In Washington, 1971, Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) is the owner and publisher of the Washington Post after the death of her husband. Her editor is Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), and she and the board are trying to make the paper a publicly traded company right as the Pentagon Papers broke in the New York Times. Both the people named and many more in the movie were real people, and the Pentagon Papers were a very big deal - which drove the question of freedom of the press all the way to the Supreme Court.

The movie is primarily about the Pentagon Papers and freedom of the press, but they do kind of make a case for what an uphill battle Katharine Graham had every day as a female manager of a paper in the 1970s.

I suspect this movie exists because of "Spotlight," Tom McCarthy's brilliant story of the Boston Globe's series of publications about the child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Boston and around the world. While I would argue "Spotlight" is the superior movie, this one is still very good. Like "Spotlight," it makes a strong case for free speech and an independent press.

UPDATE: if you watch this, you should also watch its spiritual - and in some ways literal - sequel, 1976's "All the President's Men" (if you haven't seen it).