Last year, awards experts had their work cut out for them. In the aftermath of the autumn festivals, just two films (La La Land and Moonlight) emerged victorious, culminating in both teams mounting the steps of Hollywood’s Dolby stage on Oscar night. The landscape today is a lot less certain. Who deserves a trophy? A scrappy first-time film-maker? An overlooked 89-year-old screenwriter? One thing we know for sure is that the following films represent the best of this award season’s extraordinary output.
5. The Post
20th Century Fox
All the President’s Men (1976) would have you believe that men were responsible for toppling the long-standing Watergate conspiracy. Steven Spielberg begs to differ. In his new film, The Post, the investigative journalist Kay Graham (Meryl Streep) leads the charge against corruption, alongside her editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks). As America’s first female newspaper publisher, Graham battles not only the Nixon government, but also her sexist colleagues who doubt that a woman “has the resolve to make the tough choices”.
A political drama celebrating the importance of the free press is likely to go down a treat this year, since it so neatly parallels The New York Times’ autumn article that instigated the fall of Harvey Weinstein. Meryl Streep, as we have come to expect, is a force to be reckoned with in The Post, spitting out mile-a-minute dialogue and wrestling with the moral dilemma of printing the Pentagon Papers. As she said in her lauded speech when accepting her lifetime-achievement award at the Globes earlier this year: “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.” The words of an “overrated” actress, right Mr President?
