All the President’s Men (1976)

Adapted from the 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, this tells the story of how two Washington Post journalists broke news of the Watergate scandal that ultimately brought down US president Richard Nixon. 

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are both at their very best playing the journalists. It’s a fascinating glimpse into another era. In this pre-internet world, they spend most of their time talking to people, phoning people, typing, scrawling in notebooks, chain-smoking and drinking coffee. In our current period of misinformation politics and double-think social media, the 1970s seem relatively straightforward and innocent. 

You wonder if this film could even have been made now: there are no tech giants, no billionaires dictating how people communicate, no car chases, no shootings and no “love interest” – just two writers trying to uncover the truth.