Chris Garman (sononothing)

After The Sunset is another example of what James Bond does when he retires.Sometimes he becomes Harrison Ford's dad. Sometimes he ends up in The Spice Girls Movie or Boat Trip (+1). Occasionally he ends up being in films co starring The Nanny or Daffy Duck. Or you end up being George Lazenby. So welcome, Pierce, to the pasture that holds all of the former 007's. You'll never live it down (unless you're Scottish).

The film is about a jewel thief (Brosnon) who commits his last heist with his girl (Salma Hayek) so that he can retire to the Bahamas. Of course, we know it won't be his last heist because there's still an hour and a half left in the film. The couple are living the good life to its dullest until the FBI man he ruined (Woody Harrelson) shows up to harass our thief over a cruise ship docked on the island that holds yet another huge, unsellable diamond.

To make a long story short. Sure, the film is way over the top with most of the characters having telekinetic powers. It's like a criminal X-Men because they can plan each others moves like clockwork. The script is ridiculous and knows it. That's what's OK about this film. it knows its borderline crap and goes with it. There isn't much action involved with Brosnon making Harrelson look like a horses ass throughout the film, but it's acceptable because it won't really bore you. And it's better than Mamma Mia.

I Love You Beth Cooper takes the high school standard of "THE" girl that ruled the roost over the four years of education you go through and the infatuations that males had for her and wraps them up in a neat little bow that presents the class geek (Paul Rust) professing his love during graduation. An interesting premise, I must say and it could have worked if the script was written with any kind of sincerity, the direction was worth a damn, and had acting that was above the putrid level of two geeks at a bus stop doing Monty Python skits.

What invariably happens is that the geek and his best friend (Jack Carpenter) end up, through a series of circumstances, on the town with the geeks queen Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettiere) and her entourage. Of course there's the party that gets crashed and the pissed off boyfriend, but it's what happens during this final night of high school insanity that the geek realizes the Venus-like girl in his head is not the wild teenage girl crashing into his parents Volvo.

As a plot on paper the film sounds pretty good. It's an age old formula for decades, but it sounds like something different compared to most of the teen comedies out there. But then we get the script, which is an atrocious series of misadventures that zig zag without anywhere to land. There's the psycho, coked up, Army boyfriend (I though they gave drug tests) who is this Superman chasing our harem throughout the night, yet is defeated in a towel fight, never to be seen again. The acting is terrible due to the fact that it rests on Panettiere, who isn't the greatest actress in the first place. A poorly acted movie that's only saving grace is Alan Ruck as the geeks father. Yes, Cameron had a kid (see if you can get that reference).

I Love You Beth Cooper is essentially resume filler for the cast with Panettiere being able to say that she had a starring role in a film. This film was directed by Chris Columbus, who quit making the Harry Potter movies after the first two. Now we know why.

The Greatest Film Ever Made.

At the end of the 1950's Alfred Hitchcock saw all of these cheaply made B-movies coming out of Hollywood and came up with an idea: what if I made a movie on a shoe string budget that was actually good. After doing the big budget films Vertigo and North By Northwest, Hitchcock took his TV crew and started to shoot a film with the working title "Wimpy". And that's how Psycho, the masters greatest work, was born.

Psycho is about a young women who runs off with $40,000 from her employer to her boyfriend. It's a fairly simple story during the first 45 minutes until it's shattered in a way that takes the film down a totally different road becoming the story of the young inn keeper and his domineering mother.

Yes, I am actually writing this review as not to spoil the film for the three people who don't know what the big twist is.

Hitchcock steered away from the Vistavision films he had made for the previous decade to make a gritty kind of film- black and white, no Grant or Stewart, no matte paintings. This was like guerilla filmmaking for Hitchcock and it's one of the reasons that this film works so well. Another is the way that Hitchcock presents a cheaply made horror film to his audience. This isn't a film about werewolves or reanimated eastern Europeans. It could be about that deserted house down the road or the hotel near the ball park. It's centered in reality and makes you think that these could be your friends and neighbors. This was revolutionary in 1960. A tight production, it used every dollar to its fullest. It's like Hitchcock painted the Mona Lisa with a box of crayons. The only thing that Hitchcock carried over from his 1950's high end films was music by Bernard Herrmann, which probably was the final cog in the machine that is Psycho. Herrmann's score is legendary and improves a film that was perfection to begin with.

Other than John Gavin's semi-stiff performance, the rest of the cast give their roles great personality, especially Janet Leigh as the unlucky thief Marion Crane. Of course, the real stand out is Anthony Perkins. He becomes Norman Bates and plays the part to perfection. This is probably one of the best examples of acting ever captured on film. Perkins lives as Norman Bates. He conquers the role with all the mannerisms, such as knowing when to stutter the line and when to pour gasoline on the fire in his eyes. A legendary performance.

You can say that Hitchcock's career peaked with Psycho. He never produced the same kind of quality film again (excluding Frenzy) as they were always compared to Psycho. As the '60's wore on he continued to direct big budget films with big names (Connery, Newman) but none of them would come close to the greatness of that little production titled Wimpy.