6. Hitchcock
Sacha Gervasi's biopic of Hitchcock hasn't been released in the UK yet, but US reviews have been pouring in during recent weeks, and having been sent a handy screener by Fox Searchlight, I've been able to see the film myself. It's a film that should be legendary; casting A-list, Oscar-winning actors as Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, as the film examines the process through which Hitch developed his most revered film, Psycho. Though Anthony Hopkins is a fantastic actor, he doesn't really match the physical likeness of Hitchcock, and even with some performance-encroaching make-up and a fatsuit, he's still far away from what the man actually looked like. Furthermore, his attempt to mimic Hitch's voice comes off as one-note, because we can still recognise that signature Hopkins affectation underneath. Smart it is, then, that a lot of the focus is on Mirren's Reville, easily the most compelling component of the film, and the film suggests that she had far more influence on Hitch's films than most people realise. The problem is that the film indulges itself too much in the passive-aggressive, almost childlike relationship woes between the two and not enough in the making of Psycho. The result is a biopic-by-numbers that has its share of nice moments, but can't amount to a cohesive or particularly invigorating whole. What could have been a Best Picture runner is more like a Lifetime movie with one great performance.