This almost-no-budget feature by writer/director James Ward Byrkit was created by gathering eight of his actor-friends in his Santa Monica living room, and giving each of them a daily page of notes about their character on which to base their improvised performance. Five nights of shooting gave Byrkit enough material for the finished product, but questions must be asked about whether the process justified the flick's 88 minute running time.

Here's the genuine hard problem facing commentators confronted with Tom Stoppard's new play of the same name: how do you honour the legacy of this extraordinary writer's first play in nine years that also marks its director Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre swansong and is – truth be told – a disappointment on multiple fronts?

It’s Turing versus Hawking, Cumberbatch v Redmayne, computer science v astrophysics, tragedy v the triumph of love. Ever since The Imitation Game and The Theory of  Everything appeared at the Toronto Film Festival last year, the head to head has been inevitable, leading all the way to the Oscars.

How long should a dance programme be? Opera and theatre habitués can be surprised by outings to contemporary dance, where the pieces might be shorter than the intervals, and a 7:30 start could see you comfortably on the 9:15 train home. But the early train is in no danger from Rambert’s new programme, their annual showcase of contemporary creations at Sadler’s Wells, which features one world première, one London première, and one revival from this time last year, and last night came in at a handsome two and a half hours.

Brian Cox has a very beguiling way of expressing quiet wonder. He’s taken on the very largest of subjects in Human Universe, extending traditions of science and natural history broadcasting towards a wider study of how the human race has come to be what it is, where it came from and where it may be going, and he doesn’t raise his voice on a single occasion. Other BBC presenters carried away by their subject matter could certainly take a hint.

I Origins is a high-concept sci-fi thriller and romantic drama from American indie director Mike Cahill, who investigates big philosophical and scientific issues by looking for meaning in coincidence. Part produced by Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt, who also stars, this well-intentioned thesis intrigues but falls short due to a laboured script and an inelegant handling of a burgeoning relationship.

Science has fallen in love with comedy – or maybe that should be the other way round. Whichever, geek is now chic, and being in possession of a brain is something to be laughed with, rather than at. All of which explains the popularity of Radio 4's The Infinite Monkey Cage, or Dara Ó Briain's School of Hard Sums on the Dave channel, both of which employ a large dose of comedy to discuss some terrifically complex topics.

It may not have won the Best Picture Oscar, but Gravity's sack of gongs for cinematography, sound editing, original score and more was richly deserved, while Alfonso Cuarón's acute directorial vision brought its own reward. I was amazed by Gravity on first viewing, and watching it again on disc it's even better. I've always found the notion of travelling into the infinite freezing vacuum of space a horrifying prospect, and perhaps only Kubrick's 2001 can match Gravity in its ability to evoke its incomprehensible and unfeeling emptiness.

Such is the level of confidence that the Silent Witness producers have in their new ensemble that star turn Emilia Fox barely lifted a scalpel in the latest instalment of the BBC’s long-running crime series. Either that or she needed a night or two off, and who could blame her? It's now in its 17^th series, and Fox has stuck it out for more than half of them.

Hailed in some quarters as a wily and satirical retro-classic, Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess depends for its survival on threading its way through the eye of a tiny nostalgic needle. Bujalski's intention was to create a kind of hommage to the single-minded, possibly autistic computing pioneers of the early Eighties, often unsightly weirdos with hilarious hair and no clothes sense who nonetheless "saw this mountain and insisted on climbing it," as Bujalski puts it.