This movie attempts to give a history lesson about one of the most disturbing topics in human history. The massive child abuse of children at the hands of Catholic Priests. One of the most stunning statistics mentioned in this movie is that there is a 6% occurrence of Catholic Priests molesting children, mostly boys.  At this rate, this problem was explained in this movie as more of a psychological phenomenon isolated to the priesthood, rather than something that is a rare and sick occurrence from pedophiles in the Catholic Church who pray on young boys.   From the 1500 priests in the Boston area, it was determined that as many 90 priests had molested children, proving the 6% statistic to the letter.

This movie is mostly about the investigation of the child molestation crimes by Priests in Boston over a period of 25 years starting in the year 2001 when it is discovered that at first 13 priests were suspected of molesting children in their Parishes. Over the course of this movie it is discovered that lawyers and the Catholic Church were covering up this problem with payoffs, suppressing evidence and transferring Priests to different locations or having them take medical leave. Through the use of Catholic Church records the investigators who worked for the Boston Globe were able to discover 90 priests who molested boys and from them many hundreds of victims.  The staff of the Boston Globe was very well played by Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton,  Liev Schreiber and Mark Ruffalo .  One flaw in this movie is that the investigations and questioning can get a little tedious at times and this movie is probably too long at over 2 hours. At the end of this movie it is shown a list of cities in the world that have had a major scandal involving Catholic Priests and the list is very disturbingly long. One also has to wonder, based on the other statistic that 50% of all Catholic Priests are sexually active that if the Vatican would finally eliminate the vow of celibacy that perhaps this child abuse problem would at the least be reduced.

Overall, this is a good movie about a very difficult subject and is worth seeing.

Spotlight IMDB

In some ways, its a very simple thing to figure out. How can a very bad movie be made? One way is because of clout. Clout to have the power and influence in Hollywood and because of that you can make any horrible script into a movie.  Perhaps you owe someone a favor or someone is your friend and gave you a break in some earlier movie. Perhaps by making one horrible movie you may get the green light to make some other movie in the future. Most of us will never know what really goes on behind the scenes in Hollywood but its a shame when you consider how many scripts and how many good ideas for a movie will never be made because a horrible script like this was made into a movie.

Its hard to understand what was the point of this movie. Something about bad weed and 3 friends traveling around the city of New York to different parties experiencing different drugged out visions and delusions.  There is no real story here, just a series of scenes that lead to nowhere and make the audience look at their watches and hope that it will soon be over.  This movie is beyond bad, its literally one of the worst movies I have ever seen. This movie reminded me of “The Interview” from last year and was the last movie that Seth Rogan put out. At least that very bad movie had some sort of a plot, but this movie had no plot, just a series of bad scenes that lead to other bad scenes.

By all means, miss this movie. Hopefully it will be out of the theaters soon.

The Night Before – IMDB

This movie is about justice.  Its also about doing something for the greater good of more people, in this case terrorism.   There is a horrible rape and murder committed and the prime suspect is helping the police catch terrorist, so the question becomes; do you arrest and jail a rapist and murderer even if he could help you catch an entire sect of terrorists? This is a difficult question and a question that is addressed in this movie.

The other question is, if you are the relative of a person who is murdered then what would you consider proper justice for the person who committed that murder? The death penalty or life in prison? The answer this varies based on person who lost the relative and this is another thing addressed in this movie.  In the end there are some twists and turns but nothing too surprising because many clues were left along the way.   Julia Roberts had a great acting scene when it is discovered that her daughter was murdered and her body was bleached inside and out.  In the past, with a scene this powerful there is always a chance that the actor might be nominated for an Academy Award, but in this case the movie is not strong enough for a nomination like this.

Julia Roberts looks much different in this movie and is not wearing any makeup and for the first time she is very far away from the pretty woman she was in 1990. This movie is a remake of a foreign movie with the same name that won for best foreign film a year ago and one has to wonder if that movie is better than this one or why given the subject matter and strength of the story that this movie was made a second time.

I thought this movie was good and the acting performances were strong and I do recommend it, but this movie leaves you wishing that the story and the conclusion of this movie was better.

Secret in Their Eyes