I'm not saying that movies should be judged entirely by how quotable they are, but there's certainly some overlap between being quotable and being memorable. The middle of that Venn diagram is definitely where American Psycho sits – a frankly fantastic adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis' extremely icky novel.
It stars Christian Bale in one of his most widely-praised roles as Patrick Bateman, a successful business executive who's living a double life as a ridiculously violent and emotionally dead murderer. Now, this is a great time to rewatch the movie anyway, since it's just been confirmed that there's a remake in the works, but it's also about to disappear from Netflix here in the US.
That's right – you've only got until the end of 31 December, New Year's Eve, to watch it, whether you've seen it before or this will be your first time. For a film as influential and cultish as this one, that doesn't leave you with much wiggle room, and there's no doubt that it'll leave Netflix's library the poorer when it's gone.
Returning to that theme of quotability, anyone who's seen American Pyscho won't be able to hear the name "Huey Lewis and The News" without a shudder of dread. It'll be fascinating to see how that sort of quite dated reference gets updated in the new version, which is apparently set to star Oscar-winner Austin Butler.
Plenty of people are already holding that up as a superb bit of casting, and there's no doubting Butler's performing chops, but it's worth remembering just how uncannily impressive Bale is in the original. His version of being dead behind the eyes is extremely, eerily convincing, and downright scary at various points.
In fact, there's a real case to be made that American Psycho is straight-up a horror movie, rather than a dark thriller. It's even creepier for the way it holds up a mirror to parts of our society that certainly haven't gone anywhere in the nearly 25 years since it came out. Netflix aims to be the best streaming platform on the planet, so here's hoping it can get the movie back into its library before long – until then, be sure to watch it while you can.
