Review: Hitchcock (2012) thinks you can't handle the truth.

Hitchcock

2012

95 minutes

rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

It is telling that the opening frames of Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock don't even give us the usual 'based on a true story' text as its allegedly non-fiction story begins.  It's the only honest moment of the entire picture, which is so gloriously full of shit that it can't bear to even pretend that the story it's presenting is remotely truthful.  Technically based on Stephen Rebello's 1990 book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the film alters history, dilutes the contributions of talented individuals, commits outright libel against others, while basically ignoring its central subject (the, um, making of Psycho) in favor of a contrived would-be romantic conflict between Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and Alma Reville (Helen Mirren).  Worse yet, the story is told in broad, on-the-nose strokes that resembles the kind of writing found in bad childrens' cartoons and the picture revolves around hindsight-superiority that renders it potently obnoxious.  It plays less as an adult drama and more like a Hitchcock biography blandly written for first-graders.

Weekend Box Office: Rise of the Guardians stumbles as most everything else (Life of Pi, Red Dawn, etc.) flies.

As I wrote yesterday, this weekend was a perfect example of the issue with reporting cumulative box office as if it means anything.  Yes it was the biggest Thanksgiving weekend on record ($295 million total over the five days), but such a thing tends to happen when you have three strong holdovers and three relatively strong new releases in one frame.  As always, it's the movies.  More importantly, total weekend box office success is only important if your film is among the ones doing well.  

Dreamworks' Rise of the Guardians basically flopped.  There's really no nice way to say it.  In five days, the $145 million animated film earned $32.6 million while earning just $24 million over Fri-Sun.  As I mentioned yesterday, this is the lowest opening weekend, by a very large margin, for Dreamworks Animation since Flushed Away back in Fall 2006 ($18 million).  Even the film's five-day total ($32.6 million) puts it as the lowest comparative three-day opening weekend since 2006 and their 17th lowest total out of 25 films.  The reasoning for this actually pretty simple.  The film didn't look very visually appealing, the marketing didn't promise anything beyond a painfully generic story (both sadly true about the film itself), and the campaign was based upon the idea that having three holiday icons that everyone knew (Santa, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny) and two that were far less well-known in pop culture (Jack Frost and the Sand Man) engaging in a riff on the first X-Men picture was automatically appealing. It wasn't, and with Lincoln and Skyfall winning out as consensus choices for large families, and with Life of Pi  coming out far stronger than expected as a family film choice, plus the still-strong Wreck It Ralph ($149 million thus far, making a go at Tarzan's $171 million finish), Rise of the Guardians just couldn't muscle out of the pack.

Red Dawn, Rise of the Guardians or Life of Pi? John Gosling previews the Thanksgiving weekend's new releases.

Red Dawn is a remake of the controversial 1984 film of the same name, which was written and directed by John Millius. Made as the threat of nuclear war was prevalent, it saw Russia and its allies invading America, with the picture focusing on a small town and a group of high school kids turned resistance fighters. Apart from its notoriety in 1984, it also became the first picture to receive a PG-13 rating and was deemed the most violent film ever made by the Guinness Book of Records, with a total of 134 acts of violence committed in its run time. Thought to be unsettling (and all too possible) at the time, it has since become something of a cult classic. At the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, MGM announced plans to remake the movie and set stunt co-ordinator and second unit director Dan Bradley to helm. The idea was to shoot the film in 2009 with a view to release in November 2010. For the lead role of Jed Eckert, Bradley cast the relatively unknown (at that point) Chris Hemsworth, based on footage he had seen of his work in Cabin in the Woods (another MGM flick). Josh Peck, signed on to play Jed's brother Matt, and was joined by Josh Hutcherson, (who has since gone on to star in The Hunger Games) and Friday Night Lights alumni Adrianne Palicki. Kurt Russell was said to be up for playing the role of downed-pilot Lt. Col Tanner, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan would ultimately take on the job. The plot would follow that of the original quite closely, but substitute an invading Russian army for a Chinese one - something that  would become the cause of much criticism during the film's production. Shooting took place as planned in late 2009 and photos of Chinese propaganda posters from the set soon showed up online. Apart from the 'enemy' controversy, filming went smoothly and everything started to come together for the 2010 release date.

Hitchcock (IE - The Making of Psycho) gets a trailer.

Well this looks like good fun, even if it tries to sell the making of a popcorn entertainment as an epic "Us vs. the World!" underdog story.  Based purely on the cast alone, this is one of my top must-sees of the Oscar season, as I can't imagine it not being a gold-star acting treat.  I could carp that it follows the standard biopic trailer, even to the point of trying to sell the story of the world's most famous director making his next pulp fiction as a grand David vs. Goliath story.  But the actors all look grand and this looks like a good bit of inside-baseball fun.  I don't know how much general moviegoers will care about this one (when I was twelve, would my friends and older relatives flocked to a film about the making of The Treasure of Sierra Madre?), but if it's cheap enough if should be a solid investment.  I do wish we had gotten a glimpse of Michael Wincott as serial murderer Ed Geinn, but I hope his apparent absence doesn't mean he's but a cameo. Anyway, Hitchcock debuts on November 1st as the opening film of the AFI Film Festival before debuting in limited release on November 23rd.  As always, we'll see.  Your thoughts?