HITCHCOCK

HITCHCOCK
Written by John J. McLaughlin
Directed by Sasha Gervasi
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson

Alfred Hitchcock: You may call me Hitch; hold the cock.

If you’re going to make a movie about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, your movie had better be good. To put it plainly, Alfred Hitchcock is simply one of the best and most famous film directors in history. And PSYCHO is arguably his most notorious film. It is an unfortunate shame, to say the least, that both the man himself, and this brilliant film, have been over simplified and stripped of all actual suspense and drama for the attempted biopic, HITCHCOCK. It is even more regrettable I’m afraid, to see two winning performances buried in such a middling movie.

HITCHCOCK adapts the modern style of biography filmmaking, choosing to focus on one particular period in the man’s life instead of a more strict adherence to portraying his life from birth to death. This approach worked quite well in films like CAPOTE and MY WEEK WITH MARILYN because, even though we only got a glimpse at their lives, we still got a grander sense of who they were and how they became these people. Screenwriter, John J. McLaughlin (BLACK SWAN), chooses to focus all of his attention on the period where Hitchcock made PSYCHO, but it seems to me it could have been any movie really. After all, all he did was take all these popular ideas of who Hitchcock was as a person, from his obsession with blondes to his overeating to his control issues, and plop them into the behind the scenes of PSYCHO. A setting should have a purpose; this slice of his life should have been so particularly telling that it would also inform on what came before and where the man would go after. Instead, we get in and out of Hitchcock’s life without getting to know very much about him at all.

HITCHCOCK is far from disastrous but it just feels so slight and unfocused, which may be the inexperience of the film's director, Sasha Gervasi. In fact, the only true anchors the film has are its two lead stars, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock. Neither is given very much to work with but they make the most of it every moment they’re on screen. Hopkins takes the caricature he was given on the page and gives us an eye into the man’s soul. This is even more impressive given the size of the fat suit he’s got on. His Hitchcock is anxious, worried, unsure but also passionate and determined. His scenes with Mirren are what brings the film to life. They are a feisty pair and their chemistry truly feels like that of a dedicated, married couple, who have been together for ages. Together, Hopkins and Mirren make HITCHCOCK worth watching.

In conclusion and further to my first point, if you’re going to make a movie about Hitchcock, it should be a film that Hitchcock himself would be proud of. I’m not so sure he would have been able to sit through this one.

271. Hitchcock

271. (11 Nov) Hitchcock (2012, Sacha Gervasi)* 37



Hot on the heels of the bolder The Girl, this take on Hitchcock dissolves tension away by being pandering and reverential. When Hitchcock chats up Ed Gein or fear he's being cuckolded, the audience knows both scenarios are merely his lame imaginings. So there's not much to invest in since we all know Psycho's predictable success story. A scenery-chewing Helen Mirren comes off substantially better than the thoroughly unbelievable Anthony Hopkins. But then convincing casting is way down the list of the film's problems, which are namely a terrible script and uninspired direction. Most scenes seem like they were shot from two or three angles with Sacha Gervasi accepting whatever was offered on the first take.

360

360
Written by Peter Morgan
Directed by Fernando Meirelles
Starring Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Foster

The concept that we, as human beings, are all tied to each other in some way is one that most people understand on the basest of levels. Many might not think anything of it, while I’m sure many others think the theory is without merit. To genuinely try to conceptualize the grandness of the idea though can be overwhelming. Regardless, it is often fodder for filmmakers, including Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian director of CITY OF GOD. His latest, 360, takes the viewer around the world to understand that we are just living in one big global community. Who knew that such a big trip could feel so slight?

Even talented scribe, Peter Morgan (FROST/NIXON, THE QUEEN) cannot revolutionize the 360 concept. The trouble with tackling this topic is that the filmmaker’s hand is shown in the first act of the film. The audience may not know precisely where they’re being led but they know that it will be from one insignificant moment to the next in an elaborate game of connect the dots. Subsequently, no attachments are made to the characters on screen and thus, very little engagement in the film is established. Gifted actors like Jude Law and Rachel Weisz (who won an Oscar the last time she worked with Meirelles on THE CONSTANT GARDENER) appear and disappear almost as quickly. Only Anthony Hopkins manages to carve out a memorable scene, with a passionate confession at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And then he’s gone.

