An interesting pair for "Dunkirk"

Rating: 6/10 (2 February 2018)

The best acting always includes the best yelling, and Gary Oldman does some of the best WWII yelling since Bruno Ganz in Downfall or George C. Scott from Patton. In fact, that would have been a great movie, Oldman, Ganz, and Scott yelling at each other about everything or nothing at all, trapped in a bunker for two hours or more.
Darkest Hour shows us a Winston Churchill who mumbles and bumbles and stumbles through the weeks of the Battle of Dunkirk, when there was no steady coalition in the British Parliament to pursue a course of non-capitulation, and a dying Neville Chamberlain seeking to appease Hitler one last time. Catching Darkest Hour in close temporal proximity to Dunkirk is an interesting movie pairing, one getting shelled at on the beaches of Dunkirk, another getting yelled at in the basements of London.
Oldman shuffles around with neck popped down and eyes popped up over thick glasses, like a turtle or overfed goose, smacking a cigar and drinking champagne as if always on holiday. Why not lie about some of the news when all of it seems so awfully bad?
Oldman deserves any awards he gets, showing you can find interim solutions to problems that cannot be solved immediately, sometimes winning a war of words, sometimes winning a war with words.