I'm 2-for-2 in liking awards-season movies that've seen their awards prospects go up in a puff of smoke, barely made money at the box office, and got a lukewarm shrug from filmheads (along with _Armageddon Time_).

Can't stand most movies/shows that have journalists as characters: it's either Very Noble Very Brave Borderline Infallible people uncovering some horrible covered-up crime and the music swells when the story's published and they're treated no less as some superhero without much personality other than Tenacious Benevolent Protagonist or dig-through-your-garbage shove-recorders-in-the-face-of-victims swarming-like-locusts-type characters who skulk in the dark and will do anything to get a scoop. The actual humdrum work of journalism is often sidelined in favor of just overemphasizing the heroics/rattiness of the journalist character (exception: the superb Australian drama _The Newsreader_ which combined interesting characters and pound-the-pavement work of 1980s TV reporters in a very watchable package). Didn't know what to expect going into She Said, was afraid it'd fall into the Journalists-as-Heroes genre or hit the points of the #MeToo movement too much to treat the expose of Weinstein as The Moment The Patriarchy Ended.

It didn't (for me anyways), and even better it focused a lot on the day-to-day work in getting the story published (with a bit of the requisite 'these journalists have families and personal lives too' scenes but played very naturally and intertwining nicely with their work scenes): Getting leads, interviewing, verifying stories, double-sourcing triple-sourcing information, gingerly initiating conversations with victims who may want nothing to do with them (scenes handled very well by all parties involved), following threads and all the while seeing the scope of Weinstein's crimes grow bigger and bigger. It just focused on the work and I really enjoyed that. (Samantha Morton also pops in for a scene to remind everyone how. damn. good. she. is.) It's definitely not perfect, it has a Big Dramatic Moment that felt very Hollywood & artificial when Zoe's character gets a call about someone going on the record (the music was swelling then, right?), the use of Ashley Judd playing herself but then decidedly not-Gwenyth Paltrow playing Gwenltltyth Paltrow was jarring as hell (why didn't they just shoot the scene without showing Gwynith's actual face?!). But all in all an awards season movie that stands on its own without feeling like a Very Important Issue movie shoehorned into a fall release date for awards.

It's rejection by awards & audiences is understandable, it's almost like the movie came both too soon and too late, too soon as Weinstein is still going through the courts and appeals but too late as a lot of this story has been told (and re-told and re-examined along with reporting about Farrow's investigations) that the average moviegoer can have a "what, _again?_" reaction when hearing this was being released.

tl;dr I'm just really happy Zoe Kazan got a (co-)lead role in a major studio movie