A third great contender for Best Picture: The Imitation Game

So now I see that we have 3 (at least) really fine movies up for Best Picture Oscar award, as The Imitation Game stands up there with Boyhood and Birdman - a really excellent movie about Alan Turing, creator of the Turing Machine which was essentially the first digital computer, that he and a team used to crack the Nazi's "enigma code" and by many estimates advanced by 2 years the end of the 2nd World War. Yes, we learn a lot about the code-breaking and the surrounding intrigue and espionage, but what sets this film a notch or two higher is that we also learn about Turing's complex and troubled personality, through dialogue and action. Many props to Benedict Cumberbatch who in my view should win Best Actor (though probably won't) - a subtle performance with great range. Also props to Graham Moore's screenplay, another O contender, that expertly moves about among the framing narrative (set in 1951 as Turing explains his life to an officer who's arrested him on a "morals" charge) and various time periods in Turing's life: boarding school days of harassment and isolation and the war years and his struggle to crack to code and to live his life. Turing is clearly what today we would call "on the spectrum," and Moore's screenplay captures beautifully the difficulty he has relating to peers, superiors, women, everyone - because he can't really dissemble, nor can he determine when others are not saying precisely what they mean. He starts as a terrible loner who antagonizes all who work with him because he knows he's smarter and they're on the wrong path to crack the code. Without any foolish dramatics or epiphanies, he gradually understands he has to build a team and his fumbling attempts to do so are sweet and, ultimately, effective. (Full disclosure that Moore's mom is an old friend - though I've never met Moore.) The subplot involving his sham near-marriage is a bit fumbled - Knightly is just far to pretty and charming for this role - but props for the honesty and directness in dealing with Turing's homosexuality without becoming lurid, morbid, or melodramatic - and yet still showing us what a disgrace the British "morals" laws were and how they ruined thousands of lives needlessly.