Gary Oldman (center) stars as Winston Churchill in director Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, a Focus Features release. Photo credit: Jack English / Focus Features ©

Gary Oldman gives an amazing performance as Winston Churchill in director Joe Wright Darkest Hour, a riveting drama about Churchill and the earliest darkest days of World War II, as Britain faced the crisis of Dunkirk and invasion by Hitler loomed. The film is an admirable work, a mix of historical drama and biopic, but it is Oldman’s remarkable Oscar-worthy performance that is generating the most attention.

Darkest Hour offers more than Gary Oldman’s sterling, stirring performance. It is also a wonderful companion to a couple of other WWII films released this year, Dunkirk and the less-seen Their Finest Hour, both set around he same time in Britain. Combined with director Joe Wright’s earlier film Atonement, which contains a riveting depiction of a...