Life is made up of these fleeting moments and 360 does a good job demonstrating how even the seemingly least significant of those moments, derived from chance encounters in airports or dentist offices, can lead to life altering events. It does so in such a banal and uninspired fashion though that all it truly made me feel is that I would be better off making connections with people instead of watching people make them.

Review copy provided by eOne Entertainment.

187. Magic

187. (03 Sep) Magic (1978, Richard Attenborough) 49



Magic never comes close to topping what "The Dummy" episode of The Twilight Zone accomplished in a fraction of the time. Rather than capitalizing on a gimmicky premise, the film takes an unexpected direction by focusing on a romance between Anthony Hopkins and Ann-Margret. Whenever it barely becomes a thriller, it's intriguing. Unfortunately, much of this is Anthony Hopkins overacting while Ann-Margret comes across quite poorly. Richard Attenborough made a film far too serious for its own good.

THOR

Written by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Don Payne

Directed by Kenneth Brannagh

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins

Erik Selvig: It's not a bad thing finding out you don't have all the answers. Now you can start asking the right questions.

So I Thor-oughly enjoyed THOR. I’ll be honest; I was not expecting to. I certainly enjoy the occasional comic book film, be it about a boy with serious spider issues or a technology genius with a giant ego and a sharp tongue. That said, I’m hardly an enthusiast. Of late, I’ve felt like Marvel has been making anything they’ve ever drawn into a movie and when I first saw the trailer for THOR, I thought, enough already. The two mediums are not meant to be mutually exclusive and not every character deserves to be reinvented for the big screen. Fortunately though, director Kenneth Brannagh has proven me very wrong. Perhaps this might have something to do with Thor not being your typical superhero; Thor is a god and he is a mighty one indeed.

To be fair, Thor isn’t really a god. He was merely seen as one by Viking culture way back around 965 A.D. He is immortal though and I can see how that might be misinterpreted as god-like but no, Thor is just a man – from another galaxy, with super crazy strength, who can never die … and who has an insane body. Still, mistaking him for a god makes his fall from grace oh so much further. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is heir to the throne of Asgard and is on the cusp of inheriting the crown from his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins) when he allows pride and selfishness to guide him down a path that leads his people into war. Odin banishes Thor to Earth and strips him of his power, including his infamous hammer, which some of you geekier readers may know as Mjöllnir. God or no God, everyone has their lessons to learn.

Once Thor is on Earth, the action cuts back and forth seamlessly between the mystical heaven-like beauty of Asgard, where magic and science are one and the same and this teeny tiny town in New Mexico, population next to nothing. While the setup that precedes this act is certainly densely weighted in mythology and mysticism, it gets decidedly lighter once Thor crashes to Earth from the heavens. This is in great part due to Thor’s interaction with the team of scientists he runs into, led by Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and the quick witted repartee they partake in. Thor is now a strange demi-god in a strange land and Hemsworth plays his predicament with great resolve. He cannot help but be humbled by the damage he has done, his inability to rely on the strength he always has and the genuine caring he gets from Jane. The real chemistry between Hemsworth and a hilarious Portman plays a key role in grounding this otherworldly tale.

What truly cements this fantastical story as still undeniably human is the father-son struggle between Thor and Odin. Brannagh, with his extensive background in Shakespeare, both on screen and on stage, knows that the action in THOR is the easy part. That hammer gives him the strength to defeat armies practically on his own and so whatever action he gets himself into, it will take care of itself. But the heart of the film has to be relatable. Thor is but a boy learning how to become a man, learning to put the good of the universe before himself. Odin is just a father, waiting for his boy to find the inner virtue he knew all along to be there. We’ve all been there, more or less. And so, Brannagh becomes his own incarnation of Odin, providing the tools that make it possible for a comic book to grow into the movie it was always meant to be.