Revealing. Fascinating. Entertaining.

| Mar 7, 2017

Trumbo is a solid effort made close to unmissable thanks in large part to Cranston's magnificence, the resulting biopic a gripping return to a Hollywood of yesteryear where the themes being examined couldn't be more appropriately timely.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 22, 2016

Credit must go to Cranston for giving this lean film some heft.

| Jun 21, 2016

For all the smart people involved in its making, and for all the smart people it's about, this is not a movie that's all that interested in complexity - in either its storytelling or its morality.

| May 3, 2016

The film is a labour of love for Bryan Cranston, as Trumbo. As Hollywood's greatest screenwriter, embattled but not beaten, he embodies the old Hemingway definition of courage: "grace under pressure".

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 18, 2016

Bryan Cranston does a remarkably effective job of impersonating the man who played such a key role in the era of the McCarthy blacklist, from his raspy voice to his distinctive cigarette holder and his pungent sense of humour.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 12, 2016

One day, perhaps, an HBO mini-series will tackle this cultural face-off and blow our minds. In the meantime, check out Trumbo.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2016

Alongside flagging up Otto Preminger's unsung role in returning Trumbo's name to the screen, what gives Roach's movie bite is the depiction of the writer's family and the toll that his actions and allegiances take upon them.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2016

A small portion of the debt is repaid in a biopic that veers from the pedestrian to the ludicrous to the indecently entertaining.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2016

Fast, funny, if a little flimsy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 5, 2016

The film itself is very uneven. Any texture, depth and pathos here resides in the central performance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2016

Cranston is good, very good, here, but let down by a meandering drama that lacks cojones.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 4, 2016

It feels terrestrial rather than cinematic, but the joy of Trumbo is in the heroism of its subject and an amazing performance from Cranston.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2016

Cranston is superb. The Breaking Bad actor, in best form, is an attack dog: he goes at lines like a mutt at a mutton bone.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2016

Trumbo is no masterpiece, but the story of a writer imprisoned in America for his political beliefs needed to be told.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2016

We are left with the painful irony that a film about a screenwriter so good that Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger couldn't live without him suffers from a dull and slow-moving script.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 27, 2015

Trumbo is ... a blast, even if the screenplay perversely lacks the energy of its title character, who is played with great wit and brio by Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 26, 2015

It's a period piece full of colorful characters, natty costumes, jaunty music.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 25, 2015

The movie's main idea seems to be that, in the end, people prefer movies to ideas. Or at least ideologies.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 20, 2015

A fun, highly watchable film.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 20, 2015