Psycho

Rating:
Summary: A very good revamp of a classic
Review: I''ve been a fan of the original for years and I really believe this is a
very masterful shot for shot remake of a classic. The only thing I didn't
like was the bates house. They built a totally different house. If your going to do a faithful remake you have to leave aleast one aspect
of the original the same. The house in this movie [stinks]!!!!!
It's just not as creepy as the one in original movie.

Rating:
Summary: Gus Van Sant's Psycho
Review: I think that this movie was better than Psycho III and IV, but not better than the original and II. Although, there are some things that weren't even close to the original. They use a different house and a different motel! If I were you, I would see the original first before you see this and compare the two.

Rating:
Summary: Great DVD package, great experimental film....
Review: My God! Everyone is so defensive when it comes to the original 'Psycho'. This film was never supposed to be better than the original and it isn't. But on a positive note, as an 'experimental' film, it holds up well. For those who haven't seen the original and watch this, it makes for an interesting film because modern thrillers aren't filmed this way anymore.

The whole cast goes out of their way to deliver a performance that is totally different to the original giving their own interpretations of the characters and in some cases go to greater depth than some of the original cast members.
The film also looks fabulous in its fluro colour scheme and features some great filming from legendary Aussie cinematographer Chris Doyle.

The DVD too has some great extras including a very interesting documentary of which you will unnderstand why Van Sant wanted to do this. The commentary is very interesting too. A MUST for film buffs no matter what your opinion of this 'experimental' and highly underrated film.

Rating:
Summary: Hitchcock and Perkins are still rolling in their graves
Review: I don't give this 1 star,I give it no stars.What... were they think?Well,nothing.Vince Vaughn holds no candle to Anthony Perkins,Vaughn was totally not the choice for the famous role of Norman Bates,only Perkins did that back in 1960 and still does it know 42 years later.Nowonder it took Gus-Van Snat 4 years to make another movie after this piece of ....Hitchcock's version is one of the best movies ever made.Don't rent the ... remake,rent the classic one instend.

Rating:
Summary: Not THAT Bad of a Remake. But Still..................Why???
Review: Well, guess they wanted to do a remake of the brilliant classic, "Psycho." Does it work? Eh, not really. However, this is not the WORST remake I have seen. Watch the remake of "12 Angry Men," and you'll know what I mean. It could've been worse. Much worse.

All I have to say is that Vince Vaughn did a very good job of trying to live up to Anthony Perkins' outstanding portrayal of Norman Bates. He is very creepy, and it shows that he did his best. Still, he is no Anthony Perkins.

My question is simple: WHY?! Why did they have to do a remake. This movie was already perfect to begin with. And when you think about it, that's all this movie is. A remake. There is nothing new or different about it. Except for color, more blood and nudity, and different actors. That's all. Does Holywood really think that we hate old black and white movies? Hello! Just because it's black and white does not mean that we don't want to watch it. The original was already a true classic. Why mess with that?

Still, I cannot give it too much of a low rating. Because, it's not the worst remake I have ever seen. I can also think of a million other movies that are more horrible than this. It's okay.....I guess.

But, I still don't see the need to do a remake of a brilliant classic.

See the original.

Rating:
Summary: Psycho Sematics
Review: Let's face it; Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is untouchable to the standards of it's art form. No one in 1960 had ever seen something like a naked woman taking and shower, then brutally murder by an unknown assailant, then disturbingly and slowly, fall to a painful death before. What Gus Van Sant had in mind must have been just plain idiotcy and gulliblity. Why would you want to make a remake of a classic film, run done in color, shot-by-shot and with updated sources? Hogwash, I say! Why on God's green Earth would you hire Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche to play Norman Bates and Marion Craine? First of all, Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh ARE Norman Bates and Marion Craine, and there's no way you can change that. Instead of the boy-next-door creepy image that Perkins' Norman gave us, we get the perverted and giggling Norman that Vaughn portrays. Instead of Leigh's head strong and likable Marion, we get Heche's unsure and dumbass Marion, who acts more like Sharon Stone than Janet Leigh. And what about the other castmembers? William H. Macy and Julianne Moore give the only deccent performances as Det. Arbogast and Marion's sister, Lila. Viggo Mortensten gives a alright performance as Marion's headstrong lover, Sam Loomis. But what about the scenes of the film? Yes, there are scenes. But how good are they from the original? That's questionable.

