See if this were a proper double feature then it would be Darkest Hour and Downfall since they both start with new personal secretaries doing a tryout with their future bosses… And there’s some other stuff in common too. But actually Downfall, the 2004 retelling of Adolf Hitler’s last 10 days, is harrowing, depressing, and necessary. Also executed more or less perfectly, if noticeably within the budget limitations of a production outside of Hollywood-level financing. Maybe a hint of corniness and bullshit to the subplot of 11 and 12 year-old kids recruited to fight to the death in the Battle of Berlin, but pretty much every scene inside the Fuhrerbunker just feels so chillingly real.

Darkest Hour? Something seems just off about the scenes underground as Churchill battled with Lord Halifax and Neville Chamberlain. Something inauthentic. The subway scene was not off so much as fucking awful. But Gary Oldman is great – his best performance since True Romance, as are Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI and Kristin Scott Thomas as Clementine Churchill. It’s worth a watch as an intro point to the state of British politics in the spring of 1940, as the nation stared down the barrel of the Wehrmacht and nearly capitulated. Just don’t take it as historical gospel.

There’s no Downfall here because R-rated movies can’t be embedded. Instead here’s The Darkest Hour a forgettable 2011 alien invasion actioner starring Emile Hirsch and Joel Kinnaman.

Fell asleep watching it a few years after it came out. Let us know how it ends in the comments.