Bryan Cranston is Trumbo, trailer and poster

The successful career of 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) comes to a crushing end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. TRUMBO (directed by Jay Roach) tells the story of his fight against the U.S. government and studio bosses in a war over words and freedom, which entangled everyone in Hollywood from Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne to Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

We want this movie to find a proper place at the Oscars just because we like to think about how Dalton Trumbo would be amused and appalled at the idea of his life story being Oscar-friendly. The same way Dalton Trumbo would be amused and appalled to see a top Google search result lead to a right-wing rag that says, “So Hollywood will be producing yet another movie about how the courageous and freedom-loving Communists fought the blacklist in the film industry” — and call the whole thing a “myth.” The same way he’d be amused and appalled by the internet itself and everything on it, and the way he’d be amused and appalled by today’s America and everything in it.