What Van Sant does to the "new" scenes in the film is a bit of underminded script writing, spite the fact that they didn't really need to write much of a script. Newly updated dialouge is introduced, including one scene where Lila Crane in the original says "I'll go get my coat", in this version says "I'll go get my walkman". It doesn't really add context to the story, but it doesn't ruin it either. But what about changes? Terrible is all I say. The original Psycho house, the one house that is practically burned in the back of our subconscious minds, is replaced by a cheap-looking British house that looks like it was built in a matter of 80 seconds. One of the most dislikable scenes in the new film, is that when Norman is spying on Marion from the peephole, he starts masturbating. That is just plain disgusting and really unnecessary. When Marion is being stabbed, Van Sant inputs quick glimpses of rain clouds crashing over and moving quickly, which doesn't add any effect to the scene whatsoever. Finally, gestures and facial remarks are slightly changed to add more modern approach, such as Lila wink-wink to Norman in the checking-in scene, all the way to Marion when first seening the killer in the bathroom next to her, does a creepy gasp and then a shreking scream. All the less, "Psycho" is not all that bad, but it could be better than it is. Stick with the original and you'll see what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: Bah...
Review: I am an Black American, and Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors. "Psycho," the original, is one of my favorite movies. After catching the original on the Oxygen channel I realized that I'd never seen the remake, so...I rented it. I probably expected to much from the remake. While the movie did ATTEMPT to do justice to Hitchcock's film, it didn't quite...make it. I was sure that, for example, UPDATING the movie, would add some uh...actors of color, but this film remains as lily white as the original. While Hitchcock couldn't really be faulted for this (he was simply a man of his racist times), Van Sant could. How realistic is a movie, supposedly set in 1998, with an all-white cast? What planet did this movie take place on? (As a sidebar I'd cast Jada Pinkett Smith as Marion...between the short hairdo and her stabbing death in "Scream 2," she would be excellent...but I digress). Okay. Politically correctness aside, let's talk turkey. Some things were added to this movie that were simply uncalled for. Norman Bates masturbating? Visible flesh wounds? I think the director misses the point. Hitchock's version was excellent because he knew the arts of subtlety, implication, and he left something to the imagination. We WONDERED what Bates thought when he spied on Marion...we WONDERED how badly she was sliced up when she was killed in the shower...and it made for interesting viewing and thinking. Whereas chocolate syrup was blood in the original, the blood-red blood in this version was just...sickening. OVERKILL! And as with the self-gratification and stab wounds, they didn't NEED to be shown in the remake any more than they did in the original. Sometimes additions can be overkill.

Vince Vaughn was NO Anthony Perkins. Perkins was, and always will be, Norman Bates. Vaughn was like, the poor man's version; there was something about him that didn't quite...add up. You know...if it don't gel it ain't aspic. And his portrayal didn't "gel." Heche as Crane was okay...but...I don't know. Bah. And I don't know why they turned her boyfriend into a redneck, but...that was just awful. And finally, with the addition of Julianne Moore and William H. Macy, I thought I was watching "Boogie Nights" or something. (Could Van Sant's masturbation scene be an...homage to the that movie...of sorts?)

Um...all in all...a decent EFFORT. So I give it an "F"...for EFFort. But definately NOT an "A."

Rating:
Summary: respect the artist, if not the movie
Review: to all of those who say that gus van sant's opus is "unoriginal", you're missing the entire point. if you were to follow his career from his early work, you would realize that he's more of an avante gard artist than anything else. willing to try new things and experiment, re-making "psycho" was merely another way for him to tread upon undiscovered ground. although, the film is far from brilliant, one must admit that he tried something that has never been tried before. van sant is not a hollywood director and his unexpected success with "good will hunting" gave him the opportunity to take advantage of his newly-gained popularity within tinsel town. "psycho" was nothing more than a fleeting thought that raced through his head when he was finally offered an abnormally bigger budget. i'm willing to bet that, if given the opportunity over again, he wouldn't have done it any differently.

Rating:
Summary: How not to remake Hitchcock
Review: The only value of Van Sant's film is pedagogical. It demonstrates how Hitchcock's 'touch' demands the most rigorous/scrupulous attention to cinematic form: the careful placement of the actor within the frame, the rhythmic potential of montage, the expressive power of camera movement, etc. None of this is found in Van Sant's 'shot-by-shot' remake. (Either he was lying when he called it that or he is blind.) I use the film when I teach Hitchcock and it is extremely useful: students get to see with their own eyes how the slightest changes in detail -- due to whim or a simple lack of attention -- alter the power and meaning of an entire sequence. (When the actors rattle off their lines there doesn't seem to be any human agency behind the camera directing them.)
The only way to argue for the film would be to claim that its awfulness is deliberate -- that Van Sant's version is post-horror, a portrait of a world drained of eroticism, beauty, sadness (i.e., human feeling). But even if this were true, it still doesn't make it any less painful to watch. This is a lousy film.

Rating:
Summary: NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ORIGINAL
Review: Perhaps if the film makers behind this video anachronism had actually invested some originality into their project, taken Hitchcock's original plot and showed us a new perspective, or perhaps even adapted one of original author Robert Bloch's sequels to the Norman Bates saga, almost anything other than a pointless shot-by-shot and line-by-line colorization of the original masterpiece, then maybe this would have been something other than an empty waste. But they didn't, and it is. Some have tried to justify this remake by claiming today's moviegoers-especially the youth--don't know the original and won't watch a black & white movie. Well, that's their loss. The original Psycho's black & white photography was so beautifully manipulated it actually looks better than the remake, color or not. Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn are adequate as Marion Crane and Norman Bates, but they don't make anybody forget they're not Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. On the other hand, Julianne Moore as a spazzed out Lila Crane is a disaster, and takes every one of her scenes like the bad medicine they are. Viggo Mortenson's Sam Loomis is even worse, an empty-headed redneck evidently just looking for a cheap feel. Bottom line? If you want to see Psycho, arguably the most terrifying thriller ever filmed, skip this one and see the original.