I was able to preview Steven Spielberg’s (Jaws, Saving Private Ryan) The Post two years before it was released to the public and even a year before it went into production. It was called Spotlight, and it won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was a fantastic movie. I wish I were more than kidding, and with that, I could be more positive about my viewing of what I hoped could be one of the year’s best movies. That was months ago when I only knew of the movie title and that it starred Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. In my head, I envisioned a movie about an army outpost and was very intrigued. But then I saw the preview, and I wished the movie would have been about a post office instead. Then, when I was halfway through the movie, I wished I had been watching a movie about a bedpost, a fence post, or any other post that would have represented something far less predictable and boring than the waste of talent and time that was being projected on the screen in front of me. It was one of those times (I’ve had many recently) when I was more than grateful to have a MoviePass. The thought of paying for some of these 2017 movies is even more terrifying than the disappointing IT, which was neither scary nor good. And, except for a couple of non-Oscar nominated movies that I am still looking forward to but have yet to see (Hostiles, The Florida Project), The Post successfully ends 2017, the worst year for movies this century.
A few great things happened at the movies in 2017. First, there were many movies (some good, some not so good) about outsiders, characters who feel like they don’t belong, or at least characters who perceived themselves to believe they didn’t belong or had others believing them to be outsiders. Films like this included IT, I, Tonya, Get Out, The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name, Logan, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Stronger, A Ghost Story, and Lady Bird. For someone who often feels like an outsider, I enjoyed seeing so many movies revolving around these themes, even when many of those failed to live up to my lofty expectations. The second great thing about 2017 was the tremendous supporting actor performances. These included the nominees (Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Christopher Plummer – All the Money in the World, and Richard Jenkins – The Shape of Water).
There also is no Armie Hammer, Michael Michael Stuhlbarg (Call Me By Your Name), Jason Mitchell, or Garrett Hedlund (Mudbound). Finally, 2017 brought us one of the best Lead Actress races of the century. Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Sally Jenkins (The Shape of Water), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and……….Meryl Streep for The Post. I get it. She’s Meryl Streep. But does she need to be nominated every year? This felt like an uninspired movie where she and Hanks were both going through the motions, relying on Spielberg and the success of Spotlight to lead them to Oscar gold. A fantastic race got watered down with the obligatory inclusion of Streep. Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game), Brie Larsen (The Glass Castle), and Michelle Williams (All the Money in the World) all delivered fantastic performances, and each deserved that fifth spot over Streep.
Seth Meyers joked about The Post winning the night’s biggest award before The Golden Globes’ first category of nominees was read. Hanks, Streep, and Spielberg all laughed, believing they were the kings and queens of the party until they were giving their winning speeches on stage. The Post received just two nominations. Unfortunately, the categories in which it was nominated were two of the three or four most important (Picture and Lead Actress). I’m grateful that neither The Post nor Streep has a chance to win an Oscar. For everything that Spotlight did correctly in 2015, The Post did incorrectly in 2017. The Post felt like a half-assed effort and did not give us the third movie in the Spielberg/Hanks trilogy that we were hoping for (Saving Private Ryan and Bridge of Spies were the other two movies these two powerhouses combined on).
This film will make many moviegoers think it’s a legitimate movie of the year candidate. I would first ask these people if they’ve seen Spotlight. I would tell them to watch it instead of The Post if they said no. If so, then I would ask them to watch it again. It’s average and doesn’t deserve to be on a list with the other Best Picture nominees. Most of the Best Picture nominees this year do not deserve to be nominated. The five nominees should have been Call Me By Your Name, Get Out, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, winning over Dunkirk and The Shape of Water. And to all of those directors who had wished they had released their movie in 2017 rather than 2015 or 2016, I feel for you.
So here we are, four paragraphs into the review, and I haven’t even talked about it yet. Set in 1971, Washington DC, The Post is a true story that revolves around publishing the Pentagon Papers, exposing the coverup of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson on what went on with the Vietnam War. We learn that in 1965, a man named Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, FX’s The Americans) briefed the Secretary of Defense and the Chief of Staff about the progress of the Vietnam War. When the facts he shares are not presented to the public correctly (it was said that things in the war were going better than they were), Ellsberg decides to take matters into his own hands and sneaks out of the Pentagon with classified documents on the Vietnam War. He meets in secret with two of his colleagues as they make copies of the papers. Ellsberg reads them, revealing that four U.S. presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson) were covering up specific facts regarding the war, contrary to what they had told the press.
