Darkest Hour (2017)

[That One Girl]

6 hours ago, filmlover said:

WOULD YOU STOP INTERRUPTING ME WHILE I AM INTERRUPTING YOU?!

 

I'm still kinda annoyed this got a Best Picture nomination.

 

I’m cool with it.  It’s the weakest of the nominees but I really liked it still so no complaints.  Would’ve been far worse if I Tonya got a nom instead

[ddddeeee]

Crap.

[Avatree]

Just saw this, I enjoyed it. Gary Oldman is great and his version of Churchill is very watchable. In fact that's the movie summed up, watchable. It may not be accurate or complex or particularly well written but it is very watchable. Gets my approval.

[Blankments]

There's nothing to Darkest Hour. An empty shell of a biopic, there is no point, no thesis, nothing except a caricature of a man. Perhaps there's an interesting movie out there about Churchill, but Oldman's portrayal is dry and lacking of any true effort from him as an actor. Indeed, the only good attribute in any aspect here is Mendelsohn's performance as King George VI, which distances itself from Firth's portrayal and feels remarkably human compared to the rest of this film.

 

Everything else is the bare standards; the much touted cinematography has the color palette of an NCIS episode, and the acclaimed score sounds like every biopic score of the last five years. Wright's direction is workmanlike, and the script manages to be both obnoxiously sympathetic and lacking in any form of character exploration. Some people have stated this film is made better with thinking of it as a Dunkirk companion piece; the only thoughts that came to my head were how much I wish I had just watched Dunkirk a fourth time instead.

 

Darkest Hour is just dull and visionless, failing to entice in any way. When we go to the movies, we expect to forget about our lives' troubles, escaping into a story for at least ninety minutes. As I watched Darkest Hour, my mind wandered to stressful aspects of my life that I honestly hadn't been thinking of all day. That is the greatest failure a film can be. This is the type of film that makes you realize that there is no way cinema can fill the empty void within yourself. If anything, it can only make it worse. Much, much worse. D-