About the movie : The Imitation Game is a 2014 historical drama thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum, with a screenplay by Graham Moore loosely based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges (previously adapted as the stage play and BBC drama Breaking the Code). It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as real-life British cryptanalyst Alan Turing, who decrypted German intelligence codes for the British government during World War II.
Genre: Drama/ Thriller/ Historical
Release Date: UK ; August 29, 2014
USA; November 28, 2014
Production: Before Cumberbatch joined the project, Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing Turing.In the end, DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the script reverted to the screenwriter. Black Bear Pictures subsequently committed to finance the film for $14 million.Various directors were attached during development including Ron Howard and David Yates. In December 2012, it was announced that Headhunters director Morten Tyldum would helm the project, making the film his English-language directorial debut.
Bletchley Park, "the home of the codebreakers" where parts of the film were shot
Principal photography began on 15 September 2013 in Britain. Filming locations included Turing's former school, Sherborne, Bletchley Park, where Turing and his colleagues worked during the war, and Central Saint Martins campus on Southampton Row in London.Other locations included towns in England such as Nettlebed and Chesham (Buckinghamshire). Scenes were also filmed at Bicester Airfield and outside the Law Society building in Chancery Lane. Principal photography finished on 11 November 2013
Produced by: Nora Grossman
Ido Ostrowsky
Teddy Schwarzman
Production Companies: Black Bear Pictures (Owned by Teddy Schwarzman)
Bristol Automotive
Distribution Company: The Weinstein Company
Budget: $14 Million
Box Office: $233.6 Million
Critical Response:
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 90%, based on 229 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch illuminating its fact-based story, The Imitation Game serves as an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic' genre."On Metacritic, the film has a score of 73 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating a generally favourable rating of review.The film received a grade of "A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore and was included in both the National Board of Review's and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of 2014"
Cumberbatch's performance was met with widespread acclaim from critics. TIME ranked Cumberbatch's portrayal number one in its Top 10 film performances of 2014, with the magazine's chief film critic Richard Corliss calling Cumberbatch's characterisation "the actor's oddest, fullest, most Cumberbatchian character yet... he doesn't play Turing so much as inhabit him, bravely and sympathetically but without mediation".Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times declared Turing "the role of Cumberbatch's career", while A.O. Scott of The New York Times stated that it is "one of the year's finest pieces of screen acting". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone asserted that the actor "gives an explosive, emotionally complex" portrayal. Critic Clayton Davis stated that it's a "performance for the ages ... proving he's one of the best actors working today
Film Review: By the NY Times
“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. Chances are that you are reading this, as I am writing it, on a device that came into being partly as a result of papers Turing published in the 1930s exploring the possibility of what he called a “universal machine.” 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. The film interweaves three decisive periods in Turing’s life, using his interrogation by a Manchester detective (Rory Kinnear) as a framing device. Turing tells the investigator — who thinks he is after a Soviet spy rather than a gay man — about what he did during the war. Later, there are flashbacks to Turing’s school days, where he discovered the joys of cryptography and fell in love with a slightly older boy named Christopher Morcom.
The adult Turing is played by Benedict Cumberbatch (his younger self is Alex Lawther), expanding his repertoire of socially awkward intellectual prodigies, real and fictional. What has made Mr. Cumberbatch so effective as Sherlock Holmes and Julian Assange — and what makes his Alan Turing one of the year’s finest pieces of screen acting — is his curious ability to suggest cold detachment and acute sensitivity at the same time. If he did not exist, 21st-century popular culture would have to invent him: a sentient robot, an empathetic space alien, a warm-blooded salamander with crazy sex appeal.
His Turing, whom the film seems to place somewhere on the autism spectrum, is as socially awkward as he is intellectually agile. He can perceive patterns invisible to others but also finds himself stranded in the desert of the literal. Jokes fly over his head, sarcasm does not register, and when one of his colleagues says, “We’re going to get some lunch,” Turing hears a trivial statement of fact rather than a friendly invitation.
Awards Won:
Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival Award for Best Picture
Palm Springs International Film Festival Best Ensemble Cast award
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film – Wide Release
Academy Award for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay
Empire Award for Best Thriller
Other movies by Benedict Cucumberbatch:
Doctor Strange
The Hobbit
Star Trek
Penguins Of Madagascar
The Weinstein Company:
The Weinstein Company is an American mini-major film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after they left Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979. They retained ownership of Dimension Films. TWC is one of the largest mini-major film studios in North America.
