28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Yxklyx]

The cover would've been perfectly fine without the revolver.

Probably some twenty-something son of a billionaire got the gun in.

And I've seen the The Fellowship of the Ring nearly double-digit times....

Fox and His Friends is definitely one you want to watch if you want to explore some of Fassbinder's films - Criterion has a great selection of his films.

[DFA1979]

That whole cover is just weird.

[Philip J. Fry]

Probably some twenty-something son of a billionaire got the gun in.

A twenty-something son of a billionaire who hasn't watched the movie.

[StanleyK]

I think I found a goof in Sabrina (1954).

[

Show Spoiler

It's in a scene near the beginning when she's in cooking school in Paris and fails to bake a souffle. The Baron tells her that she forgot to turn the oven on, but you can clearly see the flame burning (it's the last oven, with the flame under Hepburn's chin).

]

I didn't see this in IMDB or anywhere else, so I had to post it. This might be the only time ever I noticed something that no one else did.

[DFA1979]

So I did finally view Miami Blues. It's a funny, oddly touching at certain points, yet darkly comedic movie. Baldwin and JJL are nice together and Ward is the cop giving chase. The poor guy lost his dentures! This would make for a good double bill with Grosse Point Blank since George Armitage made both films.

[quido8_5]

From a technical standpoint, this film is nearly flawless. The direction is striking: virtuosic, but also restrained, Joon-ho’s preternatural skill and confidence are on full display here. He sets a tone that is elegiac and profoundly human. Part of what stands out, in fact, is how all the characters feel lived-in, their arcs slowly interweaving and becoming more complex. One thing really stands out, though: how funny the script is. I was smiling, if not outright laughing, for a surprising number of scenes, considering the overall melancholy of the film. At the end of the day, I was left with an odd feeling. Although I should have seen the end coming, I didn’t and how things ultimately turn out is unsettling. I guess everyone does return to the scene of the crime—both the killers and the cops. ****/*****

[megladon8]

Glad you enjoyed it.

In my books, Se7en and Memories of Murder are the undisputed champions of modern serial killer thrillers. And nothing really comes close.

[megladon8]

Just got two trilogies of Takashi Miike films by Arrow...

The Black Society trilogy
Dead or Alive trilogy

I freaking love Arrow. Criterion-level quality.

[StuSmallz]

From a technical standpoint, this film is nearly flawless. The direction is striking: virtuosic, but also restrained, Joon-ho’s preternatural skill and confidence are on full display here. He sets a tone that is elegiac and profoundly human. Part of what stands out, in fact, is how all the characters feel lived-in, their arcs slowly interweaving and becoming more complex. One thing really stands out, though: how funny the script is. I was smiling, if not outright laughing, for a surprising number of scenes, considering the overall melancholy of the film. At the end of the day, I was left with an odd feeling. Although I should have seen the end coming, I didn’t and how things ultimately turn out is unsettling. I guess everyone does return to the scene of the crime—both the killers and the cops. ****/*****

I'd give it about the same score myself, since I found it to be quite engaging in general; I still maintain that it would've been slightly better if it hadn't fabricated as many plot details as it did, like the unnecessary [

Show Spoiler

red herring with the guy caught pleasuring himself at the scene of the crime, which feels like a salacious detail that would be better suited to an episode of Law & Order: SVU (which is part of the reason why I slightly prefer Zodiac and its more consistently grounded approach to its case), but it speaks to the strength of the cast and the overall craft of Bong's filmmaking that the film was still as strong an experience as it was anyway.

]

Glad you enjoyed it.
...
In my books, Se7en and Memories of Murder are the undisputed champions of modern serial killer thrillers. And nothing really comes close.

Don't forget about Silence Of The Lambs; after all, it's unsure whether certain modern "serial thrillers" would even exist if it wasn't for Demme's movie in the first place.

