Film

The Post

Name: The Post
Genre: Drama, History
Released: 2017
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts

Spielberg's brisk, handsomely cast procedural about the night Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee decided to publish the Pentagon Papers and risk the Post's future to do it. It's a movie about institutions finding a spine, told with warmth, urgency and a real feel for newsroom clatter. Good for anyone who likes their history with a pulse and a point.

TMDb rating

7.0

If you liked this

All the President's Men1976

The direct sequel in spirit — same paper, same building, the scandal that follows the one The Post just survived. Redford and Hoffman turn shoe-leather reporting into pure suspense.

But Slower and more procedural; it trusts you to follow phone calls and index cards rather than courtroom drama.

Spotlight2015

The modern gold standard for journalism-does-its-job cinema, quieter and colder than Spielberg's version but just as gripping, and it won the Best Picture Oscar for good reason.

But Deliberately unglamorous — no stirring speeches, no movie stars playing it big, just grinding, patient investigation.

Good Night, and Good Luck.2005

Clooney's black-and-white portrait of Edward R. Murrow taking on McCarthy is the closest cousin to The Post's central nerve: a newsroom deciding principle is worth the risk.

But Cool and clipped where The Post is warm; smoking-lounge minimalism rather than Spielberg's sweep.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

His Girl Friday1940

Same newsroom-as-battlefield energy and the same question — does the story matter more than the people telling it — but played as comedy instead of drama, decades before Watergate made journalism solemn.

Howard Hawks's screwball masterpiece moves at the speed of a printing press and finds the same electric joy in newsroom chaos that The Post takes seriously — reporters as sharks who love the hunt.

But Rapid-fire 1940s dialogue delivered at breakneck pace; if you're not braced for it, you'll miss half the jokes.

Bridge of Spies2015

Same director, same star, same interest in ordinary decency under Cold War pressure — Hanks again playing a man who won't bend when the government wants him to.

But Espionage courtroom drama rather than newsroom drama; slower burn, less immediate stakes.

Lincoln2012

Spielberg's other great room-full-of-serious-men movie, about the grinding, unglamorous work of doing the right thing inside a broken system, with Day-Lewis instead of Streep carrying it.

But Talkier and more claustrophobic — nineteenth-century parliamentary procedure instead of twentieth-century newsroom chaos.

Frost/Nixon2008

Picks up where The Post's Nixon leaves off, turning a TV interview into a duel of wits and guilt — sharp, theatrical, and surprisingly tense given you know the outcome.

But More two-hander than ensemble piece; if you loved the crowded newsroom energy, this will feel narrower.

The Insider1999

A different industry, same fight — a story about whether a news organisation will back its own reporting when a powerful interest wants it killed. Pacino and Crowe are excellent.

But Runs nearly two and a half hours and takes its time; corporate broadcast politics rather than print journalism.

Truth2015no page yet

The mirror image of The Post — a newsroom that gets the big story wrong and pays for it, with Blanchett and Redford wrestling with the cost of a mistake instead of a triumph.

But Less rousing by design; this is about failure and fallout, not vindication.

Bombshell2019

A later, messier newsroom story about women navigating institutions built by and for powerful men — Kidman, Theron and Robbie give it teeth that complement Streep's quieter authority.

But Tonally sharper and angrier, closer to satire in places than The Post's earnest procedural mode.

Deadline - U.S.A.1952

It's the film that established the genre The Post belongs to — publisher under pressure, editor with a deadline, institution on the line — made twenty years before the Pentagon Papers and telling almost the identical story in miniature.

Bogart as an editor racing to finish a corruption exposé before his paper is sold and shut down forever — this is the template The Post is quietly working from, made when the stakes felt just as real.

But Black-and-white, brisk, and stagey by modern standards; a 1950s newspaper picture with all the period trimmings.

Gaslit2022no page yet

Picks up the same Nixon-era rot The Post is fighting, but trades the film's tidy two-hour arc for a slow, human-scale unraveling of what happens to the people who get crushed by it.

This miniseries takes the Watergate machinery that grinds into motion right after The Post ends and slows it down over eight hours, following the wreckage it leaves in ordinary lives, especially Martha Mitchell's.

But Deliberately messier and sadder than The Post's clean triumph; it's interested in collateral damage, not vindication.