TRUMBO (2015)

I sat down to watch this film with a prejudiced mind; I have loved classic Hollywood movies since childhood, and the witch hunt that was the Hollywood blacklist, the "Red Scare" of the late 1940's through the 1950's, where some of the biggest names in the industry were singled out as potentially threatening members of the Communist party, was the beginning of the end for the careers of some of my all-time favorite actors (John Garfield comes to mind), who never fully recovered from having their reputations soiled.  Trumbo tells the story of famed, eccentric screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), who, along with a number of colleagues eventually labeled The Hollywood Ten, would refuse to name names, and ended up doing jail time for it.  Trumbo, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, would go on to create a cottage industry, writing scripts under various names (and recruiting fellow writers to do the same) - including the screenplays for Spartacus and Exodus - right under the very noses of Joseph McCarthy and his Republican cronies determined to make the U.S. live in fear.  Cranston is great, but the rest of the cast deserves equal mention, particularly Helen Mirren as the salacious and insatiable Hedda Hopper, and an extraordinary David James Elliott playing John Wayne, a major proponent of the Red Scare.  As someone calling himself a writer, and someone who reveres the days when Hollywood actually had "stars," for me this film was at various times rejuvenating, aggravating, eye-opening, horrific, touching, even amusing ... but always riveting.  While Cranston deserves his nomination, I think the film's strength rests just as much on its incredible cast, in a film everyone should see - particularly with the political climate in America today.  Frightening, the likenesses; more frightening is the realization, watching this, of how close we may be, as a nation, to repeating past mistakes ... if we don't remember the heinous roads they took us down before. (rated R)  A