Spotlight on Room!

Do yourself a favor and go see Spotlight in your local movie theater as soon as possible. In the tradition of All The President's Men,this is a journalism movie. Now maybe the youth have no idea what journalism is because quite frankly it doesn't exist any longer, but by seeing this movie, they will understand what used to happen to bad people once the newspapers got a hold of your skullduggery. Spotlight tells the story of a special team of Boston Globe (thats a newspaper kids) who tackle the story of the Boston Archdiocese covering up pedophilia, paying off victims of the abuse, oh hell call it what it was, racketeering.

Strong performances from Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian D'Arcy James and great subtle performance from Liev Schreiber fuel this thriller. Yeah it's a thriller. Will they get the story? Will the church destroy them? Will Mark Ruffalo's rage make him turn green?

I used to work in newspaper rooms 100 years ago. I was of the generation of Woodward and Bernstein who thought we'd change the world and slay all the evil. Man we were wrong. Watergate is nothing compared to the open buying of these creeps in DC nowadays. Nowadays "journalism" is some TMZ busybody telling you so and so is screwing so and so and people actually giving a shit. But not that long ago, journalism was noble. It got bad guys. It made bad guys tremble. Now, we celebrate these bad apples.

Spotlight is a noble film. Period. I miss that.

Room is a movie that makes you glad to be a movie lover. Room is a tough watch for an hour or so. A story of a young woman kidnapped and held captive in a garden shed, the Room, who has a young son thanks to her rapist kidnapper.Their life in the room is a young woman making the best of it. Teaching her young son the ways of the world, lying of course, that outside is outer space and the room is perfectly normal. Brie Larson is wonderful as this young mother trying to keep her son, Jack, from the truth. Until the opportunity to escape comes along and Jack is forced to learn the truth, much to his dismay.

The final hour of this movie is Ma and Jack trying to assimilate to a world one had forgotten and the other has never known. Joan Allen as Ma's mother is a needed glue to keep this movie intact and she is brilliant as usual.

But I gotta tell ya. This little boy, played by an unknown child actor named Jacob Tremblay is one of the most brilliant performances I have ever seen. Not for a kid, but for anyone. There are certain performances by unknown to me actors and actresses in movies in history I can never get over. I remember Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remember Meryl Streep in Julia. I recall seeing this guy named Robert DeNiro in Godfather 2. Benicio Del Toro in Traffic. Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy (I didnt say they were all good movies). Edward Norton in Primal Fear. Leonardo DiCaprio in Gilbert Grape. And now Jacob Tremblay in Room. This kid is THAT good. There isnt a false moment in his performance. He's 5 years old. And he acts 5 years old. Brilliantly.

Go see Room. Go see Spotlight. The more money these types of movies make, the more of them they will greenlight.