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Apropos Spotlight, I found it decent enough, but when the movie ended I thought "That's it?" It felt like it should have had another hour.
Discussions about Spotlight are invariably about the politics rather than it being a noteworthy entry in cinematic canon, because it's not. The Martian would have been a better-aging winner, and Fury Road was on the slate. The Big Short probably should have won, but one was another chance to dunk on the long groveling church and the other was about bankers. A tidy microcosm of power, that.
I rewatched The Big Short recently and found it not nearly as good as I remembered it being. Despite Adam McKay's comedic background, I didn't find the "funny" bits funny at all (and the meta fourth-wall breaking bits were just embarrassing). I think it would have worked better as a straight drama with no postmodern jiggery-pokey.
Margin Call, which I watched for the first time more recently, was to my mind a more intelligent, entertaining and tonally consistent take on similar material (and what a cast!).
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Yeah, frankly it was a boring movie that won because it hit all the right liberal circle-jerk notes. Remember when newspapers made so much money that they could hire 4 journalists for an entire year to cover one story? That's the way things should be, right?
Zero rewatchability value.
Michael Keaton is always great though.
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The big short still won "best adapted screenplay" along with 25 other accolades (a list with its own Wikipedia article).
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