Before I start the review for Darkest Hour, we might as well get one thing out of the way. Gary Oldman (Sid and Nancy, The Dark Knight Rises) will win this year’s Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. Whoever the other four nominees don’t even need to show up for the ceremony. Buried in thick coats of makeup and padding that make him unrecognizable, Oldman (who was only six years younger in real life than the many he was portraying on screen was at the time of this movie but who clearly takes better care of himself physically than the man he is portraying) pulls off one of the most remarkable actor character transformations in recent memory in his portrayal of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His performance will draw comparisons to Colin Firth’s portrayal of King George VI (who ironically was a character in this movie) in 2010s The King’s Speech, a role in which he earned numerous awards, including the coveted Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Oscar. When an actor’s performance is so much greater than that of his peers in a given year, I often compare that role against previous years’ roles. If Darkest Hour came out last year, Oldman would have beat Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) and had it come out in 2015, Oldman would have given Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) a run for his money. Ultimately, though, this is a movie review site and not an acting review site. Darkest Hour is a good movie but, in my opinion, doesn’t rival The King’s Speech, Manchester by the Sea, or The Revenant in terms of entertainment and lasting impact. But in terms of the importance of telling its story and doing so in a way that keeps the audience interested and educated, Darkest Hour tops the other three.
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Category Archives: Stephen Dillane
The Hours (2002)
Oh, man, what a fantastic movie is. This was actually my second viewing of The Hours. I first watched it back in 2010 and remembered being extremely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would not have given this movie a chance back when it came out in 2002, but my interests in films have changed dramatically since then. Now that’s not to say I still can’t enjoy a blockbuster (I actually watched Captain America: Civil War earlier in the same day and loved it), but I am much more into the human aspect of independent dramas like The Hours than I am about action movies or comedies. This movie deals with depression, a topic that I am, unfortunately, very familiar with. And it does it from three different time periods with three different stories that are loosely at times (and not so loosely) during others. This movie knotted Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain, Rabbit Hole) with, surprisingly, just her third nomination to date (as of May 2016) and her first and only win. With a prosthetic nose, she was virtually unrecognizable as Virginia Woolf. But it wasn’t her physical characteristics that stood out. It was how she immersed herself in the role of a woman who you would think had it all but was so mentally troubled that she could not find any happiness in her life. An accomplished actress, this is the performance of her career in a movie that shouldn’t be missed by anybody who views life with a cup half empty sort of mentality.
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