Her rise to Washington Post pop culture editor didn’t happen overnight, but Caitlin Moore, SOC/BA ’11, began her career working them. After honing her editing skills on the graveyard shift, a red carpet unfurled into Style, where Moore’s worked since 2014. The longtime entertainment buff—who interviewed Zac Efron and Queen Latifah as an Eagle reporter—now leads a team covering the whole heft of Hollywood: breaking news, criticism, features, and more. But no one, not even Moore, can track each of the dozens of new film and TV projects that emerge from Tinseltown each month. “I try to make sure I’m up on the really big stuff,” she says. “I also give myself some grace for having a life.”
Ready the remote for Moore’s must-see films set in the District:
17 Blocks (2021): This tragic documentary follows one DC family over two decades. When we meet 9-year-old Emmanuel Durant, we don’t know that we’ll also see his funeral 10 years later. This is just one person’s story, but it underscores that every homicide victim has one.
“Day of Rage: How Trump Supports Took the US Capitol” (2021): Social media has forever changed the way we document history. Arresting and unvarnished, the New York Times’s 40-minute Visual Investigation of the January 6 Capitol riot explores the insurrection from multiple angles. It feels cinematic.
Residue (2020): Native Washingtonian Merawi Gerima’s feature debut drives home the ignorance of history around gentrification. Set on Q Street in Eckington, this intimate depiction of neighborhood change interestingly only shows White newcomers from the neck down.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013): Not necessarily the most well-reviewed movie, The Butler’s interesting through note is Cecil Gaines as a witness to history, serving presidents while watching them decide which civil rights laws are worth enacting.
All the President’s Men (1976): This classic moves at a slower pace that’s true to journalism: a lot of desk work to chip away at the story. I first watched this after joining the Post, prompted by Robert Redford’s visit to the newsroom on my day off.