In an awards season where no film has taken a clear front-runner status, the DFW Film Critics Association picked its list of this year’s best movies over the weekend. Emerging as the winner was Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s drama about the Boston Globe‘s work to expose the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. The film was not on my ballot, but I did find it very good. Only two of the DFWFCA’s top 10 picks made my ballot. I seem to be rather out of step with my colleagues this year; of the 21 actors who won recognition (there was a fifth-place tie in the Best Actress category), I only voted for six of the performances. The only top pick that agreed with mine was Inside Out as the year’s best animated movie. I was gratified to see the Brazilian domestic comedy The Second Mother win some recognition in the foreign film category, though I wish the best film score award had gone to something more original than the music for The Revenant, as good as it is.
You’ll have to wait until the December 28 issue before I publish my Top 10 list, which will probably be different from my ballot, since I’m still seeing movies from this year. However, I’ll be publishing my usual pieces about the year in cinema later this month on this blog, so watch for those. One last note on the awards: This year’s were dedicated to Philip Wuntch, the longtime Dallas Morning News film critic who passed away in October. His love for the art form inspired us all.
Spotlight will win most of the awards that it is nominated for, because it is powerful enough to literally change the religion of tens of millions of people.
No other movie in history did that, and Hollywood will acknowledge it’s power, rewarding itself, as it should.
This movie will have a more dramatic impact on people’s lives than any movie ever made, and Hollywood doesn’t want to be remembered as the institution that didn’t understand that.
Well well well, if it isn’t Patrick O’Malley 617-PATRICK, trolling under his thinly disguised handle “neil allen”. Old Patrick here would lead you to believe that “Spotlight” will cause tens of millions of people to stop being Catholic.
Old Patrick here thinks that all catholics will be raped for eternity in hell. Old Patrick here has called for the death of all catholic priests. Old Patrick here has said that he’d rather the victims of abuse just kill themselves. Patrick doesn’t care about child abuse and makes excuses for molesters — as long as they work for the public schools and not the church.
I don’t know if the movie will have the dramatic impact that patrick says it will. I just hope that his words—his real words, made under the cover of a fake internet name when he’s too big of a coward to say them in real life — will echo on and on and on. Spread the word.
Change the religion of tens of millions of people? I don’t know that this or any other movie can do that. I’d be surprised if it was left out of the Oscar race, though. We’ll hear more about this.