ON THE BIG SCREEN
There are a lot of adjectives that don’t apply to Spotlight, the new film about the Boston Globe’s uncovering of the Catholic Church’s role in hiding sexual abuse by priests. It is not sensational, nor is it graphic in its depiction, nor is it fast-paced. Rather it is a compelling and absorbing story of the journalistic process and of a new editor, Marty Baron, who cared less about whom he and his reporters might offend. The dogged persistent work of the four members of the Spotlight team turned up a mind-boggling number of involved priests, several lawyers who aided in the cover-up, and direct involvement by the cardinal. You know the ending, but well worth seeing!
Brooklyn is a beautiful film. It has a simple plot–a young woman leaves her village in Ireland to go live and work in Brooklyn and slowly makes a life for herself, all the while feeling the tug of home. Eventually, she has to choose between the new world and the familiar one. No violence, no explosions, no car chases, just good storytelling. The movie is based on Com Toibin’s lovely novel of the same name and is faithful to it.
ON THE SMALL SCREEN
I thought the first season of Broadchurch, a British detective series was excellent, but so is the second! We noticed it on Amazon Fire and so paid the $19.99 to watch and watch we did. We got hooked and completed all 8 episodes in a weekend. (Two days later it was available on streaming Netflix.) This season wraps up the case of Joe Miller with his trial and re-opens the failed Sandbrook case which was what brought DI Inspector Hardy to this small Dorset town in the first place.
What, for me, makes this series so fascinating is the attention paid to the feelings and reactions of all the players, including the townspeople and the lawyers. Here, there are two competing lawyers in court, one the former mentor of the other, one dealing with a son in prison, the other facing the end of her professional life alone. Charlotte Rampling plays the more experienced barrister and she is amazing to watch. This is television at its finest!
