‘The Post’ joins ranks of best journalism movies
Some professions just seem right for the movies. Secret agents. Jedi knights. Oil drillers who need to blow up an asteroid with a nuke.
On the surface, journalism wouldn’t seem like one of them. But filmmakers have made some pretty great movies about the media. The latest is Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama “The Post,” about The Washington Post’s pre-Watergate clash with the Nixon administration.
Here are nine other great movies involving the Fourth Estate.
‘His Girl Friday’
In the 1940 Howard Hawks classic, a newspaper editor (Cary Grant) using any and all means to keep his ex-wife and star reporter (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying.
‘Broadcast News’
Holly Hunter is the sparkplug in this 1987 comedy-drama as a TV news producer in a love triangle involving a smooth-talking anchorman-to-be (William Hurt) and a shlubby but talented reporter (Albert Brooks).
‘Shattered Glass’
Hayden Christensen, who gets flak for his wooden acting in the “Star Wars” prequels, gives the performance of his career with the rise and spectacular fall of a writer busted for fabricating most of his stories in this 2003 drama.
‘The Insider’
Director Michael Mann’s 1999 thriller features a CBS producer (Al Pacino) working with a biochemist (Russell Crowe) to get the word out on a cigarette manufacturer adding chemicals to make them more addictive.
‘Zodiac’
David Fincher’s 2007 thriller pits the police and the newshounds of the San Francisco Chronicle against the notorious Zodiac killer of the late 1960s/early ’70s.
‘Network’
The satire feels crazy current in this 1976 Oscar winner: A network with flagging ratings rides its suicidal, unhinged anchorman (Peter Finch) to populist glory.
‘Spotlight’
The Oscar-winning 2015 drama explores the quest of reporters hounding sources and doing the grunt work of investigative journalism to expose those who abuse power — in this case, sexual abuse of kids by Catholic priests in Boston.
‘Citizen Kane’
Orson Welles’s 1941 classic is considered one of the best movie of all time, but it’s also a cracking good journalistic story, with a newspaper magnate (Welles) letting power go to his head and a reporter (William Alland) unearthing his complicated legacy.
‘All the President’s Men’
The mother of all reportage dramas is part political thriller, part detective yarn and all entertaining with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as The Post reporters who took down a crooked commander-inchief.