Movie Review – The Imitation Game (2014)

Director: Morten Tyldum

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Allen Leech, Rory Kinnear, Matthew Beard

The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) as he and a team of cryptologists race against time to try and break the seemingly impossible German Enigma code, while also showing the tragic events of his later life.

The Imitation Game floats between three time periods. The main chunk of the film is around WWII, but it also jumps between his childhood a school and then his later life when he gets burgled and a tenacious detective starts to look into Turing’s past. I thought each of these periods were interesting to watch but I found it strange how some of them were marked with a date and location while others weren’t. Still, it’s not difficult to tell which time period is being focused on.

I found the plot about Enigma fascinating, as most war films focus on the blood and thunder of the battlefield (which makes for more epic and rousing cinema). I liked how it focused on the puzzle of the code, and Tyldum was able to eke out surprising tension from watching dials on a machine rotate. There are scenes of warfare thrown in though, so one never forgets that there is a horrible conflict going on. Cumberbatch has received many plaudits for his performance already so all I’m going to say is that they’re well deserved. The rest of the cast give strong performances as well, most notably Keira Knightley who shows a steely resolve.

I liked the kind of brain trust and the dynamics of the team, because no-one really liked or trusted Turing. At one point during the film it’s revealed that there’s a Soviet spy working for the codebreakers, but nobody seems that worried about it and it’s almost forgotten about. In fact I had wondered whether it was all a ploy to set Turing up, since after they proved it wasn’t him it wasn’t really mentioned again until much later. I did, however, love the ethical and moral decisions that they had to make towards the latter end of the film.

I thought The Imitation Game was pretty good. The treatment of him for being homosexual certainly sheds a light on a horrible part of our history and it’s awful that anyone should have had to gone through that, let alone a man who should be (and now is) considered a war hero.

Movie Review – Begin Again (2014)

Director: John Carney

Stars: Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightley, Adam Levine, James Corden, Hailee Steinfeld, Catherine Keener, Mos Def, Cee-Lo Green

Record exec Dan (Ruffalo) gets fired from his company as after a long and fruitless search for the next big sound. While diving around bars he hears Gretta (Knightley) sing, and knows that it’s the sound he’s been looking for. She’s dealing with the break-up of a long relationship with Dave (Levine), who is now a rockstar, so she agrees with Dan’s plan and with the help of her friend Steve (Corden) and a few other people they make an album that captures the sounds and spirit of New York.

Begin Again was one of my most anticipated films of the year. I absolutely loved Carney’s previous effort, Once, but this has the added bonus of Ruffalo, Knightley and the backdrop of New York. Is it as good as Once? Probably not, in my opinion, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

Ruffalo played a pretty typical character for him but it worked. Knightley was sweet and determined. The rest of the characters weren’t developed that well though, with the exception of Dave. The film suffered a little bit as I felt Dan’s wife Miriam (Keener) could have done with more development. After all, we’re given a scathing indictment of her previous behaviour but then it seems we’re supposed to root for her and Dan to get back together.  There’s also some sexual tension between Dan and Gretta, but this is abandoned pretty quickly so I wondered whether it was even supposed to be there at all. I guess it was a subtle hint at the different paths life could take.

Where the film shines, as expected, is the music. Every performer is great, although I have noticed some disparaging remarks about Knightley’s performance. I thought she was good and put a suitable amount of emotion into her songs. The recordings around New York was a fun thing to do and all the songs were fully immersive. As well as being good songs they provided emotional anchors as well, two notable moments being the kitchen scene and then the concert scene at the end – two powerful moments that highlight the strength of musicals.

What I did love is how the film played with the usual structure of romantic movies but replaced the romance with artistic integrity. There’s even a last-minute dash to a door, and for a moment I thought the film was going to descend into a cliché but it avoided that. The music is at the heart of this film, and it gets all the attention. But there is a little problem. The message seems to be that the art is the most important thing and you shouldn’t be so concerned with writing a hit, rather writing something that’s true to you, and if you show your passion and the song comes across as authentic it will click with people. That’s all well and good but it’s quite idealistic and probably not realistic. In the movie it’s not handled as delicately as it could have been because Gretta has the help of a record producer, and one of the reasons it sells so well is because she gets re-tweeted by someone Dan introduced her to, a famous hip-hop artist who has hundreds of thousands of followers. Obviously this isn’t going to be a common outlet for the usual struggling artist.

