The "Imitation Game” is a highly conventional movie about a profoundly unusual man. This is not entirely a bad thing. Alan Turing’s tragically shortened life — he was 41 when he died in 1954 — is a complex and fascinating story, bristling with ideas and present-day implications, and it benefits from the streamlined structure and accessible presentation of modern prestige cinema. The science is not too difficult, the emotions are clear and emphatic, and the truth of history is respected just enough to make room for tidy and engrossing drama.

An Alan Turing biopic is, all in all, a very welcome thing. His decisive contribution to the breaking of the Nazi Enigma code gave the Allied forces an intelligence advantage that helped defeat Germany, though the extent of his wartime role was kept secret for many years. The secret of his homosexuality was revealed when he was arrested on indecency charges in 1952, caught up in a Cold War climate of homophobia and political paranoia and subjected to the pseudoscientific cruelty of the British judicial system.

All of this is a lot for a single movie to take in, and “The Imitation Game,” directed by Morten Tyldum from a script by Graham Moore, prunes and compresses a narrative laid out most comprehensively in Andrew Hodges’s scrupulous and enthralling 1983 biography. 

Source: The New York Times

Adam Sandler is a vastly talented actor who is a victim of his own success, which generally keeps him working in a wan comedic mode with directors of little inspiration. The outstanding exception, to date, is his performance in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” which showed what happens when he works with directors who tap into the depth of his talent. I eagerly await seeing him in Noah Baumbach’s new film, “The Meyerowitz Stories,” which will première at Cannes next month. In the meantime, owing to Sandler’s ongoing production deal with Netflix, there’s “Sandy Wexler,” the latest feature that he has made for the company; it was released there last Friday, and I watched it so that you don’t have to. There’s no way to recommend it, yet I wouldn’t ask for my two hours back (though I do wish that they could have been sped up somewhat). “Sandy Wexler” is both an example of everything that’s wrong with what Sandler is doing under his own initiative and everything that’s right with Sandler’s artistry, which, despite the oppressive mediocrity of this new film, remains fascinating.

Source: The New Yorker