Trumbo

It's not often that Hollywood explores the darker side of it's past. There's films like The Player and Bowfinger, but they're comedies satirising, rather than narrating. This is a biopic of Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston, a screen writer who was blacklisted in the late forties for being a communist, but who continued to work under pseudonoms for B-Movie studios, eventually earning two Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One. He finally recieved credit for Spartacus, breaking the blacklist and allowing him to work again under his own name.

A brilliant film, well acted by Cranston and an excellent supporting cast including Helen Mirren as Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist and anti-communist, and Diane Lane as his wife Cleo. Recommended.