As a result the films feels a little too slick and lacks the same  kind of pathos that felt so credible in Once. But despite this I still enjoyed the film a lot. It does have flaws but it gets plenty right and it’s a good follow-up effort to Once, although in my opinion it doesn’t surpass that film.

Movie Review – Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

In this new release Chris Pine stars as the latest in line to play Jack Ryan, star of a series of Tom Clancy novels. I haven’t read any of the books but I have seen all of the Jack Ryan movies so far. This one shows the beginnings of Jack Ryan’s career when he gets caught up in a Russian plot to attack America and devastate its economy and has to find a way to stop them before it’s too late. 

I liked that it showed how Jack Ryan became an analyst and how he got involved with the CIA. I also liked how he actually used his expertise in economics to figure out what was happening, rather than simply being a generic action spy. It did seem more of a team effort, although there were a couple of points towards the end when it seemed like the titular character discovered things that other agents probably would have thought of before him. But although I liked that aspect of his character I found that the central threat of crashing the economy was a bit too abstract and I found it difficult to follow the Russian’s plans at some points. 

The supporting cast were pretty good. I liked Kevin Costner (although there is one really odd moment with a dog) and Keira Knightley was okay, although I wasn’t convinced by her American accent and the chemistry between her and Pine was only adequate. I also thought that her character was too distrustful in the context of everything we saw but I liked how she had an important part to play towards the end of the film. 

I liked the intrigue of the whole thing and there was a good climax that was a suitable payoff for the suspense. I liked the direction and there was a lot of tension throughout the film. I liked the atmosphere the director generated and there was a bit at the start that actually made me jump. I thought the pacing was good as well although sometimes the camera work was too frenetic, especially in one fight when both characters were wearing black so it became hard to tell them apart. 

I also have issues with the films tagline ‘Trust No-one’ because betrayal didn’t really play into the film at all. I was expecting some twists but there wasn’t too much that was surprising. Overall though I liked it, I thought it had good action and I’d check out a sequel if it was made. I do think there could have been a little more depth but I was mostly satisfied and entertained.

Movie Review – The Jacket (2005)

The Jacket is a layered sci-fi mystery about a Gulf War veteran who is sent to a mental institution. While there he is subject to ‘The Jacket’ which is a dangerous experiment and involves him being shut in a morgue for hours on end. However, when he’s in the jacket he finds that he’s traveled 15 years into the future, and also finds out that he dies in a few days. Thus begins a race against (and through) time as he tries to convince people that he’s not crazy while also trying to find out exactly how he died so he can prevent it from happening. 

This film is very much in the vein of ones like Donnie Darko and 12 Monkeys. Adrien Brody is pretty much perfect for this role and he’s supported well by Keira Knightley and Daniel Craig, who actually disappears into his role and it’s easy to forget that this is the man who plays Bond. Generally I liked the film. I think it was very atmospheric, it moved along at a good pace and it was very intriguing. The cast was good and I liked how the future referenced the present and how it was all linked in. There were a few great stylistic choices as well which made the film vibrant in certain scenes, and the revelations of certain characters were well-handled and had the necessary impact. 

The problem with time travel films is that if you think about them too much you start to uncover holes in the story and this is true with this film. People who want a concrete explanation for why things happen in this film will be left disappointed because there aren’t any given and I think it’s more about the emotional reactions of the characters rather than whether it’s logically possible. On an emotional level it pretty much succeed’s. It’s very easy to empathize with the main character and you do want him to succeed in his journey. There are also things going on with the supporting characters that provide a great deal of pathos. 

It’s very much a film where you have to put a lot into it and you’ll have to derive the meaning for yourself. Some people like those kinds of films, others cannot stand them. I generally like them and this one is decent but I can’t say that I’m still trying to figure things out now. It’s not one that completely blew my mind and I’m quite happy to let the lingering questions linger. I do think there should have been an attempt to make things a little clearer but if you like films that try and play with your mind a little bit you’ll probably like The Jacket.