Sure to be nominated: Secret in Their Eyes and Spotlight

11/26/15  Secret in Their Eyes, not yet nominated, 2015 

Julia Roberts, Chiwetel  Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman star in the remake/adaptation of the Argentinean film and Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film from 2009. The name of the movie sounded familiar but it didn't really hit me until towards the end that this was a remake; not that it made a huge difference, just a fact. Another fact is I really liked this movie as well. The story is told using flashbacks (as the original did) and we first meet Ray (Ejiofor) as he is staring at a computer screen comparing faces from a database; and we then see him in Los Angeles waiting to meet with the District Attorney, Claire Sloan (Kidman). Jess (Roberts) walks in on them only to find that Ray is there because of an old case they worked on 13 years earlier. Flashback 13 years and we see Jess and Ray as they are working a post 9/11 joint terrorism task force in Los Angeles; Ray is on loan from the New York bureau of the FBI. Claire is a Philadelphia transplant to the DA's office. Michael Kelly plays Seifert, a pain in the ass member of the team who has a confidential informant who leads them to a local mosque and the promise of terrorist activity. All of these facts come crashing together when Jess's daughter, Carolyn, is found dead, after being brutally raped, behind the mosque. Going back to the future, Ray wants Claire to re-open the investigation and let him work it and follow his findings. The movie uses flashbacks wisely, and the tension builds to a crescendo, and there are a few red herrings. Roberts is really good here, the emotional pain she feels is palpable to the audience. Ejiofor and Kidman are good as well, although there is a romantic plot line that seems awkward and forced (perhaps that's intentional, since she is playing a Harvard educated lawyer who is engaged and later married and he is an investigator). Alfred Molina plays Martin Morales, the District Attorney when the movie opens, and there is something right away that is smarmy (that's really not giving anything away). This could get nominated for editing and Roberts could definitely get nominated for Best Actress. If you see this, I also recommend seeing the original.


11/27/15 Spotlight, not yet nominated, 2015

When the movie ended you could hear people sighing and making other sounds of knowing disbelief - they knew the story happened, but you simply could not believe it. Spotlight refers to a section of the Boston Globe that focused on investigative journalism, and in this case, the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in and around the Boston area. The film has a strong cast of actors including Michael Keaton as editor Walter "Robby" Robinson; Liev Schreiber (Best Supporting Actor?) as executive editor Marty Barron; Mark Ruffalo as Mike Rezendes and Rachel McAdams as Sacha Pfeiffer, two of the investigative reporters; and Stanley Tucci as quirky attorney Mitchell Garabedian. Some of the characters are based on real people and others are composite characters. I should also mention that John Slattery plays Ben Bradlee Jr., son of Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal. It occasionally felt like this was a mini-Watergate or All the President's Men with the secrecy and conspiracy. Even if you followed the news back in 2002/2003, and I do remember when the report came out, the story behind the story is intriguing and well told. It was nice to see Keaton follow up his performance in Birdman with another powerful role as a man investigating his own 'family' (including a priest who taught at his high school and one of his closest friends for his role in the cover-up). Liev Schreiber as Barron, the outsider - not from Boston and Jewish, and it's at his instigation that the investigation takes the turn it does, which is a shift from the individual to a focus on the systemic cover-up and corruption; Schreiber does it in a very understated way, you can see him struggling to navigate the cronyism and insularity of the Roman Catholic Church. Stanley Tucci is Mitchell Garabedian (I don't know if he was a real person or a composite) but he comes off as paranoid, but ready to slay the dragon that is the Church. He is reluctant to let Mike Rezendes into his confidence, but he does when he finally believes that Rezendes and the team are sincere in search for truth and that using the press to expose what has been going on for over thirty years. Mark Ruffalo as Rezendes annoyed the crap out of me; I don't know if he was taking on Rezendes' real life quirks, but he kept talking out of the side of his mouth and he seemed very twitchy. The Spotlight team won a Pulitzer for their work on the story, and Spotlight will probably be nominated for a few Oscars (my opinion) - Best Supporting Actor - Liev Schreiber or Stanley Tucci; maybe Best Picture, Best Screenplay and possibly an editing nod. It's hard to say you 'enjoyed' a movie like this, but it did make an impact and it was extremely well done.

As a sidenote: being a records manager and recovering archivist, it was really gratifying to see the Spotlight team using the library to help in their research and to see the library team using: microfilm, newspaper clippings and computers to locate the needed information (as well as the obligatory trip to the dusty, smelly basement). Much more realistic than untrained personnel walking right up to the correct box of files or file drawers without so much as a barcode or other locator.