Meryl Streep stars as Post publisher Katharine Graham, an unassertive socialite who normally follows the journalistic lead of her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks, playing it too cute).
Set in 1971, this brisk message movie dramatizes how The Washington Post risked being shuttered for publishing the Pentagon Papers, classified documents illicitly copied by Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), which proved that every president since World War II had been lying to the American public about Vietnam. In these days when the media has become everyone’s favorite scapegoat-Trump blames the media for fake news his opponents blame the media for Trump-Steven Spielberg has made a timely throwback to the days when Americans seemed happy with freedom of the press. One of the year’s very best movies, worth seeing more than once. While some people find the ending too fast to be believable (though less abrupt than in There Will Be Blood), I was wowed by its exquisite, almost Japanese perversity. Anderson weaves together a story filled with pathological masculinity, elaborate gowns, sniping aristos, spectacular New Year’s Eve bashes, deadly mushrooms, and shots of driving through the British countryside that are dreamier than any I’ve seen. But their relationship turns out to be far madder than either of them ever imagined.
When he meets a shy, lovely waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps), he thinks he’s found the latest in a series of women who serve as muses and are then discarded under the unblinking eye of his protective sister (an indelible Lesley Manville). In what he calls his final role (hope not), Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Reynolds Woodcock, a painfully refined couturier (he can be driven mad by the sound of somebody buttering toast!) who dresses the rich and titled. At one point, Ren says it’s time to let go of the past, and in The Last Jedi, you feel that happening, as its multicultural cast of millennials finally takes over the franchise from the boomer trio who launched it.Īfter years of exploring the craziness of American life-from pornography to Scientology to the oil business-Paul Thomas Anderson travels to ’50s London for this cool, strange, quiet dazzler about the many forms of obsession. Johnson offers more visual invention and better jokes, which is good, more climaxes and drawn-out battle scenes, which isn’t, and more of Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker and the late Carrie Fisher’s Leia, which is touching-both carry an emotional resonance built up over the decades.
By now, the franchise is mainly about giving the audience more of what it’s already given it, and the gifted writer-director Rian Johnson ( Looper) delivers just that: It runs two and a half hours. It’s hard to say much about Episode VIII of the saga without dishing up spoilers, so suffice it to say that Daisy Ridley still shines as the heroic Rey, John Boyega’s Finn’s heroism still comes tinged with comedy, Oscar Isaac is still insubordinate as Poe, and Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is still the moodiest, most teary-eyed villain in film history.
Even if Star Wars isn’t your religion (as it appears to be with countless people at the early screenings), this is the one holiday movie that’s as inescapable as sales tax-we all know we’re going to see it.