The Post and Get Out: Movie Reviews

Now for reviews of the final 2 Oscar Best Picture nominees that didn't win the award: The Post and Get Out.  Both are worth seeing but not particularly memorable or award-worthy.  Get Out in particular was pretty over-hyped, in my humble opinion.

1.  The Post: This film, directed by Steven Spielberg, follows the controversy surrounding the Washington Post's release of the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s.  As a brief history lesson, the Pentagon Papers were the top secret government files which detailed how several U.S. presidents, starting with Truman and leading up to Nixon, deeply misled the country about the Vietnam War.  Tom Hanks stars as Ben Bradlee, executive editor of the Post, and Meyl Streep plays Katharine Graham, the owner of the paper.  It's interesting to see Hanks and Streep together in their first-ever film collaboration, and both do a fine job with the material written for them.  The plot revolves around The Post's decision about whether or not to print the Papers, after the New York Times had already been barred from doing so by the courts.  There's a lot of back and forth between Graham and her associates where they question her leadership (she gained control of the paper after the deaths of her father and husband), leading to her ultimate decision to go ahead with printing in the movie's big "yay Girl Power" moment.  Afterwards Bradlee and Graham take their case to the Supreme Court, which (Spoiler Alert) rules in their favor (yay "Freedom of the Press").  Normally I find movies about the press to be pretty boring.  Spotlight, about the Boston Globe's investigation into sexual abuse by local Catholic priests, won Best Picture several years ago, but I found it to be really drawn-out and too intellectual.  There's only so much onscreen excitement that can happen in a newsroom.  The Post, however, kept my attention for its entire 2 hour run time, probably because it ventured a little bit outside of the newsroom to give some insight into Hanks' and Streep's characters, and it lightened the mood at times with little bits of humor.  The nuanced acting skills of the two leads also helps to elevate what could have otherwise been some pretty uninteresting onscreen moments.  The supporting cast, which included such strong actors as Bradley Whitford, Matthew Rhys, Carrie Coon, and Sarah Paulson, also live up to the high acting standards set by their more famous costars.  While I probably wouldn't rush to seek this movie out, I would classify it as a good HBO or Netflix watch, if it ends up on either of those platforms.

2.  Get Out: This was a fine suspense/horror film, but I'm a little puzzled by all of the hype that it has received amongst critics and fans.  It's said to be a commentary on race relations in America, but to me it really just kind of made fun of the differences between whites and blacks.  Starring Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a young black man visiting his white girlfriend Rose's (Allison Williams) parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) in upstate New York for the weekend, the film's light tone begins to darken when Rose's psychiatrist mother hypnotizes Chris.  She claims to be trying to rid Chris of his smoking habit, but she's really just trying to get inside his head.  Chris also notices that the country house's staff, black maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and black groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson), are acting strangely.  Georgina stares creepily into space, as if missing a soul, and Walter runs at high speed on the property in the dead of night.  Other creepy events follow, and the film culminates in an unexpected and strange reveal.  The creepy events taking place during the film really didn't have all that much to do with race at all.  I'm not going to give anything away, but the final scene was a little too predictable for my liking; a more twisted and less conventionally "happy" ending would have had a much greater impact.  Kaluuya did a fine job of acting bewildered at the strange events around him, but he had no business being nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.  Jordan Peele's script was one of the best parts of the movie, so I can't argue with his Best Original Screenplay Oscar win, but the film at its core is really just a standard (but very good) horror movie.  I also have to add that Lil Rey Howery, as Chris's best friend Rod, provided some of the funniest moments of the film with his hilarious commentary on the strange goings-on around Chris.  His analysis of Chris's predicament, all through cell phone conversations with him while working as a TSA agent back home in New York City, removed from the action, grounded the film back in reality.  I would definitely recommend this movie as a decent horror film (and decent horror movies are hard to come by these days), but an Oscar-worthy classic it's not.