Film of the Week — Darkest Hour

Darkest Hour's well worth 125 minutes of your time, thanks primarily to Gary Oldman’s likely award-gobbling turn as the old warhound during the summer of 1940. Under a mountain of prosthetics that eerily make him look like both himself and Churchill at the same time, Oldman finds the rhetorical fire, but also — and more importantly — the private moments of quiet self-doubt and anxiety. There’s the usual simplification of a complex figure, of course, but at least the film remembers Churchill’s struggle to keep Britain in the war was as much against parts of the establishment as it was against the Germans. A stacked supporting cast do strong and fresh work as figures put on screen a lot in recent years — but this is Oldman’s film. Times & trailer