Hitchcock, a dramatization of the making of 1960’s Psycho, may very well have the great director figured out, but the movie’s on-the-nose vision of the man makes for an unsurprising narrative. Here, Hitch is a voyeur with a large appetite who’s obsessed with blond starlets and the notion of guilt. Sounds about right, we shrug. The only intriguing stuff here – at least to me – is the recognition the movie gives to Hitch’s wife Alma (Helen Mirren) as a vital contributor to his creative process. Yet this, too, is so broadly drawn that it comes off as patronizing. With Jessica Biel as Vera Miles, James D’Arcy as Anthony Perkins, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh and – doing an impression beneath Klump-like prosthetics – Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock.
