10 Spectacularly Wrong Movie Reviews
9. Psycho Remake Better Than The Original
Gus Van Sant is as much an arty-farty type as a movie director. His best-known work is stuff like the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting (it's not your fault etc), but he also helmed the pretentious likes of Gerry, where Matt Damon and Casey Affleck walk across a desert for an hour and a half talking, and then one of them strangles the other. It's a bit like 127 Hours without a happy ending. Or gratuitous violence. One of Van Sant's biggest "art" pieces was his remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which added literally nothing to the original. Which was absolutely intentional, as the director set out to perfectly replicate the film, frame-by-frame. The only differences are that it's in colour, and obviously the cast. Which includes Vince Vaughan as Patrick Bates, because we guess he's the modern-day equivalent of Anthony Perkins? You guys should see the sixties version of Dodgeball, it's a hot.
The general consensus is that the remade Psycho isn't very good. Or at least, it was totally unnecessary. Because it's exactly the same as the original. It'd make sense as an art installation for Van Sant to make in his own time, less so as a theatrically-released film. One enterprising critic, however, disagreed. In fact, Eugene Novikov's four-star review was quoted on the film's poster, as he noted his disinterest in Hitchcock's version before enthusing "to my absolute astonishment, I enjoyed the remake more." He admits that there isn't much difference between the two, except "because its colorized its about twice as effective, and twice as thrilling," and states that Perkins' "performance is in no way better than Vaughns is here". Yeah, no, you're wrong. That's not how opinions work but, well, here it does.