SPOTLIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw ****TIFF 2015**** MUST-SEE

Spotlight (2015)
Dir. Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Organized religion has always had about as much to do with genuine faith in God as the Corleones' Genco Oil Co. had to do with selling olives. In both cases, neither parties are what they seem on the surface. The Catholic Church is probably more insidiously evil than the Mafia.

Built on secrecy, shame and corruption of the highest order, the Church has always been the perfect hiding place for sadists, psychopaths and pedophiles. Catholicism is so powerful that it's been almost impossible to break through their fortresses of protection. Too occasionally, through dogged determination, commitment and bravery on the part of its victims and valiant supporters, the Church has occasionally been exposed.

Where there is a Catholic Church…
there are Child Rapists!

The movie Spotlight takes deadly aim upon Catholic corruption and is so terrific, the picture easily takes its place with a handful of classic films featuring journalists as crusading detectives under the yoke of dark forces. Director Tom Mcarthy expertly lays out the proceedings in such a clear, precise fashion that his picture knocks us on our asses as mightily as 70s stalwarts All The President's Men and The Parallax View managed to do.

Telling the true story of a team of Boston Globe investigative reporters, the film powerfully and breathlessly details the eventual discovery and exposure of not one, not two, nor even a handful of Catholic Church pedophiles, but hundreds of them. In fact, this was one of the most significant takedowns of Catholic proclivities towards sexual abuse in recent decades.

McCarthy serves up one of the most astonishing casts in recent American cinema to lead us into the labyrinthine evil that plagued Boston as horrifically as Whitey Bulger. We follow Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a newly appointed Globe editor who pushes the long-respected "Spotlight" team to drop everything and pursue the story behind the story and yet, behind the story, on Catholic pedophiles.

Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the team leader, initially complies under duress, but as he comes to know and respect his new boss and discover the twisted truth, he drives his crack reporters to dig deeper than they've ever dug before. The reporters are all Catholics, albeit of the lapsed variety, but even their "lapses" descend into pits of outright indignation as they realize how many children have been sexually abused by priests how both the Catholic Church and the legal system have buried the truth.

Mark Ruffalo - Lapsed Catholic Reporter

Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) takes on Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), a lawyer representing ninety victims. The attorney wants to help, but can only do so surreptitiously. He also has knowledge of documents that can only be secured legally by suing the Catrholic Church. Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James) discovers pedophile priests who are merely reassigned to new parishes to rape anew (with the full knowledge and blessing of the Archdiocese of Boston), while Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) discovers even more victims than the aforementioned ninety - hundreds more. She also goes after slime bucket lawyer Eric MacLeish (Billy Crudup) whose collusion only protects the Catholic pederasts further.

Collusion, of course, is the key, and as the film progresses it seems the entire city of Boston is protecting this Confederacy of Holy Child Rapists: the rich and famous, the captains of finance/industry, the Crown, the cops and even the parents of victims (one victim describes his mother putting out cookies for his rapist). Oh, and just so the Globe doesn't come off completely lily-white in all this, McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer make sure to nail the local media also - especially The Globe and its early collusion with the Church.

McCarthy's mise-en-scene is intelligently, tastefully un-fettered by overwrought visual excess. He spins the yarn by allowing the terrific script and first-rate cast do their business within well-blocked scenes that play-out in longer takes with punch-ins occurring only when they're necessary to genuinely tell the story and move the picture ever-forward. This is not to suggest McCarthy's work is by-the-numbers - instead he subtly creates three primary looks which assist in terms of tone - garish, fluorescent lights in office settings, dark interiors punctuated with glowing warmth when in the presence of the denizens of the Church and finally, a kind of drab, grey quality to most of the daytime exteriors as the reporters go about their business.

Stanley Tucci - a lawyer holds the truth

The entire film grips you by the throat and its impossible to shake free of its grasp - ever-maddening, ever-frustrating, ever-creepy and at times, even downright scary. In addition to the corruption and collusion, the film doesn't avoid exposing the Catholic Church's virulent anti-semitism (especially when blame is placed on the Jewish editor of the Globe). There's also an unbelievably creepy performance from legendary Canadian actor Len Cariou as Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston's prime pervert priest apologist/protector.

