Darkest Hour demonstrates the immense courage Churchill had. It doesn't fully absolve and deify him, rather humanizes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 5, 2018

I don't want to undermine my admiration for Gary Oldman's performance, but I think the film itself is flawed.

| Aug 28, 2018

In Darkest Hour, Wright's charged, blustery framework pulls the audience into a distant political landscape. But his approach here is also limiting and nearly wearying.

| Mar 8, 2018

Oldman has already bagged the Golden Globe for his performance, and it is he who elevates Darkest Hour beyond Wright's stuffy, sluggish and stagy filmmaking into a reflective and passable drama.

| Jan 19, 2018

The script has been written with the caps lock on and Joe Wright directs accordingly.

| Jan 18, 2018

As far as the overall package goes, Darkest Hour is kind of just proficient, a perfectly competent and effective period film. What elevates it is Oldman's full-bodied, tour-de-force performance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 14, 2018

Oldman delivers the greatest-hit speeches not just with mastery of cadence but with enough raw power to make the exceedingly familiar sound fresh.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 12, 2018

Director Joe (Atonement) Wright exhibits his trademark flashes of visual aplomb and captures the peril of Nazi invasion with thrilling immediacy, despite being almost entirely confined to the claustrophobic corridors of power.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 11, 2018

Who wouldn't want to see the Nazis taken to task by George Smiley, Count Dracula and Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg?

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 11, 2018

This isn't an uncritical celebration of British bulldog spirit but a nuanced portrait of Churchill at a key point early in the war.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Taking us from Chamberlain's resignation to the aftermath of Dunkirk, the film resists no opportunity to indulge in clunking exposition.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2018

It's an amazing performance: the only star turn I've seen in which a famous actor visible in nearly every scene would be unrecognisable if we didn't know his name already.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Oldman is sheer joy in a role which transcends an otherwise uneven affair.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 10, 2018

Darkest Hour may be brash, but it's never less than riveting when actors such as these are doing their stuff.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 5, 2018

"Darkest Hour" is a straightforward, day-by-day depiction of world-changing events, told with meticulous simplicity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 19, 2017

And yet for all that telling about how it was, the film feels much more like happy fantasy than detailed history, a fond look back on the lead-up to a moment of moral righteousness.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Dec 15, 2017

Churchill, by way of Darkest Hour, hands the actor some of the best speeches of his career, and Oldman brings them vividly to life.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 14, 2017

A nagging question persists throughout Darkest Hour: Is Oldman's compulsively meticulous turn here anything more than a brilliant impersonation?

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 14, 2017

"Darkest Hour" is a one man show for Oldman. And what a show it is.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 8, 2017

Oldman disappears into the role...and Kristin Scott Thomas is impeccable in showing us Clementine's elegance and resolve.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 8, 2017