The past year has brought an exceptionally varied and thematically rich crop of movies exploring men and their — to use the proper scientific term — mommy issues. By the end of most of them, blood is on the floor, and the collateral damage is steep. Men who couldn’t, or worse, didn’t want to, were portrayed as marionettes tied to and practically strangled by their mothers’ apron strings. “I’ve been talking to this psychiatrist about my mother for two years now,” his character says in “Pillow Talk” (1959), adding, “It’s perfectly healthy. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

---

Persons: Beau, ”, who’s, Freud, Robert Walker’s simpering, mommy, Anthony Perkins, Norman Bates, Marion Crane, Janet Leigh, Tony Randall, Doris, “ I’ve Organizations: Hudson, The