This Just In: Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren are simply stellar in Hitchcock

Review: Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren are simply stellar in Hitchcock:







From the review:




Like two heavyweight veterans, Hopkins and Mirren carry much of the 98-minute “Hitchcock” through its awkward first act. Their performances dominate the second when Hitchcock and Leville’s relationship is in jeopardy. Then the film takes a left turn in the final stanza as it shifts focus back to "Psycho's" production and Hitchcock and Leville's attempts at saving it in the editing room.

Director Sacha Gervasi is best known for helming the documentary “Anvil: The Story of Anvil” and while he has story credits on Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal” and “Henry’s Crime,” “Hitchcock” truly feels like a first film. Gervasi and McCloughlin seem intent on tying Hitchcock’s creative process and belief in his wife’s affair into a number of scenes where Hitchcock and the killer Gein interact together (the two never met in real life). Sometimes they converse in Gein’s Wisconsin farmhouse, sometimes Gein appears in Hitchock’s dreams and at one point he randomly is in the director’s office. It’s a device that just doesn’t work and was probably unnecessary from the beginning.

More disappointing, Gervasi doesn’t have a cinematic enough eye to tell a tale about one of the medium's great masters. Gervasi and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (“The Social Network”) attempt to bring a 60’s Technicolor feel to “Hitchcock,” but instead the film looks cheap and bizarrely conventional at times. It might actually be one of the most disappointing efforts of Cronenweth’s impressive career.