Wild

Only a hundred or so more days to go. Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) did just that. She strayed. Weighted down by guilt, anger and grief over the death of her mother, the then-22-year-old pulled up stakes and -- figuratively, at least -- she wandered, like so many tend to do in times of trouble.

For her, it became a dangerous journey, as the self-described experimentalist and habitual yes-girl wandered farther than most dare, toward heroin addiction, toward meaningless sex, toward anything to help her forget everything but the moment.

And then she found her way back.

It's that moving and inspirational journey -- to the brink of self-destruction and back again -- that she described in her best-selling 2012 memoirs, and it's the journey director Jean-Marc Vallee tells in his beautiful, soul-stirring adaptation, "Wild."

After day one of her hike up the Pacific Crest Trail—a winding path that stretches from the Mexican border all the way up the West Coast of the U.S. to the outskirts of Canada—Cheryl Strayed is seriously questioning her willpower. And her sanity.
 

But it was kind of a mental meltdown that got her here in the first place.
Her life has become a mess. She knows it, and everyone around her knows it. Before she set her feet down on this rough-cut trail, she had been on a self-destructive path of drug addiction and sex with strangers. It was a trek that had destroyed her marriage and sucked away her health. Maybe walking a thousand miles will set things straight.

If nothing else, this journey might give her a chance to think, to dissect the mistakes she's made, to salve the things that hurt the most. Maybe this exhausting slog filled with aching muscles, scraped knees and bloody feet will allow her to finally dig up all the stuff she's had buried down deep.

So she shrugs into her huge and agonizingly heavy pack once again. She takes the next step. She conquers the next mile. She embraces the next hour alone with her thoughts.
With only a hundred or so more days to go.

Cast:

Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed

Laura Dern as Mom/Bobbi

Thomas Sadoski as Paul

Keene McRae as Leif

source:http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2014/12/the_wild_reese_witherspoon.html#incart_m-rpt-1

& http://www.pluggedin.com/movies/intheaters/wild-2014.aspx

Movie Info

With the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed has lost all hope. After years of reckless, destructive behavior, she makes a rash decision. With absolutely no experience, driven only by sheer determination, Cheryl hikes more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. WILD powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her. (c) Fox Searchlight

Rating:	R (for sexual content, nudity, drug use, and language)
Genre:	Drama
Directed By:	Jean-Marc Vallée
Written By:	Nick Hornby
In Theaters:	Dec 3, 2014 Limited
On DVD:	Mar 31, 2015
Runtime:	1 hr. 55 min.

20th Century Fox - Official Site

source:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wild_2014/ 

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The Imitation Game

Synopsis

Alan Turing's life story is unequivocally a tragedy. The Imitation Game, a new biopic that focuses on his accomplishments as a codebreaker during World War II, manages to recognize this while celebrating his formidable legacy.

The film tells an important story. Turing, a mathematician, is considered the father of computer science and a pioneer of artificial intelligence. That alone would merit his continued recognition as a great thinker. But he also played a crucial role in World War II—so much so that Winston Churchill said Turing made the most important contribution to winning the war. He was a war hero. Perhaps the biggest war hero.

During the war, the Axis forces had no better weapon than their Enigma machines, cryptographic marvels the Nazis thought were impossible to crack. Turing and other Allied codebreakers thought differently, and built a machine to break the code. This allowed Allied forces to intercept Axis communications, enabling access to information that ultimately helped the Allied forces defeat the enemy.

The film primarily focuses on Turing's time at Bletchley Park's Hut 8. Using a police officer's investigation into Turing in 1951 as a framing device, the story is told largely in flashbacks. The film follows Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, as he antagonizes and bonds with his fellow codebreakers—particularly Joan Clark, the team's brilliant, lone female member (portrayed by Keira Knightley in a subtle, unshowy performance), to whom he was briefly engaged. In the movie, as in life, Turing called off the engagement after he told her he was gay.

The Imitation Game is a good movie, but not a great one: While the actors turn in solid performances, the screenwriting relies too much on the trope of the tortured, misunderstood genius vs. the world, and the historical footage of the war seems awkwardly crammed in to make you remember that, oh shit, U-Boats were scary.

In fact, The Imitation Game is really a few different movies at once: It's a spy caper, a race-against-the-clock film, a celebration of eccentricity, and an indictment of Britain's shoddy treatment of one of her heroes. The framing device was distracting, since it asks us to imagine that Turing would confess his highly classified role to a random police officer.

And the flashbacks to Turing's formative schoolboy relationship border on schmaltzy. Though they do serve to humanize the character, they wouldn't have been necessary if the script gave Turing a more nuanced characterization. Some of his lines sound like it's just Sheldon from Big Bang Theory talking, although Cumberbatch saves much of the material from getting too paint-by-numbers-nerd.

Despite the tremendous debt Britain owes him, Turing died a convicted felon. He committed suicide at age 42, two years after his arrest for "gross indecency" after being exposed as a homosexual. He was unable to continue working with the government, and was forced to choose between chemical castration and prison, and chose castration. The man whose work helped save Britain was treated monstrously, just for being who he was.

The film touches on the tragic ending to Turing's life as the film closes, as well as the way his reputation has been (thankfully) restored in recent years. It notes that he was eventually granted a posthumous royal pardon last year. I'd be surprised if you didn't leave the theater after seeing it without agreeing with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's apology to the (long-dead) Turing in 2009: "We're sorry. You deserved so much better."

I saw The Imitation Game at the Toronto International Film Festival, but it will have a limited wide release November 21. So spend Thanksgiving this year being thankful Alan Turing existed.

source:http://gizmodo.com/the-imitation-game-review-a-stirring-look-at-turings-t-1633503454

Movie Info

During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of 'gross indecency', an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality - little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. 

Famously leading a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, he was credited with cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany's World War II Enigma machine. An intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, THE IMITATION GAME follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save thousands of lives. 

(c) Weinstein

Rating:	PG-13 (for some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking)
Genre:	Mystery & Suspense , Drama
Directed By:	Morten Tyldum
Written By:	Graham Moore
In Theaters:	Nov 28, 2014 Wide
On DVD:	Mar 31, 2015
US Box Office:	$90.5M
Runtime:	1 hr. 54 min.

The Weinstein Company - Official Site

source:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_imitation_game/

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