“The Imitation Game” Review

Biopics have got to be among the hardest films to make. Sure, they can turn out great, but more often than not they can turn into shameless promotion pieces for their subjects. You’ll also be raked over the coals by angry historians if you don’t get the most minute details exactly right. Fortunately, The Imitation Game has always shown a lot of potential. The story of Alan Turing’s breaking of the Enigma code is nothing short of fascinating, as are his personal struggles. The film has also garnered a solid cast led by the very talented Benedict Cumberbatch. When word got out that The Imitation Game could be an Oscar contender, my anticipation increased ever more. After seeing the film for myself, I can confidently say that it deserves all the praise it gets.

Premise: When World War II breaks out, Britain’s code-breakers are assembled to break Nazi intelligence codes. When new arrival Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) sees his coworkers’ lack of progress, he goes to work building a machine that could break the codes faster than any human ever could.

Pros: The Imitation Game wouldn’t have worked without a good leading performance, but Benedict Cumberbatch takes it even further and makes Alan Turing one of the most compelling characters of the year. The real-life Turing was a fascinating guy, and Cumberbatch (with the help of great direction) brings his personality and all of his subtle nuances to life. Even though he’s initially a cold and arrogant man, everything from his line delivery to his facial expressions to his body language is also very entertaining and endears you to him. It was an excellent performance that almost single-handedly made the movie work, and I’ll be shocked if Cumberbatch doesn’t get nominated for Best Actor come Oscar season.

This is clearly Cumberbatch’s show, but he’s not the only one who gets a chance to shine. Keira Knightley is great as Joan Clarke, the only woman on the team and the one who makes Turing come out of his shell. Charles Dance and Mark Strong don’t have a lot of screentime, but nonetheless give solid performances as the military higher-ups that Turing and his fellow code-breakers answer to. Even Matthew Goode, who I’ve never been particularly impressed with, gives what might be his best performance to date as cryptanalyst Hugh Alexander. All in all, everybody did nice work.

When you’ve got a true story this good, you’d better not screw it up. Well, director Morten Tyldum and writer Graham Moore have taken the life of Alan Turing and told a very interesting story. The main draw is probably going to be Turing’s work building his code-breaking machine, and that makes for great drama. But at its heart The Imitation Game is the story of a deeply complicated man and his personal life. He may be a hardass, but he also desperately wants to have friends. On another note, Turing must also conceal his SPOILER ALERT homosexuality, which was illegal in Britain until the 60s. All of this makes for a story that is both inspiring and heartbreaking.

Cons: There’s not a lot to dislike about The Imitation Game, but it does have a few minor issues. The film uses a framing device that allows it to jump back and forth between time periods, and it doesn’t always work. Certain scenes have awkward transitions to events that happened decades before or after, and sometimes the non-linearity of the story causes it to drag. I’m not going to say that going the non-linear route was the wrong choice, but the way the story was framed didn’t always work and there were times when the pacing suffered.

Verdict: Even though I had high expectations for The Imitation Game, I’m surprised at just how much I loved it. Folks, make sure not to miss this one. Even if you don’t know anything about Alan Turing (I didn’t before trailer inspired me to look into him), this is a fantastic movie with a lot of great performances and plenty of heart.

Score: 9/10 (going back to numerical scores)

“American Sniper” Review

American Sniper is one of those movies that should really intrigue me, but I’ve had mixed feelings about it for a long time. It’s a biopic about the late Chris Kyle, the legendary sniper who killed (possibly) a few hundred enemy combatants. Bringing him to life is Bradley Cooper, who just keeps getting better and better. But director Clint Eastwood has been on a cold streak for more than half a decade. He’s made a lot of great movies stretching back to the 70s, but more and more it’s looking as if he’s lost his touch. However, the trailers slowly won me over. Cooper looked great, and I was hoping that Eastwood could give us one last home run. I dared to dream, but sadly not all dreams come true.

Premise: American Sniper follows the life of Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) and struggles with his military career, family life, and psychological scars left over from duty.

Pros: As I said before, Bradley Cooper is a magnificent actor. Whether he takes on meaty award bait, summer blockbusters or comedy, he almost always knocks it out of the park. While he probably won’t win any awards for American Sniper (the next Oscars’ Best Actor category is gonna be a battleground), it’s yet another showcase for his talent. He plays Chris Kyle as a soft-spoken individual who, when put in the field, can do pretty much anything with a rifle. One of the things that makes Cooper’s performance so interesting is how he captures the duality of Kyle’s personality; he’s a consummate professional, but he also wants to be a family man. While it’s not entirely original, Cooper brings heart to material that needed much more.

If there’s one thing Clint Eastwood has proven he can do, it’s gunfights, and when the movie focuses on combat it works (for the most part). The battles are smaller in scale than the ones found in Eastwood’s previous war films, but they make up for it with their sheer tensity. What’s even better is that they show how insanely dangerous Kyle was. Whatever people thought of him back home, while he was in Iraq he was an efficient soldier and killer.

