saw it today. very well done.

Knowing I had to see it, I had read a review in New Yorker magazine the other day and he got it right. Such a difficult subject, so many emotions connected to the subject matter and to the local (Boston) Catholic community, and ultimately the whole world.

Locally, the people portrayed in the movie (mostly Boston Globe Spotlight Team and management) say the performances of them and much of the dialogue are crazy accurate.

OK, on my list.

Al, I wonder if it had a bigger impact on me being a Boston guy, seeing streets I have walked on, people being portrayed whom I know on some level, living here as the horror story was unfolding. Boston is really a small city and easy to know all of it ...but it has obviously morphed into a world wide issue. As important as the story has been, it may have a bigger impact in our small, very Catholic, town.

One particularly interesting thing is the way the director elicited emotion (at least in me) without actually showing any sick acts of any kind, Fine acting pulled it off, and the characters were not all about chest pounding outrage, other than a couple of Roffalo outbursts the reporters mostly stayed in character and focused on the mission of their assignments. We got to see them as complete people.

I reread the New Yorker review (Current Cinema) when we got home. Well written, and spot on.

I've been curious about how the problem of pedophile priests exploded into a worldwide scandal. The priest who presided over our marriage (wife is a non-practicing Catholic) "disappeared" a few years afterward, and there was loud scuttlebutt that he was too friendly with his altar boys. Over the next 15-20 years, there were other dribs and drabs about priests in SoCal being transferred...always with the local Catholic patriarch, Roger Mahoney, who many predicted was a raising star headed to the Vatican, denying there was any foul stuff going on. Then...

I guess my interest is less "local connection" and more confirmation of "I don't have any faith in religious leaders because..."

sounds like you will like the movie. I don't want to scare away people without a Boston connection, but maybe that did enhance it a bit more for me. Often the setting is also a factor in movies, but this story is so powerful and important, and yet told in a manner that does not push sensationalism.

At the time of the Spotlight Team's expose, a local radio talk show guy said that what the Church was doing was the same as if a local owner of several Dunkin' Donuts franchises found out a manager in the Newton shop was raping children in the bathrooms, so he transfers him to another shop in Lowell...and Corporate signs off on it.