‘Unbearably sexy in his rodenty way’: Benedict Cumberbatch’s 20 best films – ranked!

To mark the two-time Oscar nominee’s recent 50th birthday, we rate his finest screen roles – from hyper-British patricians and seething serpents, to ghastly Yanks, tragic codebreakers and sci-fi scoundrels Benedict Cumberbatch does his considerable best opposite the equally prestigious Olivia Colman in this souped-up marital-breakdown dramedy, essentially remade from the 1989 movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. This time, though, it’s all about the Britons – indicating the supposed classiness of the affair. But the film is overwrought and unconvincing; it never convinces us that the couple were once passionately in love and now passionately in hate. The below-par script has the effect of bringing out an unrewarding kind of coldness in Cumberbatch, technically assured though he always is. Continue reading...