[baby doll]

How are we defining "modern" serial killer thrillers? What historical shift occurred in the early '90s that makes The Silence of the Lambs "modern" and Manhunter a "classic" serial killer movie (along with M, The Leopard Man, Peeping Tom, and Psycho)? After all, a lot of the films being cited here as "modern" are already pretty old (Demme's film is now thirty years old), suggesting that the only reason for making a distinction between classic and modern is to tacitly acknowledge that the films in the latter category aren't as good as those in the former (and for all its genuine virtues, Se7en strikes me as considerably less impressive than the films by Lang, Tourneur, Powell, and Hitchcock), and that it's unfair to even compare them. In other words, the distinction here between modern and classic functions to disguise a type of affirmative action for latter day filmmakers who were unfortunate enough to begin their careers after the collapse of the old studio system that nurtured Lang, Hitchcock, Powell, and Tourneur, and after its genres had been largely exhausted.

[megladon8]

Anyone seen Archenemy yet?

[megladon8]

Anyone seen Archenemy yet?

It was really good.

Like, really REALLY good.

[StanleyK]

Between 2013-2016 or thereabouts, I stopped watching movies and thus stopped participating in Match Cut. When I came back, I noticed a lot of users I remembered had gone, and more still have stopped posting in the past five years. I came across some of these users as I went through some of my older posts and wondered what their final contribution to MC had been.



[

Show Spoiler

lovejuice (24-05-2012):

A pretty bad movie, but as an ex-Burton fanboy, I can't bring myself to hate it. The movie feels like Burton's honest attempt to return to his earlier, darker, weirder days -- before he became "Hot Topic" Tim Burton. Imo, there is almost an attempt to alienate the audiences, to show us who he really is, and his vision of the modern Gothic before that's got distorted by the Twilight crowd.

soitgoes... (11-03-2013):

It's pretty fucking good.

B-side (06-09-2013):

Saw this. First 15-20 minutes or so was pretty cool, with Riddick wandering and surviving in this vast and gorgeous desolate alien landscape with a dog companion. The color palette is dominated by brown, and yet it pops. Once the bounty hunters show up, things go downhill a bit, then get even worse when Riddick joins them. There's a really poor attempt at an emotional core dealing with Johns and his son that seemed to have been slapped together and thrown in just to make sure people hadn't become tired of the grunting of anonymous henchmen. I don't get the homophobic argument at all. I get why people didn't like the depiction of the lone significant female character, though. I won't say it's misogynistic because that's kind of a facile character judgment of the filmmaker, but it's one that is contradictory in its portrayal and fails to support her individuality despite initially pushing a sort of hard-nosed female soldier arc. There are basically only two or three kinda likeable characters in the film, and she's one of them, and considering there are about a dozen featured characters, the end result in terms of character's earning sympathy or depth is little to none. The lack of sympathy isn't an issue at all, and the depth isn't a problem inherently, but this is a character-heavy film, and only Riddick and the silly Latino leading bounty hunter really stand out. Riddick is meant to have a semblance of empathy about him, yet he has little trouble objectifying the lone female there in a pretty grotesque manner. In this, he is equated with the aforementioned Latino who is shown to have been sexually abusive to a woman he held captive for bounty before pursuing Riddick as well as the female officer. Thus, there is a correlation that speaks to their characters that involves misogyny in the diegetic world. Now, the way her "relationship" with Riddick is pursued in the narrative is quite bad. There's no trajectory, nor a "forbidden fruit"-type sexual conquest, which could've been made into something. There's only a dogged individualism, then an immediate capitulation out of nowhere. I'll add that I more or less forgot the film after about an hour or two. I'm forcing myself to remember right now in order to write this, but I don't see it remaining in my head beyond a few quick glimpses of the alien moon over the desert landscape.

Philosophe_rouge (15-09-2013):

Notorious.

Pleased people are choosing Gaslight though, probably my second choice. I don't think it's a great film necessarily, but in retrospect it was a sexually formative film for me. I don't know why, but it was always so exciting for me as a teenager. Makes more sense now, but ya.

Also, makes me feel sad I haven't seen more Rosselini.

balmakboor (15-07-2014):

I was glad to see so many good old names still here--most definitely including yours.

