Starring: Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman
Directed By: Jay Roach
Running Time: 124 minutes
UK Release Date: February 5th 2016
BBFC Certificate: 15

Dalton Trumbo (Brtan Cranston) was a hugely successful screenwriter of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. A family man and an eccentric in many ways, he did much of his best work writing in the bath. He was also a Communist and one of the notorious “Hollywood Ten” who were blacklisted throughout the 1950s.

With a few notable exceptions, such as Martin Ritt’s Woody Allen starrer The Front and, more recently, George Clooney’s Good Night, And Good Luck, there are very few films about the anti-Communist paranoia which consumed the United States after the Second World War. This is largely because Hollywood was hit particularly badly by it and only now as the last of the surviving few participants die off is it becoming a generally acceptable topic for filmmaking. It remains a touchy subject though. Many careers and lives were ruined. [Read more…]