The Catholic Church has never looked quite so evil as it does here, and for good reason. It's the sheer paper-pushing bureaucracy at all levels that is used to hide these rapists and then put them back into situations where they can rape again. The movie is so dazzlingly structured that in its final minutes we're not only on the edge of our seats, but are eventually dealt a mighty cathartic blow.

To expose the Church is one piece of the delicate process of healing for its victims - all of whom were children when they were repeatedly raped by supposed men of God, who in turn were protected by the Church itself. The Church should have been protecting the children, not the rapists of the Cloth. In a sense, it would be wonderful if the children had the final word on this. They're the future, not the Catholic Church. As Spotlight stirringly demonstrates, it's the Catholic Church and its legacy of shame that needs to be exposed, but also, placed in a coffin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Spotlight is a TIFF Special Presentation at TIFF 2015 via Open Road Films

NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - COUNTDOWN TO CANADA DAY 2013 - Child Molestation in Canada? Here's How UK's Hammer Films Portrayed Canada - Weirdly, Very Weirdly!

Crafty Canadian Child Molesters Offer Candy To Kiddies

Never Take Candy From a Stranger (1960) ***
dir. Cyril Frankel
Starring: Gwen Watford, Patrick Allen, Felix Aylmer, Niall McGinnis, Bill Nagy, Michael Gwynn and Budd Knapp

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the movies, Canada never gets a break. As noted in Pierre Berton's almost pathologically well-researched (and very funny) book "Hollywood's Canada", he outlines Canada's penchant for offering up its anus to any two-bit non-Canadian huckster in exchange for the equivalent of coloured beads. Berton's book reveals how the Canadian government gave away its aspirations to manufacture an indigenous film culture (save for National Film Board of Canada documentaries) with the promise from all the major studios in Hollywood that Canada would be featured prominently as a setting in Hollywood films to promote tourism to Canada.

Most of these movies were B-grade westerns that portrayed voyageurs as boozing lechers looking primarily for white women to rape (since they get "it" easily from Native women), peaceful Canadian Plains Indians as blood-thirsty psychos wildly attacking wagon trains, geographical locations completely unlike what they were in reality and pole-up-the-butt Mounties bent on "getting their man".

In his book, Berton details over 600 such films - merely the tip of the iceberg.

He even gives examples of how Hollywood got their fingers into the pie of Britain's indigenous film industry during the "quota quickie" period (where unscrupulous Brits generated micro-budgeted trash to appease the government quotas, yet still make money) by hiring a puppet Canadian to be the "producer", use Hollywood-based British talent - on and behind the camera - and then to collect the financing and profits. This was an especially easy way to exploit Britain as well as Canada since anything made in Canada, counted as British, since Canada was essentially a colony belonging to the monarchy.

Never Take Candy From a Stranger is a low-budget Hammer Film production from Britain. It's not a western, nor is it a British "quota quickie". It is, however, set in Canada, and made primarily to satisfy voracious drive-in movie theatres and grindhouses in the United States.

And while, as the film's narrator tells us, this story could be set anywhere, we will see the tawdry events unfold in Canada. And what, you ask, is the tawdry event?

CHILD MOLESTATION!!!!!

This is a Canadian Child Molester - BEWARE!

Yes indeed - child molestation in Canada! Eastern Canada, to be precise. What the makers of the film mean by Eastern Canada is somewhat unclear since that would place the film in the rugged, rocky landscape of inbred territory in the Maritimes. Funny though, it looks like the backlot of Bray Studios - in Mother England, not in the Dominion of Canada.

There are clearly a few facts about Canada askew here. An Eastern Canadian setting in the fiddle playing environs of the Maritimes would normally mean that the child molestation was being carried out by Roman Catholic priests upon young boys in orphanages, troubled-boys schools and the notorious residential schools. As well, none of the law enforcement people in the film appear to be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but look a lot like sheriffs and state troopers from the good old Red, White and Blue below the 49th parallel.

