The Truth About Emanuel

The gentleman at the end of our row laughed so hard during Francesca Gregorini’s “The Truth About Emanuel” that I feared he might choke on his popcorn. Unfortunately, the film is not a comedy. 

Hitchcock

Breezy, efficient, and good-humored, “Hitchcock” sets about its business and sees to it briskly. Not for this movie the self-important aspirations of a biography such as “Lincoln”; it seeks only to pull back the curtain for an hour and a half and give us a glimpse into the lives of Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife, collaborator and most trusted adviser, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren), as they self-finance the film adaptation of “Psycho” on which Paramount (where Hitch had made his previous half-dozen pictures) and every other studio in town took a pass.