Darkest Hour

Director: Joe Wright

2017 / 125min / DCP

Wright’s vital, stirring period piece biopic earned Gary Oldman a Best Actor statuette at the Academy Awards for his transformation into Sir Winston Churchill, seen here in the early days of his first stint as Prime Minister, faced with the battlefield catastrophes of Dunkirk and Calais and a War Cabinet pleading for negotiations with Hitler’s Germany. “Oldman is terrific as Churchill, conveying the babyishness of his oddly unlined face in repose, the slyness and manipulative good humour, and a weird deadness when he is overtaken with depression… [He] carries off a tremendous performance here, and it’s impossible not to enjoy it. It’s as if his establishment panjandrum George Smiley was suddenly infused with the spirit of Sid Vicious.” —The Guardian

Distributor: Universal