OCTOBER 20/27, 2017 EW.COM 75THE YEAR OF
WONDER
There’s a hot new trend in
movie titles. Below, a
guide to 2017’s five most
wondrous options.Adult SuperheroTodd McFarlane
says his newSpawn film (due in
2019) will be “dark and R-rated.”
SlowRunnerBlade Runner 2049
opened to an underwhelming
$33 million at the box office.REEL
NEWS78/52: Hitchcock’s
Shower Scene
DIRECTED BY Alexandre O. PhilippeRATING NR |LENGTH 1 hr., 32 mins.REVIEW BY Chris Nashawaty @ChrisNashawatyIT’S THE MOST ICONIC SEQUENCE IN
the history of horror movies—maybe
in the history of movies, period. A
beautiful woman on the lam with a small stolen
fortune in her handbag checks into an empty
motel run by a creepy proprietor with a sweet
tooth for taxidermy and candy corn. While tak-
ing a shower—naked, vulnerable, and trying to
wash away her sins—she’s slashed to death. In
1960 this was a shocking, sexually charged sym-
phony of taboo-smashing terror. And thanks
to the artistry of Alfred Hitchcock, it remains
one today. In this mostly great documentary,
Alexandre O. Philippe dissectsPsycho’s infa-
mous premature climax like a cold case begging
to be solved. The film (whose title refers to the
number of camera setups and edits in the
scene) gets off to a rocky start with distracting
reenactments featuring actors who look noth-
ing like Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. It’s
meant to be meta; it’s just cheesy. But Philippe
recovers quickly, interviewing such notables as
Peter Bogdanovich, Guillermo del Toro, Leigh’s
scream-queen daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, and
Leigh’sPsycho body double Marli Renfro, who
all come at the scene from different angles (the
lighting, the illusion of gore, the screeching
score), parsing it like Talmudic scholars. Best of
all is editor and sound designer Walter Murch,
who slows the scene down and unpacks its art-
istry.78/52 is an orgy for movie obsessives. It
makes you see the familiar with fresh eyes.A–and the Wonder Women, a tasteful, surprisingly Alfred Hitchcock and Janet Leigh
sedate biopic slathered in the traditional sign-
posts of heavy exposition, gold-toned cine-
matography, and note-perfect period detail.
“Are you normal? What is normal?” Mar-
ston (bluntly handsome British actor Luke
Evans) asks a classroom full of rapt young
women at Radcliffe College circa 1928, with
special attention paid to the doll-faced Olive
Byrne (Bella Heathcote). The question may
be rhetorical, but Marston is already the liv-
ing embodiment of something more radical;
he treats his brilliant, bristling wife Elizabeth
(the electric Rebecca Hall) as an equal—
which she is, though Harvard refuses to
award her her own rightfully earned Ph.D.—
in career and marriage, both of which soon
begin to include Olive. It turns out there’s a
shrewd mind beneath those blond ringlets
(Byrne’s aunt was birth-control pioneer
Margaret Sanger, her mother a renowned
feminist in her own right), and together the
trio experiments with early prototypes of the
systolic blood-pressure test, which would go
on to become a crucial element in poly-
graphs. But chemistry is the sweet science
here, as William and Elizabeth fall for Olive
and find their feelings returned—at first ten-
tatively, and then unmistakably (in a scene
set, with unfortunate on-the-noseness, to
Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”).
The movie frames its soft-focus flash-
backs against the harsh glare of Marston’s
interrogation by a public-decency panel led
by Connie Britton’s Josette Frank. A cool
fury in pink lipstick, Frank would very much
like to know how a relatively obscure aca-
demic became the man behind the most sub-
versive comic book on the market, and why.
Professor Marston answers that first question
capably; it just never quite captures the true,
transgressive wonder of his creation. BWONDER WOMAN
June 2
Gal Gadot brought the comics
heroine to the big screen in
Patty Jenkins’ blockbuster.PROFESSOR MARSTON AND
THE WONDER WOMEN
Oct. 13
Wonder Woman’s creator gets
his own origin story in this
romantic period piece.WONDERSTRUCK
Oct. 20
Todd Haynes’ symphonic
drama follows a deaf girl in
1927 and a young boy in 1977.WONDER
Nov. 17
This tearjerker stars Jacob
Tremblay as a fifth grader
with a facial disfigurement.WONDER WHEEL
Dec. 1
Kate Winslet falls for Coney
Island lifeguard Justin Timber-
lake in Woody Allen’s latest.WONDER WOMAN
: WARNER BROS. PICTURES;
PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN
: CLAIRE FOLGER/ANNAPURNA PICTURES;
WONDERSTRUCK
: MARY CYBULSKI/AMAZON
STUDIOS/ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS;WONDER: DALE ROBINETTE/LIONSGATE;WONDER WHEEL: JESSICA MIGLIO/AMAZON STUDIOS;78/52: HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER SCENE: IFC FILMS