Editor Chloe Woods reviews Spielberg’s latest, star-studded film.

Usually, the actors are the ones we accuse of phoning it in. After an impressive thirty-nine features, among them lauded some of the greatest films in history, it’s a disappointment to see from Steven Spielberg something so – dare I say it – boring. It’s not that The Post is bad in any objective sense, only that it gets so caught up in its own high-mindedness it forgets to notice whether the audience has fallen asleep.

The first hour in particular drags through the slow details of inter-paper politics and occasional hints of the turmoil to come. The Post picks up a little once the Pentagon Papers enter the picture: but even then it’s a drawn-out and anticlimactic sequence of events. There’s also no great need to pay attention – the film will hammer in both plot points and thematic ones to exhaustion. You won’t leave totally enlightened about the Vietnam War or the impact of the study’s release on the Nixon administration, but you will absolutely be prepared to give an off-the-cuff presentation on the responsibilities of the free press. As long as you don’t mind being without sources, that is: because while The Post does pay lip service to the public consequences of releasing the papers (which reveal that, by 1971, successive administrations had known the Vietnam war was a lost cause for six years), it does a damn poor job of showing any actual concern. The main issue is the fate of the paper, as a financial concern and a personal one. That could have made a perfectly compelling film in its own right; but the import of this local, family-run paper’s destiny for the free press and the democratic process – which, again, we are told about, rather than shown – is less than obvious. Yes, the Washington Post published: but it could have been any now-forgotten rag.

This is the problem. My mother was born in 1971; a straw poll of millennial friends about the Pentagon Papers brings unanimous references to “that film I saw a trailer for recently” and nothing else. The Post, as a film, is missing half its pieces because it presumes understanding of why the Washington Post was later considered a critical bastion in the tradition of muck-raking journalism and a ballsy free press. There’s an obvious comparison to be drawn – this is not the first time the Washington Post has been fictionalised for the big screen – but All the President’s Men, though released (in 1976) only four years after the events of Watergate, does a much better job of sketching out the implications for the uninitiated. Maybe that’s because back then, when events were still fresh in everyone’s mind, it was clear which parts of the message needed to be stated simply. The Post by contrast comes across as an adult talking to a small child – and skipping over the bits required to actually convince. Which would explain the six Golden Globe nominations, I suppose. It will no doubt have very different connotations for an audience which recalls the events in question, and they’ll probably be the main ones watching it. But the people with most to learn from a film like this, which – however crudely – waxes lyrical on the importance of a free press to hold the government accountable, are the people with little interest in a staid Oscar-bait feature starring Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks (I mean, Ben Bradley) and Meryl Streep as Meryl Streep (whoops – Katharine “Kay” Graham).

Timely – it’s timely, after a fashion. The script was purchased in 2016; Spielberg opted to direct the film last February, a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration. I’m going to assume you’ve heard the words “fake news” before: if at any point in the last year you’ve blissfully tuned out the details of the current American administration, all you need to know is it involves a constant assault on the free press, the denial of press passes and other access, and a daily stream of nonsense. Do the newspapers speak truth to power now? When they try, it rarely seems anyone is listening. The Post yearns for the days of the Nixon administration, when revelations of shadiness and lies in the White House could provoke a sea-change in attitudes rather than an exhausted shrug, and journalists cared first and foremost about informing the public. The old-fashioned technologies of typewriters and dial-phones are lovingly caressed by the camera: the point here is not to learn from the past, but simply to romanticise it. Let us go back – to what? To Nixon? To the successive governments who lied about Vietnam? To the courses set in motion that brought us to where we are now? It was not a simpler time of more straightforward questions; that’s only how it seems in hindsight. Ben Bradley and Katharine Graham themselves had dubious links to the heart of government, were pressured not to publish, and battled to find resources for serious journalism. There have always been buffoons and charlatans. People were not nobler then – or they are not less so now – the news is only the first draft of history, and that’s the most telling line in the film: because it doesn’t only mean history still full of notes and clutter. History is penned by the victors, and the publication of the Pentagon Papers marked an important date in the temporary victory by a certain conception of journalism for cultural territory. Newspapers and television anchors, unlike politicians, became people we could place faith in. That was part of the problem. Do the events of The Post have relevance to our present situation? Yes, indeed. Is the solution an attempt to recapitulate the past? No – only in the most basic impulse – that you must tell the truth.

Does the film? I’ve no idea, honestly. Part of its dullness may stem from a loyalty to historic fact, which is rarely cinematic, but if so that would be wasted effort: historic films tend to be swallowed wholesale or disbelieved regardless of their individual merits. Among the current crop, the best to be said for The Post is that at least it’s not another World War II biopsy: but it was supposed to be a film, not a repetitive two-hour lecture on how awesome the free press used to be. We’ve all seen Trump’s tweets. We know.

