The Imitation Game

The real life story of Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing is told in this Academy Award-winning biography. Although arrogant and difficult to work with, Turing (Cumberbatch) is a genius whose work on a new machine could eventually lead to cracking the "unbreakable" German Enigma code. However, behind-the-scenes politics and Soviet spies threaten to run his critical work off the rails, and his struggles to keep his illegal homosexuality a secret could spell the end to his career -- and to British hopes of decoding the Enigma and winning the war.

Director: Morten Tyldum. Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Charles Dance. 2014. 114 min. Drama.

Interstellar

A tale of a dystopian future and interstellar exploration comes to life in this Academy Award-winning film. While humanity has been struggling to survive on Earth following a decimating crop blight, a secret NASA project has been sending astronauts through a wormhole found near Saturn to explore a distant planetary system with hopes that one of the planets will be viable for humans to inhabit. A former NASA pilot (McConaughey) joins the mission and travels through the wormhole to recover the data that was gathered by an earlier mission. Meanwhile, back on Earth, his daughter (Chastain) has become a scientist with NASA, and her equations may upset the entire mission.

Director: Christopher Nolan. Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Mackenzie Foy, John Lithgow, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, David Gyasi. 2014. 169 min. Sci-Fi.

Outcast

A tale of the ruthlessness of imperial politics comes to life in this joint American-Chinese production. When the heir to the imperial throne dodges an assassination attempt by his disgraced older brother (On), he and his sister (Liu) are forced to go into hiding. With the help of two former crusaders (Cage, Christensen) who need to overcome their own personal demons, the prince sets out to depose his brother and take his rightful place upon the imperial throne.

Director: Nick Powell. Stars: Nicolas Cage, Hayden Christensen, Yifei Liu, Andy On, Fernando Chien, Byron Lawson. 2014. 99 min. Action.