No matter, Canada it is. Britain has always had a long history of misrepresenting their own colony in the Great White North. One of my favourites is Powell-Pressburger's The 49th Parallel which depicted Nazis entering Canada via U-Boat through Hudson's Bay, encountering a Quebecois fur trapper played by Laurence Olivier, dining in the swinging city of Winnipeg, hooking up with some Mennonites on the prairies, encountering a war-weary non-patriot played by Leslie Howard and finally, an American soldier played by the Canadian actor Raymond Massey.

But, I digress.

We open Never Take Candy From A Stranger with little Sally Carter (genuinely well acted by Gwen Watford) as she plays with a new chum. Sally is a new arrival to this Eastern Canadian enclave of perversion. The gentle rough-housing between the two girls leads to Sally losing 35¢ in the grass. She laments that this was to be her candy allowance for the week. Her all-knowing new friend helpfully offers to take her to a place where they can both get all the free candy they want. Lo and behold, just behind them is a creepy old mansion and from a top window we discover they are being spied on by a foul, dirty old man, Clarence Olderberry (Felix Aylmer).

Later that evening, Sally admits to her parents that she and her friend went to visit a kind old man for candy and stripped naked for him and did a little dance. Dad (Patrick Allen) is furious. He is the new principal of the school in this small town (though it looks reasonably urban) and he is a square-jawed type looking for justice. When he visits the local constabulary, he's told not to press charges since the old man really didn't "do anything" to the children.

They also mention that the old man is essentially the patriarch of the town - responsible for starting its chief industry. He's been a highly influential citizen and well respected. Besides, the sheriff/state-trooper/constable/RCMP-officer adds, Olderberry's son, Clarence Jr. (CANADIAN ACTOR Bill Nagy) will use all his power to make their lives miserable and defend his Dad which will end in complete acquittal for the disgusting, slavering old lecher who, as it turns out, has quite a long history of child molestation that's been hushed up.

Peter is even more intent than ever to press charges and go to trial. From there, we go to an extremely intense courtroom battle, followed by a beautifully directed sequence of nail-biting suspense.

Canadian Cops Track Child Molesters With Vicious Hounds!

Lack of Canadian accuracy aside, I really have to say this movie was a great find. The scenario as depicted more-than-adequately, depicts how child molestation was, for far too long, ignored, repressed and misunderstood. As well, far beyond its time period, it shockingly and frankly depicts the horrors that victims of sexual violence go through during a trial where unscrupulous defence lawyers will pin blame and shame upon them instead of their repulsive clients who deserve a bullet between the eyes rather than the mollycoddling afforded to them.

Cyril Frankel's direction is lean and mean. In addition to directing endless hours of British cop, crime and sci-fi TV series, he also delivered one of the most terrifying and sadly underrated Hammer Horror pictures of all time, The Witches (from Hammer Horror, 'natch) as well as The Trollenberg Terror, one of the trippiest genre-benders of the period. Never Take Candy From a Stranger barrels along with the force of a souped-up GTO engine and the suspense set piece at the end is worthy of J. Lee Thompson's school "chase" between Robert Mitchum's brutal rapist and Gregory Peck's daughter in Cape Fear.

Several twists and turns during this final sequence in Never Take Candy From a Stranger had me on the edge of my seat until the devastating resolution. Add to the stew some truly rich cinematography from the legendary Freddie (The Straight Story, The Elephant Man, his first Oscar win Sons and Lovers and his second Oscar win Glory) Francis and you have an intelligent, suspenseful, powerful and slam-bang little thriller.

On a side note, one of Canada's greatest stage, television and voice veterans, Budd Knapp, appears in a small supporting role. Mother England was always happy to toss colonial savages a few bones.

"Never Take Candy From a Stranger" is available on the great 3-disc DVD set entitled "Icons of Horror - Hammer Studios" from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.