Review of The Post (2017) by Slovenly_Muse — 13 Aug 2018

Off the bat, this movie makes the puzzling decision to tell the story of the Post deciding to publish someone else's reporting, rather than telling the (one imagines) more fascinating and compelling story of the Times' hard and dangerous work of obtaining the Pentagon Papers in the first place. Then, in telling the story it chose, this film has nothing to say about it. It seems to want to make a point about sexism, but confines all sexism safely to the boardroom and does not interrogate AT ALL the real experiences of female employees of the Post during that era. Sarah Paulson is wasted as the supportive wife who makes sandwiches for her husband's work friends, and Carrie Coon is similarly squandered as seemingly the only female reporter at the Times, who has nothing to do story-wise, but whose easy presence seems designed to reassure the audience that sexism didn't (and doesn't) REALLY exist at the Post, despite the earlier boardroom scenes. The film seems to want to be a biopic of Kathryn Graham, but it only covers one thing that happened in her life, and even then it barely scratches the surface. She could be wholly excised from the movie and it would hardly make a difference, so little of it is about her. And while I can see the occasional black secretary answering phones in the background, would it have killed this film to give a non-white person something meaningful to do? The monochromatic speaking cast would be galling in a film that's NOT ostensibly about an underdog hero overcoming prejudice in the workplace.

Most review-trolls are calling this film "liberal propaganda," but I found its point of view so conservative as to be insulting. Nothing about this film is interesting or challenging, and everything it strives for, it seems afraid to actually achieve. I wasn't just bored or disappointed by this film, I was actually angered by how cowardly it was. Spielberg assembles an all-star cast, only to timidly put them to work serving up tepid mashed potatoes.