Leo wins, Inarritu wins again but host Rock steals show

In an underdog win for a movie about an underdog profession, the newspaper drama Spotlight took best picture at the 88th Academy Awards.

Tom McCarthy's film about the Boston Globe's investigative reporting on sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests won over the favored frontier epic The Revenant. McCarthy's well-crafted procedural, led by a strong ensemble cast, had lagged in lead-up to the Oscars, losing ground to the flashier filmmaking of Alejandro Inarritu's film.

But Spotlight - an ode to the hard-nose, methodical work of a journalism increasingly seldom practiced - took the night's top honor despite winning only one other Oscar for McCarthy and Josh Singer's screenplay. Such a sparsely awarded best picture winner hasn't happened since 1952's The Greatest Show On Earth.