Sidebar conversation that took place a year ago…
Spielberg, Hanks, and Streep are meeting over drinks.
Spielberg: “You guys want to do a movie and get an Oscar nomination?”
Streep: “On what?”
Speilberg: “Doesn’t matter. I’m Steven Spielberg. You are Meryl Streep. That’s Tom Hanks.”
Streep (laughing): “Great point.”
Hanks: “It doesn’t even need to be that good. We are Hollywood royalty!”
Laughs all around.
Spielberg: “I was thinking of doing something on the Pentagon Papers.”
Streep: “A newspaper investigation movie. Isn’t that what Spotlight was?”
Spielberg: “Spotlight-Schmotlight. That movie won with Tom McCarthy directing it. I’m Steven Spielberg!”
Laughs all around.
Streep: “Let’s do it!”
Hanks (toasting): “To us…three of the best this industry has ever seen!”
Spielberg and Streep: “Cheers!”
Sidebar end.
Fast-forward to 1971 and enter our leads. The Washington Post publisher Kay Graham (Streep – Doubt, August: Osage County) and her managing editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks – Captain Phillips, Philadelphia) are informed by the Chief of Staff that President Nixon doesn’t want the city’s newspaper to cover his daughter’s wedding. A lot was going on with The Washington Post at the time, each of which could have been its own story rather than spreading itself too thin by lump-summing everything into one movie. Instead, everything happens too fast and watered down quite a bit. Bradlee suggests to Graham that The Post expands its coverage on specific topics to attract a wider demographic of readers. It is well-known that the paper is struggling financially, and Graham needs to decide if she wants to make it a publicly traded company. Again, with so much going on, we have to wonder if this is a significant focus of the movie or a side story. The film is so inconsistent at times that we don’t know. There is also talk of lacking confidence in Graham because she is a woman. Again, this could have been an entire story, but it’s just something talked about on the side. This movie was rushed and sloppy. It tried to tell too much but didn’t mean anything well enough.
But back to our “main” focus in the movie, making The Washington Post reputable. And one of the most significant ways it could do that is by publishing a story that everyone would read. Hence, the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times publishes a story on obtaining the Pentagon Papers with news on the White House’s coverup stories. While Graham has dinner with Times editor Abe Rosenthal (Michael Stuhlbarg – The Shape of Water, Call Me By Your Name), his wife, Rosenthal’s assistant, walks over to his table to inform him that Nixon wants to take the Times to court over the story. So they bail, and The Washington Post gets thousands of papers with no page numbers and no particular order (designed that way).
Bradlee and his team (which includes Bob Odenkirk from AMC’s Better Call Saul) and dozens of others must find each printed piece of paper and get it in the correct order in about 10 hours AND convince Graham to publish the papers, knowing quite well that they could get sued by the President of the United States, it could go to the Supreme Court, and they could all go to jail if it ruled against them for publishing the secret government study about the Vietnam War. But, of course, that didn’t happen. So when we get the phone call that the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, we get all of the expected smiles, hugs, fist pumps, and congratulatory handshakes in lightning-quick fashion. Even if you didn’t know the outcome, you could have still figured it out. And even if, for some reason, the conclusion was in doubt, you would have still rolled your eyes at the formulaic conclusion.
The movie tries to make itself more important than it is. Rather than being a historical retelling, it tries to make subliminal comparisons of Nixon to The Washington Post to President Trump and the entire press. I do not get political with my writing in my reviews, social media, or even talk-about emails. If you want to talk politics, I’ll talk, but not argue, with you to a certain extent, and then I’ll go ahead and leave the conversation. But I will say that a President of the United States should probably place more of his time and energy into keeping our country (and to what he can) and our planet safe and spend less time on Twitter and bickering with a press that knows how easy it is to get him riled. But Spielberg and the company rushed to make this film a 2017 release to show the events of 25 years ago and mimic the king of last year’s events. Or maybe Spielberg and company just rushed because they knew how bad 2017 was for movies and knew if this movie had been released in any other year, it would not be a Best Picture nominee. Who knows? Who cares? Even those who like this film are unlikely ever to watch it again. I do love Tom Hanks, but, my God, I am glad he didn’t get a Best Actor nomination for this film.
The Post was not a good film.
Plot 7/10
Character Development 6/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 6/10
Screenplay 6/10
Directing 6/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 5/10
Hook and Reel 5/10
Universal Relevance 8/10
62%
D-
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