There’s topical, there’s timely, and then there’s “The Post,” which feels less like a historical thriller set in 1971 than it does an exhilarating caricature of the year 2017. While Steven Spielberg’s latest film rivetingly dramatizes the publication of the Pentagon Papers (and eloquently unpacks the consequences of their dissemination), “The Post” wears the Nixon era like a flimsy disguise that it wants you to see right through.

That’s not to take away from Ann Roth’s ratty and exquisite period costume design, or to detract from how immaculately set decorator Rena DeAngelo recreated the smokey thrum of the old Washington Post newsroom. It’s certainly not to diminish Meryl Streep’s fraught and powerfully grounded portrayal of the late publishing scion Katharine…

52/100

Wish I'd jotted down some notes on this, because a week later I can barely remember any details, apart from the pandering shot of Graham walking down the courthouse steps while a crowd made up exclusively of young women stare at her as if she's Athena descending Mount Olympus. And honestly I can't improve on the unsourced Facebook comment aptly observing (as paraphrased by David Edelstein) that "telling the Pentagon Papers story from the vantage of the Washington Post is like telling the Watergate story from the vantage of the New York Times." The overall stakes for the First Amendment are high, but the ground-level stakes for the Post itself (not counting the impending IPO, which is hard to…

I had listened to a podcast about All the President's Men today, so I was in the mood for a journalism fix. But as I had only just watched that movie recently, I decided to watch The Post, a sort of loose prequel. I should have just watched what I wanted. The Post just really didn't scratch the itch that I had. There are at least three compelling stories here that this movie could have focused on, but instead tries to fit them all and therefore doesn't give them time to matter. The story about the original reporter could have been good. The story about a failing newspaper deciding to break a major/controversial report would have been interesting. The story…

Spielberg, Streep and Hanks team up to deliver an absorbing and eye opening dramatic thriller about The Washington Post's attempts to expose US government lies regarding their involvement in the Vietnam War. There is nothing flashy in Spielberg's direction and the film is all the better for it. He has an important story in his hands and he tells it very well and, to the best of my knowledge, fairly. It has an intelligent screenplay that doesn't dumb down to its audience and keeps the viewer fully engaged throughout. You come to care for the characters and their cause. Kudos to the whole cast from Hanks and Streep to Bob Odenkirk and Sarah Paulson and the rest of the supporting…