Ridley Scott's 'All the Money in the World' and Steven Spielberg's 'The Post' offer a revealing study in directorial contrasts

It's not exactly rare for Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, two of the most respected and industrious directors in Hollywood, to have new movies in theaters simultaneously. (It happened before in 2015 with "Bridge of Spies" and "The Martian.") Still, there was nothing ordinary about the circumstances that brought us the late-breaking December duo of Spielberg's "The Post" and Scott's "All the Money in the World," two unusually gripping ticking-clock thrillers that found these veteran filmmakers working on tight deadlines of their own.

So accelerated were their production schedules that not until spring could anyone have even anticipated the existence of these movies, which were shot, edited and completed within months. Nor could anyone have foreseen the difficult circumstances that shaped their creation, making them unexpectedly revealing documents of not just the early-'70s scandals and power plays against which they unfold but also the equally fraught times in which we live.

In the case of "The Post," at least, that timeliness was largely premeditated. Initiated in February, after the inauguration of