The Post is out now in UK cinemas. Check out the trailer:

Editor Chloe Woods reviews Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar-hopeful directorial debut.

Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is driven, ambitious, and smarter than every man in the room. Bringing Bloom’s own 2014 memoir to the big screen in a feature both written and – for the first time – directed by The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game is a fast-paced, fast-talking film spanning Molly’s rise and fall as host of two of this century’s most infamous poker tables. Smart as she might be, the cards are ultimately stacked against her, and what began as a game will end up somewhere far more serious.

It’s about poker, but also it’s not about poker, so don’t expect to learn much about the game itself. In-depth explanations of particular hands, provided once or twice, will fly past unless you already understand them. What matters here is the culture of poker-playing among two distinct sets of the American elite, and the associated legal implications: poker itself may be above-board (and Molly makes a determined effort to keep her games clean, or at least ensure plausible deniability) but the other entertainments of the very rich are often not. The film leans into the odd seediness of gambling; even when hosted in classy rooms and breaking not a single by-law, there’s a petty crassness in the competition over money, the politics of invites, and the hapless glee with which a good number of players throw themselves onto the whims of the table’s masters. Molly draws a distinction between poker players and gamblers – almost all those at her games are the latter, including (though she does have enough other concerns to make “good decisions” for a while) Molly herself.

Opening – appropriately enough – with a narrative bluff, the film launches at breakneck speed and (though it drops a notch after the first few minutes) carries that energy for the remainder of its run-time. In the present day, Molly meets with lawyer Charlie (Idris Elba) shortly before her trial and, lacking the funds to pay for counsel, throws herself on his mercy. These conversations (confusingly set after the release of the book the film is based on, and referring to it) intercut and provide a framing device for the retelling of earlier events. By Chastain’s breathless narration we learn that Molly Bloom, after an accident put her out of the professional skiing she’d expected to be her life, worked as an office clerk and cocktail waitress before (and leading to) the eight years of running a high-stakes poker game in LA. When she was ousted from that, she pulled off an incredible ploy to launch a bigger game in New York: it was this game, hosted in a thousands-a-night hotel room, that brought Molly spiralling into drug addiction and entanglements with the Russian mob. Then she wrote a book about it. It’s a point of note that she refused to name anyone in the book not already revealed: considering her involvement in illegal high-stakes poker games and a somewhat self-absorbed tack towards life, Molly comes across as a basically decent human being.

A good part of the credit for that goes to Chastain, of course: this isn’t a performance to go down in history as one of her best, but it’s solid. The chatterbox Molly of the present day contrasts vividly against her younger self, alternately demure, terse, and thoughtful: she is careful with her words, and also clearly has no time for idiots. She spends much of her time talking down to men who think they’re talking down to her: Charlie, though not quite an idiot, gets open condescension instead, which he takes on the chin. This unfortunately gets rendered down into a whole psychotherapy thing surrounding Molly’s dislike and distrust of other humans – specifically men – culminating in a left-field appearance by her psychiatrist father (Kevin Costner). The paternalistic lecture he offers to his grown daughter about her own psyche might have been less galling if we’d seen more of Molly’s interactions with other women: her mother is often mentioned but rarely on-screen, and her female co-conspirators in New York are sidelined for the sake of presenting Molly as isolated in an aggressively male world.

About half the film is, functionally, “Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain stand and talk in a room”, which succeeds most of the time on the strength of script and cast (not that we’d mark these two down as having any particular chemistry together) despite some unfortunate directing choices. Never mind contrasting the two Mollys: the starkest contrast of this film is the one between the script produced by experienced, self-aware writer Aaron Sorkin and the film-making led by amateur director Aaron Sorkin. Fortunately he tends to stick to the tried-and-tested, but it’s easy to tell when he’s aiming for something more interesting, because those are the bits that don’t work.

They are relatively few. Peppered by moments of humour which allow the leads to show off their comic timing, and laced with light commentary on the nature of wealth and corruption in America (so taken for granted, and exploited by the film’s lead, it becomes easy to overlook its broader implications), Molly’s Game is far from groundbreaking: but it does, for the most part, work. And though this review is three weeks late and the film has been in cinemas since the start of the month, there are worse things to go and see.

Molly’s Game is out now in UK cinemas. Watch the trailer below.

This week, Calvin and Ivan run through the hot films at the centre of awards season buzz this year, weighing in on the frontrunners, snubs, and their favourite underdogs.

Last time on the podcast: #TimesUp: Hollywood, Hypocrisy, and the Future

Speaking of awards, check out our Trip to the Oscars cinema outings. This week, we’re heading to see Darkest Hour (FACEBOOK EVENT) – join us?