Bosco B Thug (18-12-2014):

What's with veteran filmmakers being so addled by the film business environment that they are compelled to make Hollywood satires?

Aka everyone go watch Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars in about a month or so (or obtain it alternatively). It's much more in Croney's wheelhouse than Malick's (I've seen it, it's weird and Cronenbergy). But "Cups" does look beautiful.

eternity (15-03-2015):

33% actually good, if not great
33% unbearably terrible
33% so bad it's good, particularly in the third act

After not being crazy for District 9 and hating Elysium, this is the first Neill Blomkamp movie that made me excited about him as a filmmaker. Somebody please stop him from directing movie stars, though. Matt Damon was bad in Elysium, but Hugh Jackman is next-level, hide-under-your-seat terrible in this. Yo-Landi meanwhile is asked to carry almost all the maudlin schmaltzy crap in this movie on her shoulders and she almost pulls it off. I'm actually impressed - asking Die Antwoord to carry a wide-release sci-fi film turned out about as well as it ever could have. Blomkamp borrows a lot from their aesthetic (and Harmony Korine's too) and it works.

Hugh Jackman's khaki shorts, though.

Rowland (06-05-2015):

Anyone note how fugly this movie is? It's a desaturated teal-and-orange fest, with entire sequences comprised of no more than minor variations of the two color tones. Combine this with an increasingly standardized reliance on CGI to only halfway-convincingly animate entire shots and I often felt like I was watching an Xbox 360 cut scene.

Boner M (10-05-2015):

There are fish in the Russian Leviathan too, you sillies.

1. The Tree of Life
2. Journey to the West (Tsai Ming-Liang)
3. Oslo, August 31st
4. The Turin Horse
5. Holy Motors
6. Le Quattro Volte
7. Margaret
8. Like Someone in Love
9. Leviathan ('12)
10. The Master

EyesWideOpen (23-08-2015):

The base game is the same between the two it's just the PS4 versions contains all the DLC and the Gat out of Hell expansion.

Derek (27-05-2016):

haven't heard any of those except for Chance and Esperanza, which were both pretty good, and Bowie's, which I love. I have ANOHNI and Mitski, but I'll look into the rest.

So far this year, there's really nothing that's blown me away but a lot of decent/good albums. It's mostly usual suspects for me (looking forward to checking out the new Autechre too), so hoping for some nice surprises in the back half of the year.

In rough order of preference w/the top 4 standing out a bit more than the rest.

Bowie - Blackstar
Radiohead - AMSP
Parquet Courts - Human Performance
Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial

Matmos - Ultimate Care II
The Field - The Follower
Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered.
Tim Hecker - Love Streams
Andy Stott - Too Many Voices
Porches - Pool
PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project
And Also the Trees - Born Into the Waves
Beyoncé - Lemonade
Fire! - She Sleeps, She Sleeps
Explosions in the Sky - The Wilderness
Kanye West - The Life of Pablo

Raiders (25-07-2016):

If you're telling me this is better looking than the exquisite (and so damn underrated) Field in England, then I am really eager to see this.

Kurosawa Fan (07-01-2018):

For the record, he addressed Wonder Woman in a post on his Patreon page.

He passed away from cancer. May he rest in peace.



Izzy Black (29-01-2018):

A few observations on the film -

I take Phantom Thread to be a film ultimately about seduction, manipulation, and exploitation. In this sense, it's a companion piece of sorts with The Master. You can see elements of these themes throughout PTA's career, but The Master is its closest kin, I think. It's also properly of piece with the films I consider among his mature era beginning in '07 (and so after what I would call his "film school" era of his earlier films).

The film revolves around games and formal structures. PTA's obsession with procedure and process is at a maximum here, and the concept of a manipulative game for PTA is explored with considerable depth in this film. For PTA, games are devices for power and control. A game is a way of streamlining and manufacturing intimacy between two subjects: "the master" and "the pupil".

