#3
Post
by kevinknapman » Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:50 pm
My review of the film from when I saw it at last year's LFF:
Jay Roach's conventional but enjoyable biopic of the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
Bryan Cranston is excellent in the title role, never too hammy but larger than life and always entertaining.
He's backed up by a great cast that includes Diane Lane as his wife Cleo, Louis CK and Alan Tudyk as fellow blacklisted writers, Helen Mirren as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G Robinson and, most memorably, John Goodman and Stephen Root as B-movie studio bosses the King Brothers. The Hobbit's Dean O'Gorman even manages a half-decent approximation of Kirk Douglas.
It's not a particularly memorably made film and Meet the Parents/Austin Powers director Jay Roach is clearly more comfortable with the more humorous elements of the script than the more dramatic stuff. The humour is welcome (which Louis CK fan wouldn't want to see him being funny on the big screen) but I did occasionally long for the film to be a little more angry and impassioned (oddly Louis CK gets the most opportunity to deliver this aspect after Cranston).
It's still worth seeing though, thanks to the great cast.
Last edited by
kevinknapman on Mon Feb 01, 2016 11:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
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