Trumbo (2015)

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely the worst movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Dalton Trumbo was an Academy Award winning screenwriter who was blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy years. Bryan Cranston was well-honored with an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the smart-mouthed screenwriter. Diane Lane played his long-suffering wife, Cleo, who supports him. Dame Helen Mirren was perfect as Hedda Hopper actress turned gossip queen. The film has a stellar cast such as Roger Bart, John Goodman and Louis C.K. The actors who played Kirk Douglas and John Wayne were perfect with their voices and appearance. The film was well-done and well-deserved to tell a forgotten story. I would like to see Dalton Trumbo get a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures posthumously.

Cranston is a magnetic on screen presence and Mirren is surprisingly vile, great of course, but truly vile. I'd wondered why I'd not heard of this fellow. That he wrote most of his best stuff (including Spartacus) under pseudonyms having being pushed out of Hollywood due to his politics explains a lot. It's not all dark though, in fact it's all delivered quite pleasantly, with plenty of humour. Not least with Trumbo squaring up defiantly against the John Wayne character in a particularly amusing scene. I've no idea what The Duke was like in real life, but here he's painted a little bit like Charlton Heston, a gun toting good ol boy. It's a scene of brain against brawn, intelligence verses paranoia. It may be a slightly bleak story, but blimey if it's not great!

This is a well-meaning, entertaining enough movie which informs, but doesn't really stir one's emotions - and it should. Really, really should for we are talking about The Hollywood Ten here: therefore we are also talking about suppression of civil rights in the era of McCarthyism.Who would have ever guessed all those years ago, when laughing at the hysterical silliness of an Austin Powers movie, that its director afterwards would turn his interest in the recent political history of the U.S.? For the sixty-year-old Jay Roach, Trumbo is the fourth political movie, and the first made for the silver screen. Trumbo is quite obviously meant to be Roach's magnum opus, and while he is very adept at keeping things moving on, Trumbo fails to deliver.It is a movie worth seeing, and the reason is the crystal clear way it presents (or digests) history. It's good to know these things. Even better would be to actually feel them, like The Front and Good Night, And Good Luck. did. But Roach, in his quest to inform and entertain, shys away from the uncomfortable. Case in point: Trumbo is shown sentenced to prison, which feels almost like a vacation. And death - the result of the atrocities of HUAAC for many - is never shown, only mentioned. Roach keeps a tidy distance.Even the entertainment value is lowered with some of the casting choices. David Elliott is the most ludicrous John Wayne ever put on film, not looking or sounding like the man. Michael Stuhlbarg's Ed G. Robinson also doesn't sound at all like the real deal, so how can one relate? On the other hand, Dean O'Gorman fares pretty well as Kirk Douglas just by demonstrating a singular determination. Helen Mirren is very good as the despisable Hedda Hopper.But of the supporting players, it's John Goodman as the trash producer Frank King who really gives the film some spark. Trumbo is at its best when telling about the unique relationship with the King Brothers and the blacklisted writers. These are the most energetic scenes of the movie, and the amazing King's are clearly worthy of a movie of their own.Bryan Cranston makes a fine Dalton Trumbo (although even he doesn't grasp the real McCoy's voice), but the Oscar nomination was a bit much.Austin Powers and the Fockers made Jay Roach a rich man. Like Dalton Trumbo, Roach is now trying to make something substantial with his fortune. Considering his fine tv movies, he hasn't fared half-badly, but the dilemma stands as it stood in front of Trumbo: can you really live the life of the entitled and at the same time criticize the system that enables entitlement?

I had heard of the Hollywood Ten for years, and about Dalton Trumbo's works. Jay Roach's "Trumbo" shows how the screenwriter got targeted after the US declared the USSR the enemy, and then spent a year in jail, unable to submit a script thereafter (so he had some people act as fronts for him). The blacklist continued for years as HUAC and Joe McCarthy targeted anyone whom they considered "anti-American".The movie should remind us of a few things. Trumbo and his cohorts (who served in the armed forces in WWII) attempt to remind people of the First Amendment, but the likes of John Wayne (who did NOT serve in the armed forces) won't hear of it. And nowadays, people like Chuck Norris claim that conservatives get blacklisted in Hollywood. For the record, there's no committee asking Kirk Cameron and his ilk "Are you or have you ever been a member of a right-wing entity?". Basically, the right wing is not a collection of fiscal conservatives, but a collection of racist, sexist, homophobic ideologues (the types who think that global warming is a hoax but creationism should get taught in schools). These people have become a literal threat to humanity, and it's bound to get even worse under the coming Donald Trump presidency.Anyway, the movie is something that everyone should see. Between this movie, "Breaking Bad" and "All the Way", Bryan Cranston has come a long way from "Malcolm in the Middle". With this movie and "All the Way", it nowadays seems like a surprise that Jay Roach directed the Austin Powers movies and the "Meet the Parents" movies. Really good movie.Also starring Diane Lane, Elle Fanning, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K. and Alan Tudyk (the Duke of Weselton in "Frozen").A piece of trivia is that Dalton Trumbo and Kirk Douglas had the same birthday: December 9. To be certain, today is Douglas's 100th birthday.