Consider Freddie's interrogation scene (his "processing") in The Master. It's a series of questions designed to target the most personal aspects of Freddie's life, mining him for his fears and insecurities. We have a kind of machine-like structure with a set of rules that help facilitate Freddie's participation and his confessions, and then there's a promise, a promise of becoming part of some larger "Cause". We might call this game "religion" (I emphasize here the deliberate scare quotes). There are numerous other examples of such games throughout the film.

Now consider the rigid rules and game-like pretenses of Reynolds' interactions with Alma. We see it first with the seduction and flirtation in the opening scene. It starts as a food game. Talk about food is a device (or diversion) to facilitate further intimacy and interaction. Then we move to Reynold's home. Here the game is "fashion". Consider how Reynolds' dressing Alma in elegant clothing, measuring her dimensions, and stitching in various areas on the most intimate parts of her body is a form of immediate intimacy between strangers not ordinarily reached outside the structure of such a game.

The game in each case, of course, is inherently artificial. It is constantly disrupted by impersonal devices, and any intimacy exchanged in the game can never substitute for genuine emotional connections and bonds. So the victim in the game is always kept at a certain emotional distance or objective remove. This has the effect of (1) keeping the victim unsatisfied, transfixed by the allure of the "master" and (2) keeping the victim in a certain state of emotional pain and vulnerability. This makes them easier to control and exploit for the purposes of the "master's" own ends. This is further enabled by the fact that, as we see in the beginning of each film, the victims appear aimless and lonely. They seem to be relatively naïve individuals who appear to be in some sense lost and in search of something. This makes them more easily seduced by the allure of the beauty, status, and structure that is offered to them. Most of all, however, it makes them more easily seduced by the false promise of genuine emotional connection and intimacy. Both films, in different ways, explore how the subjects in the game attempt to assert their agency against those who would manipulate them.

D_Davis (02-03-2018):

I love the WiiU. It has some of the best games I've ever played. A console's success is only determined by how many games I enjoy playing on it.

Also, Duke, I'm done with you.

You can fuck right off.

So fucking sick of your goddamned shit, with the way you constantly target Meg and myself.

Fuck off and die.

I won't be back to this forum until you're removed as admin so I can add you back to my ignore list. Someone let me know when that happens.

thanks.

Sycophant (08-04-2018):

I watched Gran Torino on TV subtitled in Japan once and it's amazing what effect scrubbing out most of the protagonist's most offensive language can have.

monolith94 (14-07-2018):

I use facebook to remind myself of what people look like.

Winston* (06-12-2018):

Every Christmas song sucks except for fairytale of New York and the New Zealand version of 12 Days of Xmas my students wrote.

number8 (23-12-2018):

It was actually the webhost! There was an automatic php upgrade to the server last night that seems to be incompatible with this forum’s version of vbulletin. I just had to go and revert it.

Spinal (07-05-2019):

Hey, Irish. I can now say without hesitation that you're a fucking dick. I mean, this is news to no one, but thanks for giving me no guilt about saying it.

Mara (17-11-2019):

Hey friends-- it took me ages to remember my old login but I had to come over and say how sad I am about KF. He truly was one of the greats. Kind, funny, smart, and compassionate. I loved talking to him about film, but I also just loved talking to him. This is a terrible loss.

Watashi (17-11-2019):

I still can't believe it. Even though this forum has drifted away from my memory, I will always remember the countless discussions I had with Mike when the Film Discussion Thread first began. I've known him longer than most people I interact with in real life. So very sorry for everyone he knew and touched.

Seeing pictures of him on his very last day on Facebook is heartbreaking.

Sven (17-11-2019):

Wow. Hey friends. It's been some time, and it is strange and unfortunate that the impulse to check in just flared up over the last few days.

I'm so sorry to hear of this. There was much correspondence between us over the years, including a crucial conversation I had with him Mike a few years back regarding a friend that was having a hard time with rehab. His input was fantastic, and helped settle a lot of unresolved things. Goddamn, this is such a nightmare. Jacques, I haven't followed closely how things are developing, but I'm assuming I can PayPal you an amount that you can relay to the Beeckmans...

