‘Trumbo’ a witty film about a tortured period

Were he an actor, he could not have worked at all, while as a writer he did piece together an income by writing screenplays through fronts and aliases.

Directed by Jay Roach, best known as a comedy director (“Meet the Fockers,” and the “Austin Powers” movies), and written by the TV writer John McNamara, “Trumbo” is breezy and pithy without ever undercutting the seriousness of the subject.

Anyone who saw “Breaking Bad” knows that Cranston can play a proud, intelligent man under financial pressure, looking for creative ways to support his family.

Trumbo was late to the party — the Communist Party — joining in 1943, while most of his intellectual colleagues joined in the period between the start of the Great Depression and Stalin’s purges in the late 1930s.

[...] when the political climate in the United States changed after World War II, he was among the first group of Hollywood figures to come under suspicion.

Helen Mirren plays the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, a rabid conservative who wore a new hat every day and used her massive readership to terrorize studio executives and enforce the blacklist.

Mirren gives us a sadist, but one driven by sincere conviction; and Elliott suggests Wayne couldn’t help but feel more of a personal connection with liberal fellow actors than with right-wing journalists.

With all the larger-than-life entities roaming the earth at the time, one wonders why the screenwriter felt the need to resort to the fictional character of Arlen (Louis C.K.), a Hollywood writer and fellow communist, who serves as a composite of several of Trumbo’s more hard-line political friends.