Brian d'Arcy James

The good-natured show...has a winningly inclusive spirit, a fantastical appeal, and a Vaudevillian comic showmanship that evoke The Wizard of Oz (surely a conscious inspiration).

Smart and stinging, Spotlight excels not only in depicting the stonewalling around the scandal but also the double-talk conversations from within and without the Globe that don’t say—but don’t not say—'Don’t go there

Sorkin’s flair for whip-crack dialogue, structural shenanigans, and character chemistry remains a winningly shameless three-ring circus for the screen, and his thoroughly excellent ensemble help to distract from his infamous artifice.

Because of its hurried pacing, the film doesn’t quite make us feel the potentially Shakespearean sweep of this arc, and the leading performances feel similarly hemmed in by the script’s limitations.