Man. He was one of the best.

Melville (17-11-2019):

I just happened to check in here today after longer than I can remember. This is really fucking sad. I'm glad I saw it in time to chip in.

origami_mustache (23-05-2020):

I just watched White Chicks for the first time.

Dead & Messed Up (12-09-2020):

How awkward it sounds. Bane's response "for you" is a plausible follow to "It would be extremely painful..." but immediately follows "You're a big guy," which makes it sound like he's diminishing how big he is. "You're a big guy" / "For you." By the time I processed what Bane was actually following up on, the scene had moved on.

Qrazy (25-08-2020):

Yeah.

]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread, or if the post itself is appropriate. But I thought someone else might like to reminisce.

[megladon8]

Thanks for that.

I miss all of them. Every single one.

[Dukefrukem]

Between 2013-2016 or thereabouts, I stopped watching movies and thus stopped participating in Match Cut. When I came back, I noticed a lot of users I remembered had gone, and more still have stopped posting in the past five years. I came across some of these users as I went through some of my older posts and wondered what their final contribution to MC had been.



[

Show Spoiler

lovejuice (24-05-2012):




soitgoes... (11-03-2013):




B-side (06-09-2013):




Philosophe_rouge (15-09-2013):




balmakboor (15-07-2014):




Bosco B Thug (18-12-2014):




eternity (15-03-2015):




Rowland (06-05-2015):




Boner M (10-05-2015):




EyesWideOpen (23-08-2015):




Derek (27-05-2016):




Raiders (25-07-2016):




Kurosawa Fan (07-01-2018):


He passed away from cancer. May he rest in peace.



Izzy Black (29-01-2018):




D_Davis (02-03-2018):




Sycophant (08-04-2018):




monolith94 (14-07-2018):




Winston* (06-12-2018):




number8 (23-12-2018):




Spinal (07-05-2019):




Mara (17-11-2019):




Watashi (17-11-2019):




Sven (17-11-2019):




Melville (17-11-2019):




origami_mustache (23-05-2020):




Dead & Messed Up (12-09-2020):




Qrazy (25-08-2020):

]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread, or if the post itself is appropriate. But I thought someone else might like to reminisce.

I wonder why number8 stopped posting. It's his website after all.

[Ezee E]

Duke should change his name and see how long it takes for d_davis to notice.

[megladon8]

Duke should change his name and see how long it takes for d_davis to notice.

I don't think he comes around here anymore.

He has a YouTube channel and some other stuff going on.

[Stay Puft]

origami_mustache went out in style lol

[Dukefrukem]

If people really wanted d_davis to stick around I would have been dropped as admin immediately. No one said a peep.

[Skitch]

If people really wanted d_davis to stick around I would have been dropped as admin immediately. No one said a peep.

I don't get involved in PvP

[StuSmallz]

Between 2013-2016 or thereabouts, I stopped watching movies and thus stopped participating in Match Cut. When I came back, I noticed a lot of users I remembered had gone, and more still have stopped posting in the past five years. I came across some of these users as I went through some of my older posts and wondered what their final contribution to MC had been.



[

Show Spoiler

lovejuice (24-05-2012):




soitgoes... (11-03-2013):




B-side (06-09-2013):




Philosophe_rouge (15-09-2013):




balmakboor (15-07-2014):




Bosco B Thug (18-12-2014):




eternity (15-03-2015):




Rowland (06-05-2015):




Boner M (10-05-2015):




EyesWideOpen (23-08-2015):




Derek (27-05-2016):




Raiders (25-07-2016):




Kurosawa Fan (07-01-2018):


He passed away from cancer. May he rest in peace.



Izzy Black (29-01-2018):




D_Davis (02-03-2018):




Sycophant (08-04-2018):




monolith94 (14-07-2018):




Winston* (06-12-2018):




number8 (23-12-2018):




Spinal (07-05-2019):




Mara (17-11-2019):




Watashi (17-11-2019):




Sven (17-11-2019):




Melville (17-11-2019):




origami_mustache (23-05-2020):




Dead & Messed Up (12-09-2020):




Qrazy (25-08-2020):

]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread, or if the post itself is appropriate. But I thought someone else might like to reminisce.

