The bulk of The Imitation Game—an Alan Turing biopic boasting a fast-paced, Swing Kids–meets–John le Carré tone—is set during WWII, as Turing and his team of geniuses race to build a machine that can crack the world's most sophisticated code. A zippy nostalgia suffuses these segments of The Imitation Game. Director Morten Tyldum makes air raids look like promotional posters, bombed cities like postcards of ancient ruins. The Imitation Game saves its real stakes for Turing himself. Flashbacks reveal his childhood as a tiny, brutally bullied genius at boarding school; flash-forwards to the 1950s gradually reveal Turing's future, and his treatment at the hands of his own government. It's an effective structure: When thoroughly grounded in Turing's influence and his contributions, the details of his life are even more heartbreaking. Much is made of Turing's awkwardness—his inability to understand social cues, his indifference to social niceties—but the film doesn't generate much excitement around his actual work. The Imitation Game could be a little wonkier, a little more concerned with the workings of the machine and less with how the machine is reflected in the man. by Alison Hallett