DOCTOR STRANGE

The Marvel superhero universe has now added sorcery to its world of super-powered beings.  Doctor Strange adds magic to the universe with a familiar reluctant hero premise that also has some truly trippy visuals and a surprising amount of humor.

Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch, whose Englishman-with-American-accent maked him sound like Hugh Laurie as Dr. House) is a brilliant and renowned neurosurgeon.  He's also conceited, hated for being a know-it-all by his colleagues, and tends to select cases based on how much fame they'll get him.  He also works with his ex-girlfriend Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), an e.r. doctor who wants Strange to help more people.

When a car crash leaves Stephen with uncontrollable trembling in his hands, he goes into a depression, pushing everyone away and spending all his money searching for experimental cures.  When he gets a file of a patient who had a seeming impossible cure for spinal damage, it leas Strange to a secret location in Nepal.  There, select people learn everything from magic (astral projection, using "Sling Rings" to create teleportation portals, summoning and controlling energy, visiting different dimensions) to martial arts, to sentient artifacts that choose their users.  This place is led by the Amcient One (Tilda Swinton), Strange is taught by Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and Wong (Benedict Wong) runs the library of ancient knowledge.

Of course, villainy is afoot.  The evil sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) has stolen some pages from the library.  He and his disciples plan to destroy the three sanctuaries -- in New York, London, and Hong Kong -- that protect the Earth from magic threats from other dimensions.  Once they're gone, the powerful entity Dormammu will absorb Earth into his Dark Dimension.  Strange still just wants his old life back, while the others push him to be a hero.

While Doctor Strange is a somewhat familiar story of selfish turning to redemption, it's still a pretty fun movie.  This may be the most visually impressive movie, with landscapes seeming to fold onto themselves, astral forms battling through the real world, and a hellish CGI universe in the Dark Dimension that seems disturbingly real.  While there's plenty of action, there's also a surprising amount of humor: Strange's levitating cloak acting more or less on its own for some slapstick humor, Wong listening to Beyonce on an iPod, or Dr. Palmer's incredulous reaction to learning that magic exists.

Doctor Strange is a worthy addition to the Marvel cinematic universe.  It has good acting, a nice blend of action and comedy, and (again) some amazing special effects.

Overall grade: B+
Reviewed by James Lynch

THE IMITATION GAME

One of World War Two's greatest battles took place far from the battlefields -- and its greatest hero wound up unpraised, and worse, after it was done.  The Imitation Game is a very unusual, dramatic, and gripping war story revolving around mathematics and a disturbed genius.

The Imitation Game takes place during three different times.  In 1940s England, Detective Nock (Rory Kinnear) believes mathematics professor Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) is hiding something and decides to investigate him.  In the 1920s, we see a young Turing (played by Alex Lawther) at boarding school, where his run-ins with bullies and friendship with a classmate go a long way in showing what he'll become as an adult.  And during WW2 (when the bulk of the film is set), Turing is brought in for a top-secret mission: breaking a seemingly unbreakable German code called Enigma, which resets every morning.

Saying that Turing is not well liked during his mission is an understatement.  He is socially awkward, lacks understanding of basic human interactions, and is indifferent to the feelings of others.  (Fans of The Big Bang Theory will see a lot of Sheldon Cooper in Cumberbatch's performance.)  Turing ignores and goes over the head of his boss Commander Denniston (Charles Dance), getting himself put in charge of the project -- and firing half the people there.  While others want to try and crack the codes manually, Turing focuses on building a computer (which he names "Christopher") that will crack the code -- even though progress is slow-going, and Christopher costs a hundred thousand pounds.  Turing also works covertly with Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) since, at the time, women weren't supposed to work alongside men, even though she's a mathematical genius.  And Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) is a MI-6 secret agent who tolerates Turing more than the rest.

While The Imitation Game mainly revolves around the mathematicians out to break the code, the movie really belongs to Benedict Cumberbatch.  His Alan Turing is the key and center to the whole film -- and Cumberbatch delivers an amazing performance.  He makes it quite easy to see why people both hate Turing and think he's the key to solving a seemingly impossible task.  While the movie contrasts the death and struggles of most Englishmen with the more peaceful, yet pressured life of the geniuses, things get quite morally ambiguous as the film continues.  And the ending will have you mourning Turing decades after he passed away.  The Imitation Game is an excellent drama that takes on a secret, intellectual struggle during the darkest days of war -- and the personal struggled that went along with it.

Overall grade: A
Reviewed by James Lynch

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

When the Star Trek franchise got rebooted, writer-director J.J. Abrams opted for new takes on the series' original characters.  This continues -- with mixed results -- in Star Trek Into Darkness, the latest (and most confusingly titled) movie in the series. 

Star Trek Into Darkness opens with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) after getting in trouble -- again -- by ignoring the Prime Directive to save a planet of primitive beings.  Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood) manages to save Kirk's career, but Kirk is demoted to Commander and Spock (Zachary Quinto) is reassigned to another ship.  However, rogue Starfleet agent John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) carries out a number of terrorist attacks against Starfleet, and following the deaths and destruction Kirk and Spock are back where they were.

Following the attacks, Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) gives Kirk a new assignment: Follow Harrison to Kronos (the Klingon homeworld) and kill him with some experimental torpedoes.  Kirk captures Harrison instead, despite Harrison's near-superhuman killing skills, which leads to a Federation cosnpiracy, the return of a familiar villain, plots within plots, and sexy science officer Carol (Alice Eve) who has her own secrets.

Star Trek Into Darkness works best with the smaller interactions between the main characters, whether it's the lover's quarrel beween Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the perpetual grumpiness of McCoy (Karl Urban), or Chekov (Anton Yelchin) struggling to take over Engineering.  Unfortunately, Cumberbatch spends most of the movie absent, making him catch up rather than continue as a fearsome villain.  The action isn't consistent enough to be that exciting, and if Kirk was supposed to learn humility, well, let's just say that by the movie's end he's done more than ever.

Star Trek Into Darkness is enjoyable enough, but it's also a little too much of what we've seen before (and not just from borrowing heavily from an episode of the original series).

Overall grade: C+
Reviewed by James Lynch