The Oscar nominations were announced today and I am kind of in shock how much Oscar love "The Imitation Game" received. I saw it this weekend and while I didn't hate it, I was severely underwhelmed. I felt like it was a competent movie, but not a great movie. I thought it looked great so I have no issue with any of the technical nominations. But I do not understand the nominations for Best Director, Best Actor, or Best Supporting Actress. The plot was kind a mishmash mess, there was a subplot that was never really resolved and what I think was supposed to be the climax came at a really weird time in the movie that somehow seemed both too early and too late so the denouement was very unsatisfying . I really hated the endless flashbacks/flashfowards, look movie I can pay attention to complex plots but if you do nothing to make Alan Turning look different, I can't really tell if the scene takes place in 1939 or 1942. Plus, I felt like you don't really learn about Alan Turing and the end was such a cop-out (and just kind of ended). I learned more about Alan Turning from an 45 minute episode of RadioLab than in a two hour movie. And to me, all these problems are due to the director so I really feel like the nomination for the director was undeserved. Plus, Academy, you nominated the movie Selma for Best Picture but you couldn't nominate the female African-American director (especially, since, you know all the other acting nominations and most of the directing nominations went to white people and this was a chance to be inclusive). I like Benedict Cumberbatch, but his Alan Turning is very Sherlock-y to me (with some stuttering) and I think that there were more interesting performances than this. And I know that I have issue with Keira Knightly (I've never really liked her), but again I felt like her performance (and that role) was so like middle of the road and uninteresting. I guess my biggest issue with the movie is that Alan Turning had a interesting and tragic life so an interesting movie could be made about his life, but The Imitation Game is not it.
As a side note, I know that the Academy has a history of not recognizing great talent (like the fact Joseph Cotten never won) but it is kind of aggravating that the Academy is honoring such a bland-y blanderson movie.