Man, seeing some of those names again really takes me back...

[StuSmallz]

How are we defining "modern" serial killer thrillers? What historical shift occurred in the early '90s that makes The Silence of the Lambs "modern" and Manhunter a "classic" serial killer movie (along with M, The Leopard Man, Peeping Tom, and Psycho)? After all, a lot of the films being cited here as "modern" are already pretty old (Demme's film is now thirty years old), suggesting that the only reason for making a distinction between classic and modern is to tacitly acknowledge that the films in the latter category aren't as good as those in the former (and for all its genuine virtues, Se7en strikes me as considerably less impressive than the films by Lang, Tourneur, Powell, and Hitchcock), and that it's unfair to even compare them. In other words, the distinction here between modern and classic functions to disguise a type of affirmative action for latter day filmmakers who were unfortunate enough to begin their careers after the collapse of the old studio system that nurtured Lang, Hitchcock, Powell, and Tourneur, and after its genres had been largely exhausted.

I can't speak for how meg defines it, since I was mostly just following his lead in discussing "modern" serial killer thrillers, but I suppose you could try drawing the line at Silence, given the wave of films in the genre that followed in its wake, after its huge overall success arguably gave those kind of movies something of a boost in popularity. That being said, I do think it would make more sense to draw the line between classic and modern serial killer movies based upon the content they portray, which would put that line much farther back at around 1960, since, while both movies were directed by the same person, there's obviously a significant difference in the level of graphicness of something like Shadow Of A Doubt when compared to Psycho, you know?

[DFA1979]

Between 2013-2016 or thereabouts, I stopped watching movies and thus stopped participating in Match Cut. When I came back, I noticed a lot of users I remembered had gone, and more still have stopped posting in the past five years. I came across some of these users as I went through some of my older posts and wondered what their final contribution to MC had been.



[

Show Spoiler

lovejuice (24-05-2012):




soitgoes... (11-03-2013):




B-side (06-09-2013):




Philosophe_rouge (15-09-2013):




balmakboor (15-07-2014):




Bosco B Thug (18-12-2014):




eternity (15-03-2015):




Rowland (06-05-2015):




Boner M (10-05-2015):




EyesWideOpen (23-08-2015):




Derek (27-05-2016):




Raiders (25-07-2016):




Kurosawa Fan (07-01-2018):


He passed away from cancer. May he rest in peace.



Izzy Black (29-01-2018):




D_Davis (02-03-2018):




Sycophant (08-04-2018):




monolith94 (14-07-2018):




Winston* (06-12-2018):




number8 (23-12-2018):




Spinal (07-05-2019):




Mara (17-11-2019):




Watashi (17-11-2019):




Sven (17-11-2019):




Melville (17-11-2019):




origami_mustache (23-05-2020):




Dead & Messed Up (12-09-2020):




Qrazy (25-08-2020):

]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread, or if the post itself is appropriate. But I thought someone else might like to reminisce.

Eternity, Mara and rouge follow me on Twitter. I'm also Facebook friends with B-Side, Sven, DaMU and Eternity. Last I checked number8 was on Twitter. Also I thought Winston still posted here. I last saw Izzy on the Corrie no idea where he went when the site was killed off. Wats is on FB but um yeah we are not friends haha.

[StuSmallz]

And speaking of serial killer thrillers...

Have the lambs stopped

screaming yet?


[

Show Spoiler

When it comes to the kind of movies that typically come to mind when you think of Best Picture winners, what pops up first? Do you think of an emotionally solemn, three hour black-and-white drama about The Holocaust? Or maybe a classy Mafia epic, driven by one man's slow but inevitable fall from moral grace? How about a disturbing, repulsively grimy thriller about an FBI agent's race to catch a serial killer before he slays and skins his next victim? Wait, that last one sounds a bit out of place, doesn't it? Well, if that's the case, then it's an eternal credit to the skill of the artists involved in making Silence Of The Lambs that the film managed to transcend its lurid trappings in the process of becoming a great film, one that not only won an aforementioned Best Picture Oscar, that not only additionally dominated that year's ceremony with its rare haul of all five "top" Oscars (Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, and Screenplay), but has also stood tall in the past thirty years as a truly iconic work of modern film, and one of the most influential Thrillers to ever come out of Hollywood to boot.


