rodrig58 Well, that's a cool role for Mr. Anthony Hopkins! Super cool! And Helen Mirren is absolutely exceptional! A super actress! I always liked her, in all her movies, she was born to be an actress, she has a bright star in her head and a deep deep fire in her heart! I always liked Anthony Hopkins, except for the obvious role for money in "Transformers: The Last Knight". And follows Odin in "Thor: Ragnarok," they probably pay him terribly well to get involved in such productions... Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors, I love him and I admire him. And I wish I had a wife like Alma! Congratulations Sacha Gervasi!

Kingslaay Hitchcock was a passable and average film. I noted one reviewer said the film was better when it looked at the filming of Psycho as opposed to Hitchcock's marital relations, I couldn't agree more. Hitchcock is perhaps one of the greatest directors of all time. His innovative techniques and style brought a new experience to film as he cared about the film experience. Hence we had a degree of voyeurism as it was a lens for the audience to perceive the film and experience it. It was a nice glimpse into history to see the making of Psycho and the hurdles Alfred Hitchcock jumped to get it across the line. A sad truth about the film industry where reputation still wasn't good enough and Hitch had to pay for it himself. Anthony Hopkins is passable as Hitchcock as he somewhat resembles his stature and appearance and sounds like him. However he was not entirely convincing at being Hitch. Still, I am unsure who else could have played with role. The strength of the film was the behind the scenes film making of Psycho and its weakness was the marital problems with Hitch and Alma. Sadly the majority was about his marriage. Perhaps a better director with more flair that Hitch himself would appreciate could have directed this. I felt all the ingredients were there to make a great film but it was poorly 'cut' and put together.

ted-mcwhirter A compelling study of psycho-sexual lust and jealousy built around the making of Psycho. The acting is top notch though Hopkins, in depicting a person whose delivery and presence has been caricatured so often, sometimes seems to fall into caricature himself. That said his dance in the lobby as he waits for the shower scene to be projected is wonderful. Helen Mirren is too attractive for Alma but does capture her frustration, both physical and emotional, at being perceived as nothing more than Hitchcock's shadow when she was clearly so much more. And the shooting of shower scene though faithful in capturing Janet Leigh's reactions is way over the top in suggesting that Hitchcock's threatening behaviour was the catalyst. The darkest moments though are when Hitchcock interacts with the real life serial killer Ed Gein in his dreams and imagination - a disturbing look inside the reality of the killer that Hitchcock transformed into Norman Bates. The music is excellent using variations of the Hermann Psycho themes to move the story along as well as dipping into the score itself. Whether he was as much of a tyrant as is suggested here is best left for the biographies but one gets a real sense of his self-doubt, the sexual impotence he felt towards the unattainable actresses and the meticulous way in which he storyboarded, edited and crafted his unique films.

TheLittleSongbird 'Hitchcock' had real potential to be great, being a biopic on one of the greatest and most influential directors ever and with such a great cast. It could have been much better and is an uneven film, but is a better Hitchcock biopic than 'The Girl' from the same period.It looks great for starters. The cinematography is sumptuous and colourful, and the costume, set and production design and scenery are both eye-catching and evocative. Danny Elfman's score has a lot of atmosphere but also a liveliness and whimsy, even including a chilling and very well used nod to the iconic score from 'Psycho'.A very heavily up Anthony Hopkins makes a valiant effort as Hitch, and it is a spirited, gleefully relished and well-studied characterisation that is much more subtly written than how Hitch was written in 'The Girl' (though in that Toby Jones did do very well indeed with what he was given). Helen Mirren cuts an enigmatic and firm yet sympathetic presence as wife Alma. In support, coming off particularly well are Scarlett Johanssen's spot-on Janet Leigh and Toni Collette who is always good even in material beneath her. While under-used, the Anthony Perkins of James D'Arcy is also ideal casting.Coming off less well are Danny Huston's pretty irritating Whitfield Cook, Ralph Macchio's too old and jarringly too modern-looking Joseph Stefano (kept seeing the Karate Kid rather than Stefano, which really took me out of the film) and Jessica Biel who also feels miscast as Vera Miles, a case of recognisable name and star quality over whether they fit the character or period or both (neither of which Biel does).'Hitchcock's' storytelling is also uneven and unfocused, likewise with the direction which badly struggles with the balancing of plot strand and tone shifts. 'Hitchcock' fares well in the making of 'Pyscho' and Hitch's belligerent reaction to 'North By Northwest's' success, which is fascinating and there should have been much more of it, and in the strong and quite touching chemistry between Hopkins and Mirren.It however underwhelms badly in the very unconvincingly written and unlikely love triangle, which sees Alma falling for Whitfield Cook, a big problem when that has more screen time than the story elements 'Hitchcock' does well in. And also in the tonally odd, padded out (they were clearly there for padding too) and out of place scenes with Ed Gein which was an attempt to bring a fantasy element to the film, and a ghoulish one, but it was woefully misjudged (a shame because Michael Wincott is eerily good as Gein, so much so that if a film is made about Gein in the future Wincott should be up for serious consideration to play him).Some of the dialogue is clunky and not just underuses characters that would have made the film even more interesting (Perkins definitely should have been in the film longer) but the way Alma is written can be considered a character assassination, practically hero-worshipping her and while not vilifying Hitch necessarily there is the very strong and blatant implication that he was lazy, not as clever as he clearly was to make so many great films and that he would not have had the success he had without Alma. The way the characters are written are sketchy and one-dimensional, and despite so much promise one does question the film's point.All in all, intriguing enough but very uneven. 5/10 Bethany Cox