Best Actor, Gary. Oldman. Europe is collapsing beneath the Nazi onslaught and Britain increasingly stands alone. To build a war cabinet, Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) resigns and the Conservatives accept their black sheep, Winston Churchill, who is acceptable to Labor, although he disrespects them. The Tories – and the King (Ben Mendelsohn) – would prefer Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane), a man committed to a negotiated peace that Churchill sees as futile. Supported by his stalwart wife Clementine/Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas), his family, Anthony Eden (well, mostly) and his young typist-secretary Elizabeth Layton (Lilly James), he writes and delivers amazing speeches as he desperately attempts to hold the nation and himself together without sleep except that induced by way too much drink. This is a tour de force for previous bad-boy Oldman who, draped in astounding makeup, becomes Churchill in person and attitude. Stellar acting. The language sometimes feels forced and there is what I think is an utterly fictional turn ‘to the people’ for support that I doubt ever happened. In that sense, the film is less as a whole than it is a platform for Oldman, who plays Churchill in all his self-doubt and exhausted confusion. Still, it pushes stirring buttons of one who, like myself, still gets chills when he hears these speeches just as when I read “these are the times that try men’s souls”. See it for Oldman’s remarkable work (and the makeup, although I’m less convinced they aged Scott Thomas enough) and the emotional transformation of the nation and its political leaders from the top down and from the bottom up. King George VI comes out remarkably well in this. I found myself thinking of this alongside “Dunkirk”. For performances, I’d say Oldman, who’s in almost every minute of the film, rocks, but I’d still go with Rylance for emotional depth. .