Adapted from the novel of the same name by Thomas Harris (who's actually from my hometown of Jackson, Tennessee; woot!), Silence tells the story of Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is tasked with the "interesting errand" of profiling Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant but utterly sadistic serial killer, in the desperate hope that doing so may lend some psychological insight into the mindset of another killer, "Buffalo Bill", before he can notch up yet another victim. However, when it's unexpectedly discovered that Lecter has a personal connection to Bill deep in his murky past, his relevance to the case suddenly becomes one of upmost importance, with his captors, the politically powerful family of Bill's latest intended victim, and the FBI as a whole all jockeying to position themselves close to the fine (not so young) cannibal, all the while his real subject of interest remains Clarice, and the series of sadistic mind games he repeatedly ensnares her in.


It's the central dynamic that gives the film its drive, with both actors putting on superb, Oscar-worthy (and more importantly, Oscar-winning) performances, with Anthony Hopkins' Lecter making for a one-of-a-kind, highly cultured killer, one who's always acutely aware of his surroundings, seeming like he's in complete control of his situation at all times, even when he's trapped in a glass box, or completely restrained from head-to-toe. He sort of comes off like a giant spider wearing human skin, luring its victims into his web with his particular brand of mind games, as he's immediately able to zero in on his prey's deepest insecurities and fears, abusing his intellectual brilliance in psychiatry for his own sinister means, as he always knows just what to say or do in order to get under other people's skin (in more ways than one, as a shocking mid-film development shows).


On the other hand, while Jodie Foster's Clarice hasn't become quite as big a cultural icon (because who else could've, honestly?), she makes up for it with her overall relatability, serving as an empathetic "everywoman" surrounded by a bunch of freaks, and showcasing a shaky vulnerability in a world full of predatory men throughout (particularly in the scene where she recounts her worst childhood memory, which nearly certainly cinched her that Best Actress Oscar), while also showing a certain resilience and resourcefulness at the same time, whether it be her taking the initiative to open up a long deserted crime scene, boldly taking down a killer single-handedly, or continually being the only character clever enough to decipher the cryptic trail of clues Hannibal leaves behind him everywhere he goes. However, even though that process brings her ever closer to solving the case, it still ends up unlocking her darkest, most personal secrets at the time, leaving her with fresh scars on her psyche, and the question of whether it was all worth it by the film's end.


However, what is not even remotely in question for us is if Silence was worth the time it takes to watch it, since the answer to that is a resounding "YES", as the film simultaneously submerses us in a deep, dark world of serial killers, a world comprised of dank, dungeon-like psychiatric facilities, abandoned storage units that hold nasty surprises within, and grimy, labyrinthine killers' lairs, while also avoiding a potentially trashy, exploitative overall tone at the same time, with the combination of Harris's strong underlying source material (which managed to carry even a hack like Brett Ratner to a solid film with Red Dragon) and Johnathan Demme's classy, intelligent overall direction of the film, as Silence contains the most striking examples of the technique that Demme was best known for, that of having his actors looking directly into the camera, in order to bring a whole new level of intimacy to the film, one that makes us feel as one with the characters, even when we'd really rather not. It's a film that doesn't flinch one bit from peering deep down into the darkness of the human soul, bringing back with it some of the most iconic performances in modern film, an undeniably blurring of the line between "high" & "low" art in cinema, and what has to be admitted as just a great filmmaking in general, regardless of how disturbed it may make one feel personally; if you don't agree, then feel free to go eat your own liver, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

]

Final Score: 9
.

[Yxklyx]

Great review - time for a rewatch!