History Time

Darkest Hour (2017): written by Anthony McCarten; directed by Joe Wright; starring Gary Oldman (Winston Churchill), Kristin Scott Thomas (Clemmie Churchill), Ben Mendelsohn (King George VI), Lily James (Elizabeth Layton), Ronald Pickup (Neville Chamberlain), and Stephen Dillane (Viscount Halifax):

Old-fashioned, talky history picture got Gary Oldman and a whole lot of make-up and prosthetics a Best Actor Oscar for playing Winston Churchill. The film takes place over the course of a few weeks in 1940 during which Churchill becomes Prime Minister and is immediately faced with the dilemma of fighting or making peace with Nazi Germany while Germany's forces route the Allies on the continent. 

It's certainly rousing stuff of a certain type, historically inaccurate in certain pumped-up scenes of Yay Blighty. Oldman is excellent, or at least he's not recognizable as Gary Oldman much of the time, and the Academy loves that shit. One could literally start Dunkirk immediately after this movie ends and have an almost seamless four-hour movie from two different directors. Recommended.

A Brief History of Time (1992): written and directed by Errol Morris; starring Stephen Hawking and friends and family: Errol Morris' documentary weaves together the life of physicist Stephen Hawking with illustrations of his contributions to physics and the process of his thinking. It's enjoyable and informative, though I would have liked more physics. And maybe a couple less scenes from Disney's The Black Hole. Seriously. Recommended.