning abyss where forgotten memories end up; and a surrealistic room for abstract thought that Picasso would have admired.

When dad gets a new job and the family is forced to relocate to San Francisco, Riley confronts an unsettling combination of factors—the anxiety of a new school, having to make new friends, trying out for a new hockey team—that causes her to increasingly miss her old life in Minnesota. Clearly, the dramatic change of scenery leaves her homesick, flooded with melancholy feelings that even she doesn’t quite understand and has difficulty expressing.

Adjusting to a new school is just one of the sweeping changes
for Riley, the main character in Pixar's animated "Inside Out."

Meanwhile, the perpetually upbeat Joy has problems at the controls when Sadness begins touching Riley’s happy memories, turning the bright yellow bulbs to a gloomy blue. Before Joy figures out what’s really going on—that part of growing up requires Riley to need shades of both sadness and happiness to learn to cope with life’s challenging vicissitudes—she and Sadness are whipped from the control room and spend part of the film marooned in other areas of Riley’s mind, each of them visually delightful and highly original.

If “Inside Out” sounds like a carnival funhouse for the eyes, it is that but also a great deal more. Beyond the inventive visuals, amusing one-liners and hilarious sight gags lies an intelligent, perceptive essay about the complexities of being a preteen, the anxieties of communicating with adults, and the challenges of understanding our emotions.

Not since “Pinocchio” has there been an animated movie with such an incisive sense of childhood and such a profound grasp on the nature of growing up. Unlike that dark pit in Riley’s mind where mercurial memories go to be forgotten, the enduring brilliance of “Inside Out” ensures that it’s likely to be remembered—and adored—for a very long time to come.

The Forest (2016)

Natalie Dormer in "The Forest."

Haunted forests have suddenly become a regular subject for horror movies. Last time, we looked at “The Hallow,” a darkly atmospheric tale about an army of malevolent gremlins guarding an Irish forest from tree-cutting developers. Now, in “The Forest,” the setting shifts to Japan, where the dense woods underneath Mount Fuji come eerily shrouded in fog, madness and death.

Natalie Dormer plays Sara, a young American summoned to the far east when she learns that her twin sister Jess (also played by Dormer) went into the woods and didn't come out. It is assumed that Jess committed suicide, as this particular destination is known for such things. But Sara, insisting to have some kind of psychic connection to her sibling, believes her twin is indeed alive.

Once she arrives at the notorious forest, Sara resolves to begin searching for Jess, even against ominous warnings from locals that sinister spirits deep in the forest cause erratic behavior, possibly making her believe and see things that aren't there. Meanwhile, Taylor Kinney plays a seemingly innocuous journalist tagging along for a story, only to have his motives eventually called into question when Sara’s visions and suspicions unravel in a violent panic.

Directed by Jason Zada, the most effective scenes in “The Forest” take place during the few night scenes, when the screen is drenched in blackness and the action becomes increasingly claustrophobic. As Sara tries to find her way using a small cellphone light and Zada’s jittery camera bounces nervously, the movie evokes “The Blair Witch Project,” the indie shocker from the 90s known for achieving scares using striking minimalism.

The Aokigahara Forest, where the movie is filmed, is reportedly Japan’s most popular destination for suicides—a place where vengeful ghosts seek angry retribution on the living as payback for their own violent death. The premise seems ripe for a crackling ghost story, but “The Forest” is too caught up in its own silly narrative to be serious about either ghosts or suicide. It’s a missed opportunity.

A better story about Japanese ghosts, or yurei, can be found in Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-on” and its American remake, “The Grudge,” which was visually scarier and had a dark subtext about the twisted consequences of raging anger and domestic violence. The biggest problem with “The Forest” is that it never feels half as haunting or disturbing as a documentary might be about the same subject.