BOY CULTURE RATING: *** out of ****

Though it's long overdue, Alan Turing (1912—1954)—the genius who led a group that cracked the code of the Nazis' Enigma machine and helped win WWII for the Allies—is being toasted as a hero. The father of the modern computer received a posthumous pardon in 2013 and is the subject of a major motion picture, The Imitation Game, which documents his unique mind and the mistreatment (he was prosecuted for being gay and chemically castrated) that led to his suicide at age 41.

The film is a respectful, if simplified, treatment of Turing's life, which was also the subject of a 2012 documentary called Codebreaker. In it, Benedict Cumberbatch turns in a beautifully modulated performance as the socially stunted Turing, with Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke, an adventurous woman whose mind Turing respected even though his sexual orientation precluded the romance she desired. They nearly married, Turing was so fond of her—but he cared too deeply for her to allow her to enter into a sexless union.