“SPOTLIGHT” A TOUCHING FILM

By Jerry Berger
Berger's Beat
October 20, 2015

http://bergersbeat.com/

There were few dry eyes at the Hi Pointe Backlot as two dozen media types viewed the film “Spotlight,” which is already generating Oscar buzz. Featuring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams, it’s the gripping story of how the Boston Globe’s investigative team broke open the long-simmering but largely invisible yet widespread crimes by pedophile priests. (Eventually the paper ran almost 600 stores that one year and helped expose 249 child molesting clerics and led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law, who once ran the Springfield, MO diocese.)

AT THE SCREENING: Kevin Steincross of KTVI, Calvin Wilson of the P-D and Lynn Venhaus of the Belleville News Democrat (who in the 1990s wrote many stories about predator priests in southern Illinois.) The film was especially moving to victims’ attorney Ken Chackes, SNAP’s David Cohessy, who spent hours on the phone with Globe editors and reporters during their investigation and a Webster Groves mom whose young son took his own life after being abused by two predators – Fr. James Funke and teacher Jerome Robbins – at DuBourg High School