Swanvale Halt Film Club: Hitchcock (2012)

We rather enjoyed this. I suppose part of the point is to highlight the crucial role Alma Reville played even in Hitchcock's greatest cinematic triumphs, and that the film, and Helen Mirren playing her, do very effectively. Anthony Hopkins's Hitch is positively toadish on some occasions, hinting at the truly horrible side of his character rather than the mildly troubling which is most of what you get. Elements of the gleefully macabre are exactly what one expects, and of course you can't go for 98 minutes without Funeral March of a Marionette cropping up, but it's there to do no more than add a lovely frisson of Gothic cosiness. There's nothing deep or life-changing here, or even anything that'll change one's views of Hitchcock, but it's ever so well-made.