Their highest grossing films are:
1 Django Unchained 2012 $162,805,434
2 The King's Speech 2010 $138,797,449
3 Silver Linings Playbook 2012 $132,092,958
4 Inglourious Basterds 2009 $120,540,719
5 The Butler 2013 $116,632,095
6 The Imitation Game 2014 $91,125,683
7 Scary Movie 4 2006 $90,710,620
8 Paddington 2015 $76,223,578
9 1408 2007 $71,985,628
10 Halloween 2007 $58,272,029
Genre: Drama/ Thriller/ Historical
Release Date: UK ; August 29, 2014
USA; November 28, 2014
Production: Before Cumberbatch joined the project, Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing Turing.In the end, DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the script reverted to the screenwriter. Black Bear Pictures subsequently committed to finance the film for $14 million.Various directors were attached during development including Ron Howard and David Yates. In December 2012, it was announced that Headhunters director Morten Tyldum would helm the project, making the film his English-language directorial debut.
Bletchley Park, "the home of the codebreakers" where parts of the film were shot
Principal photography began on 15 September 2013 in Britain. Filming locations included Turing's former school, Sherborne, Bletchley Park, where Turing and his colleagues worked during the war, and Central Saint Martins campus on Southampton Row in London.Other locations included towns in England such as Nettlebed and Chesham (Buckinghamshire). Scenes were also filmed at Bicester Airfield and outside the Law Society building in Chancery Lane. Principal photography finished on 11 November 2013
Produced by: Nora Grossman
Ido Ostrowsky
Teddy Schwarzman
Production Companies: Black Bear Pictures (Owned by Teddy Schwarzman)
Bristol Automotive
Distribution Company: The Weinstein Company
Budget: $14 Million
Box Office: $233.6 Million
Critical Response:
On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 90%, based on 229 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch illuminating its fact-based story, The Imitation Game serves as an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic' genre."On Metacritic, the film has a score of 73 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating a generally favourable rating of review.The film received a grade of "A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore and was included in both the National Board of Review's and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of 2014"
Cumberbatch's performance was met with widespread acclaim from critics. TIME ranked Cumberbatch's portrayal number one in its Top 10 film performances of 2014, with the magazine's chief film critic Richard Corliss calling Cumberbatch's characterisation "the actor's oddest, fullest, most Cumberbatchian character yet... he doesn't play Turing so much as inhabit him, bravely and sympathetically but without mediation".Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times declared Turing "the role of Cumberbatch's career", while A.O. Scott of The New York Times stated that it is "one of the year's finest pieces of screen acting". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone asserted that the actor "gives an explosive, emotionally complex" portrayal. Critic Clayton Davis stated that it's a "performance for the ages ... proving he's one of the best actors working today
Film Review: By the NY Times
“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. Chances are that you are reading this, as I am writing it, on a device that came into being partly as a result of papers Turing published in the 1930s exploring the possibility of what he called a “universal machine.” 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. The film interweaves three decisive periods in Turing’s life, using his interrogation by a Manchester detective (Rory Kinnear) as a framing device. Turing tells the investigator — who thinks he is after a Soviet spy rather than a gay man — about what he did during the war. Later, there are flashbacks to Turing’s school days, where he discovered the joys of cryptography and fell in love with a slightly older boy named Christopher Morcom.
The adult Turing is played by Benedict Cumberbatch (his younger self is Alex Lawther), expanding his repertoire of socially awkward intellectual prodigies, real and fictional. What has made Mr. Cumberbatch so effective as Sherlock Holmes and Julian Assange — and what makes his Alan Turing one of the year’s finest pieces of screen acting — is his curious ability to suggest cold detachment and acute sensitivity at the same time. If he did not exist, 21st-century popular culture would have to invent him: a sentient robot, an empathetic space alien, a warm-blooded salamander with crazy sex appeal.
His Turing, whom the film seems to place somewhere on the autism spectrum, is as socially awkward as he is intellectually agile. He can perceive patterns invisible to others but also finds himself stranded in the desert of the literal. Jokes fly over his head, sarcasm does not register, and when one of his colleagues says, “We’re going to get some lunch,” Turing hears a trivial statement of fact rather than a friendly invitation.
Awards Won:
Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Capri, Hollywood International Film Festival Award for Best Picture
Palm Springs International Film Festival Best Ensemble Cast award
Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film – Wide Release
Academy Award for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay
Empire Award for Best Thriller
Other movies by Benedict Cucumberbatch:
Doctor Strange
The Hobbit
Star Trek
Penguins Of Madagascar
The Weinstein Company:
The Weinstein Company is an American mini-major film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after they left Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979. They retained ownership of Dimension Films. TWC is one of the largest mini-major film studios in North America.
Their highest grossing films are:
1 Django Unchained 2012 $162,805,434
2 The King's Speech 2010 $138,797,449
3 Silver Linings Playbook 2012 $132,092,958
4 Inglourious Basterds 2009 $120,540,719
5 The Butler 2013 $116,632,095
6 The Imitation Game 2014 $91,125,683
7 Scary Movie 4 2006 $90,710,620
8 Paddington 2015 $76,223,578
9 1408 2007 $71,985,628
10 Halloween 2007 $58,272,029
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