OS X’s Spotlight: The modern Whack-A-Mole

I love how Spotlight in OS X can find information I need inside files I had long forgotten about. All I need to do is type in a few letters of what I’m looking for and then prepare for the unpleasant experience of modern Whack-A-Mole. Spotlight returns files immediately in its pulldown menu, but also begins sorting, reordering and removing them before the loading is complete. Much bobbing and weaving required. What’s worse, if I have the patience to wait for the results to fully load, I am unable to reveal a selected file with the typical ⌘-R shortcut. I don’t always want to open files I’m looking for, and if i do, I don’t always want them opened in their default applications. I need to bring up a separate window, then perform ⌘-R. Why can’t I just have my right-click? And can’t the sorting and grouping be optional?

Apple, how did you ship Spotlight like this?