Spotlight.

One of my favourite films and one I've seen many times is Station Agent (2003). It involves a quiet withdrawn unmarried man with dwarfism who has a deep love of anything connected to railways he even works in a model train hobby shop. When his boss passes he discovers that he has been bequeathed an abandoned railway station along with some stock. This wonderfully evocative movie was Tom McCarthy’s debut film and one that won him a number of awards. Four years after this initial film McCarthy won more plaudits for his second feature The Visitor (2007) which starred the great Richard Jenkins, who plays a lonely middle aged man who finds himself having to face up to life's problems when he meets a Syrian refugee he finds living in his New York flat. After making two such wonderful films McCarthy next two feature films Win Win (2011) and The Cobbler (2014) did not quite get the same acclaim. But all has changed with Spotlight (2015).

 

The Spotlight Team. 

This biographical drama deservedly won McCarthy an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and another for Best Picture. Similar to Truth (2015) it deals with investigative journalism but this time it's the Roman Catholic Church and its involvement in the covering up of widespread and systemic child sex abuse that comes under the microscope. Based on a series of stories by the actual Spotlight Team that earned The Boston Globe a Pulitzer Prize for ‘courageous, comprehensive coverage in its disclosures of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Church’ in 2003.

An engrossing fact based story that keeps you on the edge of your seat for its full 128 minute running time and again like All the President’s Men (1976) and Truth it highlights the power of journalism where in its true form investigates facts, verifies its sources normally to stop unlawful practices and all for the benefit of the wider community.  I cannot recommend this film highly enough and its another of these splendid movies where the action is in the dialogue all acted out by a stellar cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdam, Leiv Schreiber and Stanley Tucci each of whom give a career best performance.

Win Win

Its official, Tom McCarty is now high on my favourite directors list. How is it possible for one director/writer to follow up one of my most loved independent American movies The Station Agent (2003) with the almost equally brilliant The Visitor (2008) and maintain the same high quality with his third film Win Win (2011).

Poster.

All three films deal basically with human relationships, in The Station Agent we are introduced to three characters. Fin McBride (Peter Dinklage) a loner with a passion for trains who on the death of his friend and employer inherits an abandoned train depot in the middle of nowhere, but his peace is shattered when he discovers that the owner of the hot dog van parked next to his new home, Joe Oramas, (Bobby Cannavale) has an insatiable hunger for conversation. The third person in this very moving comedy drama is Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson) a distracted artist who is still trying to cope with the sudden death of her young son two years earlier.  Three people who on the surface have nothing in common but are entwined together into a credible friendship by the McCarthy’s BAFTA award winning screenplay.

In The Visitor McCarthy deals with the stark realities of the US immigration system when Walter Vale, an economics professor, discovers a young couple living in his flat when he travels to New York City on college business. The pair, unaware that they have been illegally renting it, are allowed to stay, with Walter striking up a friendship with Tarek, who shortly after gets detained as an illegal immigrant. Matters get increasingly emotionally involving for Walter when the detainees mother arrives. For his role as Walter, Richard Jenkins was quite rightly nominated for Best Actor in the 2009 Academy Awards.

The coach at work.

For his third film McCarthy has written and directed a simple affecting story of decent people that can at a divisive time in their lives act out of self-interest. Win Win (2011) elicits great humour from what can only be described as everyday situations. Mike Flaherty, convincingly played by Paul Giamatti, is a struggling small town New Jersey lawyer and the coach of the local high schools failing wrestling team. In order to improve his finances he agrees to become the legal guardian of Leo Poplar (Burt Young) a wealthy new client with early stage dementia and apparently no self-admitting relatives. But instead of allowing Leo to stay in his own home Mike places him in the 

local care home pocketing the fee for his upkeep. Its not all bad news when Leo’s 16-year old grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer in his debut role) turns up to stay with his granddad, having given up on his mother who is in drug rehabilitation and her abusive live-in boyfriend, he turns out to a youth wrestling champion with whom Mike and his two fellow coaches (Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor) hope than can turn around the fortunes of their rather dire wrestling squad. The every more familiar Amy Ryan gives great support as Mikes long suffering but compassionate wife Jackie. Maybe not quite as life affirming as his first film but still an exceptional example of American independent cinema.