The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991)

Silence of the Lambs begins the inescapable downward spiral of commercialisation over creativity, with Jonathan Demme's famous 1991 serial killer movie based on the novel of the same name.

Nearly identical to Manhunter/Red Dragon in terms of structure, Silence attempts to distract the viewer from this by unwisely upping the ante of the content with more violence and weirdness, and an even more ludicrous and twisted social misfit killer.

The film also marks the start of the transformation of the character of Hannibal Lector from believable, chilling minor role to the serial killer version of Ronald McDonald; a supernaturally-powered, pun-dispensing omnipotent face-eater. Anthony Hopkins' hissable pantomime version robs the character of any menace or dignity and replaces them with cliched evil genius tics and a parade of funny voices.

And while Jodie Foster is splendid in the role of FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling, the one-two punch of the film's crippling similarity to Michael Mann's far superior Manhunter and the cartoonish story and characters doom it from the very start. Even the occasional dip into gothic horror, and a superbly tense final pitch black shootout aren't enough to quite redeem it.

Comments

Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)

Extremely effective, genuinely tense and intelligently constructed serial killer film, elevated way above the norm by Michael Mann's elegant direction, a strong cast, gorgeous photography and a moodily evocative synthesised soundtrack. Sensibly reigning in the more over-the-top moments of Thomas Harris' original novel, Manhunter is far more than the sum of its parts; managaing to be chilling, haunting, funny and thrilling by turn, succeeding everywhere the increasingly cynical and ridiculous sequels/remakes failed to do.

Chocolate (Prachya Pinkaew, 2008)

Taking the timeless cultural meme of the wordless martial arts protagonist to its logical conclusion, CHOCOLATE is a Thai kickboxing film centring around Zen, the daughter of a crime boss and a gang enforcer. Zen is autistic, withdrawn and as luck would have it gifted with incredible senses of hearing and spacial awareness. Growing up living opposite a Muay Thai training school, when her mother becomes ill she and her brother decide to try and call in some of mum's past gangland debts to pay for her medicine. CHOCOLATE is somewhat postmodern as far as martial arts movies go. At several points, clips of ONG BAK appear on television, while Zen's first fight sees her whooping and wailing a la Bruce Lee and the credits even have a Jackie Chan-esque outtake reel running behind them. It wears its influences on its torn and tattered sleeve. But it's still a martial arts movie through and through. The main character and sidekick run into a series of elaborate brawls in acroba...

Capcom Fighting Collection 2 [PS4, 2025]

This is the third of Capcom's in-house "fighting collection" releases. It focuses on the late '90s - early 2000s, when development had moved to the NAOMI arcade board. This was a time when general public interest was moving away from the oversaturated fighting game market and into the new and expansive three-dimensional space. Eight titles comprise the collection; Capcom vs SNK Pro (2000) Capcom vs SNK 2 (2001) Capcom Fighting Jam (2004) Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper (2001) Power Stone (1999) Power Stone 2 (2000) Plasma Sword (1998) Project Justice (2000) The Capcom vs SNK games are the undoubted highlight; the experimental, flawed first game and the massive follow-up still look great and both feature huge rosters of characters, expansive, complex battle systems and hidden secrets. As with the rest of the CFC run, archive material, training modes, display filters, extra options, modern control considerations and rollback netcode are all great benefits. Also returnin...

beilblog

Search This Blog