Cons: Despite the earnest efforts of Eastwood and writer Jason Dean Hall, American Sniper suffers from a poor story. The main problem is what is being focused on. Without giving any details away, the most potentially interesting parts of Kyle’s story are either underdeveloped or brushed aside all together, and the more mundane parts are pushed front and center. The sad part is the more mundane parts of Chris Kyle’s life could’ve made an interesting story. I love a good homecoming story where veterans have to readjust to civilian life. But the way it was told was very underwhelming, with Eastwood’s direction often feeling flat and lifeless.

War is never black and white, but the makers American Sniper didn’t seem to understand that. Chris Kyle is all too often portrayed as just a badass war hero, and to be fair he was. But he was also a morally complex man with lots of shortcomings who made his name by killing people. Few of these ambiguities make it into the film, and Kyle is left feeling a bit too perfect aside from some half-hearted attempts to make appear tortured later on. Soldiers should be treated with respect, but should celebrate their service to America, not their body counts (although those can be pretty astounding).

Verdict: American Sniper could and should’ve been an Oscar-worthy movie, but like all of Clint Eastwood’s post-Gran Torino output disappoints. Aside from over-simplifying Chris Kyle, it has a dull, lifeless, poorly-told story that doesn’t do justice to Kyle’s fascinating life. Bradley Cooper and the sniping scenes are great, but I can’t recommend the film as a whole.

Score: C-

Updates on Annabelle, The Judge, Fury

Due to my lack of activity over the past few weeks, I’ve decided to give updates on what I’ve seen.

First was Annabelle:

Didn’t know what to make of Annabelle. On one hand, it was a spinoff of The Conjuring, probably my favorite horror movie since the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (but not at that level). On the other hand, there was the fact that it’s about a doll, and dolls don’t scare me in the least.

-Let me start with the bad things. The first fifteen to twenty minutes were just atrocious, acting wasn’t very good, some of the dialogue was really bad, and it completely fell apart toward the end.

-Fortunately, it did what it needed to do just enough that I had some fun with it. It’s pretty creepy, with some good subtle atmospheric tension mixed in with the cheaper (but still fun) jump scares. When it comes to horror, all that really matters to me is that it’s scary, and Annabelle did a decent job at that. If you want something of substance you’ll be very disappointed, but I would just barely give this my recommendation.

–Score: 6/10

Then came The Judge:

I had very high hopes for The Judge. Two great leads in Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall were enough to sign me up from the get-go. The trailers also made it look very good. Unfortunately, I was a bit let down by it. Here’s my brief thoughts:

-As expected, Downey and Duvall are fabulous, especially Duvall.

-It’s not really the courtroom drama the trailers make it out to be, but a movie about the bond between a father and son, it’s a very emotionally honest film.

-The tone is very unbalanced.

-There is both too much plot and no direction in the storytelling.

-The Judge could’ve and should’ve been an Oscar contender, but instead I got something pretty mediocre. Not terrible, but not something I would recommend to anyone outside hardcore RDJ fans.

–Score: 5.5/10

And last, but definitely not least, was Fury:

I’m a sucker for war films. There’s something so interesting about the brutality of war, and any war film (especially WWII films) immediately grabs my attention. Fury looked like it was one of my most anticipated films of year, both because of the subject matter and the sublime cast (yes, even Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf). So, did it live up to my sky-high expectations? Not quite, but that didn’t stop it from being quite a good movie.

-The performances were, from top to bottom, absolutely wonderful. Of course, Brad Pitt has nothing left to prove, but you know you’ve got a wonderful cast when everybody can hold their own with him. Seriously, every single interaction between these five characters is absolute gold. Logan Lerman plays the dramatic straight man to everyone else’s grizzled veteran, and all of these guys is pretty far gone into the war mindset. They’re not here to be heroes, they’re here to end the war, and they’ll kill as many German troops as they need to. Still, they all want to be good men, and respect Logan Lerman’s character because he represents the principles that they are trying so hard to keep alive.

–Fury also does a great job at showing the horror of war. After about five minutes, you really get the sense that the life of a soldier really sucks. But it also shows that there’s room for (anti)heroes in war, whether the troops think so or not. It’s also horrific without being gratuitous, never feeling the need to sensationalize the already gruesome details of history’s most terrible conflict.

-Even though I thought Fury was a very good movie, I must admit the story felt pretty directionless until the third act. I can appreciate a movie that slows down to build the relationships between characters, but writer-director David Ayer could’ve done a better job at crafting an engaging story. The trailers also misrepresent the film a bit, with what looks like the premise in the trailers not coming until the third act.

-Whoever doesn’t predict the ending has never seen a World War II movie.

Even with a lackluster story, Fury succeeds because of the strength of the characters. Now that David Ayer’s attached to DC’s Suicide Squad, I have no doubt he can work his character-building there.

–Score: 7.5/10