By Troy Ribeiro



FILM: The Imitation Game
CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech
DIRECTION: Morten Tyldum

Based on a true story, The Imitation Game is a tribute to Alan Turing, a man who under nerve-racking pressure helped shorten World War II by nearly two years and in turn saved a million lives.
Treated as a mystery film where detective Robert Noch of Manchester Police is investigating a break-in at Prof Alan Turing’s home, the non-linear narration reveals the life of the enigmatic British mathematician and cryptanalyst and his time with British Intelligence, MI6 outpost at Bletchley Park.
It is here that Alan’s team helped crack the Nazis’ unbreakable Enigma code with a machine he created, that would become a prototype for the modern day computer.
Like any other biopic, it shows that Alan’s life was not a bed of roses. With an emotional jigsaw play of trust and betrayals, the script by Graham Moore is adapted from Andrew Hodges’ 1983 biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma.
The film is a watered down version of Turing’s short life, but nevertheless the screenplay — taut, engaging and dramatic — has a plethora of poignant moments along with life lessons that propel the tale forward. It offers ample insight into the character of the mysterious Alan Turing.
With excellent production values, the story arc is as familiar as they come for the biopic genre. The first half of the film sets in the intrigue quotient, while the second half lingers on for a bit longer with some technicalities involved since Alan is developing an “electrical brain, a digital computer”. It’s the final act with its sad and unjust revelation that feels a bit rushed.
Director Morten Tyldum has delivered a finely textured film that is superbly crafted and tastefully projected with brilliant performances.
The film belongs to Benedict Cumberbatch and he portrays Alan Turing beautifully. He dwells into Alan’s complex psyche to relay the right amount of cockiness and arrogance of the confident genius.
He also manages to add that nervous twinge during conversations and oscillate from being a sensitive person to an adamant “monster”. And finally, it is his transition to a helpless defeated human being at the end that is touching.
But it is the sensitive portrayal of Alex Lawther as the young Alan that contributes largely to what makes Cumberbatch’s character convincing.
They are ably supported by a strong and impressive cast comprising of Keira Knightley, Mark Strong (II), Mathew Beard and Mathew Goode as his co-workers as also Joan Clarke, Stewart Menezies, Peter Hilton and Hugh Alexandre, who are ace cryptanalysts too.
Over all, The Imitation Game is a good introductory film for those who are not aware of Alan Turing.   -IANS

Clueless in a college

By Roger Moore


FILM: The Rewrite
CAST: Hugh Grant, Marisa Tomei, Bella Heathcote, J K Simmons, Allison Janney, Chris Elliott
DIRECTION: Marc Lawrence

Hugh Grant doesn’t flutter his eyes and stammer for comic effect any more. The long forelock that bounced over one sparkling blue eye was victim of that middle-aged man trim from the hair stylist.
But the guy still has that stoop-shouldered, arms-bowed walk that his ex, Liz Hurley, famously labeled “simian”. And he still has a way with an offhandedly witty, cutting line.
So in The Rewrite, his is perfectly nonplussed as a once-hot screenwriter forced to pitch his ideas to the mere “embryos” who run film studios today, and perfectly misplaced in the upstate New York college town of Binghamton, a British expat Hollywood sophisticate forced to take a screenwriting teaching job because that’s all that’s left to him.
“I hate teachers,” Keith Michaels gripes to his agent. “They’re frustrated losers who haven’t done anything with their own lives so they want to instruct other people” in theirs. And now he’s one of them.
The students and some of the other faculty (Chris Elliott is a Shakespeare scholar) are ever-so-impressed that the writer of the Oscar-winning Paradise Misplaced is in their midst.
The culture clash here is Michaels bringing his Hollywood ethics and work habits to a nearly charmless college town with a student body of modest ambitions. The kids just want to “get high”, grumps the faculty chair (JK Simmons, funny). The teachers — especially the resident Jane Austen scholar (Allison Janney, perfectly snippy) — just do their best to get through to the kids, and pray for the meager rewards that publishing their research offers.
Rewrite is the fourth Grant collaboration with writer turned writer-director Marc Lawrence (Two Week’s Notice, Words & Music), and while he plainly has an ear for the way Grant talks, “fresh ground” is an alien concept to him. Thus, the 50something Grant plays a man utterly clueless about the social, moral and legal edicts against dating students. The predatory Karen (Belle Heathcote) angles to get to him and get into his class.
Marisa Tomei is the SOTA — student older than average — single mother of two, working multiple jobs, aspiring screenwriter, willing to make a pest of herself to get into that same course.
And Michaels, being backwardly sexist, proceeds to “cast” the class the way crass producers populate their pictures — with nubile young women, and the occasional nonthreatening nerdy male. He doesn’t even bother to evaluate their work.
The funny stuff here has to do with the myopia of Hollywood “types”. Every pitch meeting is with very young people, one of them a young woman, insisting on “empowered” female characters being shoved into every screenplay. Michaels relates every life obstacle to a movie, because that’s easier than thinking or observing and learning or reading a book. How does one teach?
“I’ll watch Dead Poets Society to prepare!”
And the screenwriting kids are self-absorbed dreamers who believe their mundane autobiography is the perfect jumping-off-point for a script.
There’s a nice sense of place, as Michaels learns about the town from Wikipedia and Tomei’s perky, age-appropriate flirt.
Lawrence ties in Binghamton’s most famous writer — Rod Twilight Zone Serling — into those teachable moments of the script, when the hero-screenwriter starts to warm to the pace of the place, to teaching and to the promising minds he is meant to mold.
It probably never had a prayer of being a wide release, with Lawrence and Grant’s co-mingled careers shrinking in ambition and appeal. But there’s charm here, and Grant is engagingly disengaged playing somebody who knows the fickle finger of Hollywood fate no longer points his way. He just has to decide not to be miserable about that.  -Tribune News Service

Clumsy flair



FILM: Naked Soldier
CAST: Jennifer Tse, Sammo Hung, Ellen Chan
DIRECTION: Marco Mak


Naked Soldier kicks off in 1980 with Sammo Hung as Interpol agent Lung, taking a trip to the United States after successfully pulling off a massive drugs bust. Unfortunately for him, the drug cartel decides to take revenge, the evil Brother Power (Anthony Wong) ordering Madame Rose (Ellen Chan) to wipe out his whole family.
Lung survives, along with his five-year-old daughter Wen Ching, who Madame Rose kidnaps and brainwashes, training her to be a ruthless assassin. Skip forward to 1995, and Wen Ching is now Phoenix (Jennifer Tse), completely unaware of her true identity, juggling her civilian facade as a college student while carrying out assignments and dealing with the attentions of earnest cop Sam (Andy On).
As part of a scheme to take over the drugs empire herself, Madame Rose sends Phoenix to kill Lung, whose investigations have been bringing him closer to the truth.
The action quotient is high. But a certain amount of clumsy flair marks the style. There are a good number of bafflingly daft moments and generally showing a pleasing refusal to take itself seriously.
The film also wins extra points for some of the most bizarre costumes and fashion seen on Hong Kong screens since the 1990s.
DVDs courtesy:
Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha