Thursday, May 26, 2011

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

There's a new serial killer on the loose and as the partially skinned corpses of women continue to wash up on the shores of local rivers the FBI is getting more and more desperate to catch the killer. They're doing everything they know to do, including interviewing killers with similar M.O.'s already in custody. But the one they want to talk to the most, Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, isn't interested in talking to them. So they send in a young, attractive FBI Academy recruit, Clarence Starling, to talk to him, because they know that she's "his type". It works and he talks to her, but only because he has something sinister in mind.

I'm sure at this point in time everybody on the universe has seen THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and they should because it's excellent movie. Watching it again for this review was interesting, because even though I've seen it dozens of times I still got wrapped up in the story.  The construction of the story is brilliant, the acting by the entire cast is mind-blowing and the editing is so sharp that it's hard to believe the filmmakers where able to cram so much emotion and detail and character development into 118 minutes!

If you haven't seen this movie, then you really should. Not only is it an excellent movie and massively influential, but it's one of the rare times the Academy Awards actually got it right...mostly.  Ted Levine wasn't even nominated for his performance!  But it did sweep all of the major awards, including Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins who was absolutely perfect as Hannibal Lecter. So perfect, in fact, that I still think of that role every time I see him.

Part 1 - Manhunter (1986)
Part 3 - Hannibal (2001)
Part 4 - Red Dragon (2002)
Part 5 - Hannibal Rising (2007)

Same few paragraphs over and over.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I SAW THE DEVIL (2010)

[Update 05/09/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

When a secret agent's (Byung-hun Lee) pregnant girlfriend is brutally raped and murdered by a psychotic serial killer (Choi Min-sik ), he takes off after the guy in an insane game of cat and mouse. Strange thing is the serial killer actually enjoys being the prey as much as he does being the hunter. He sees it as a test to prove how badass he really is.

I SAW THE DEVIL might not be a home run, but it's very enjoyable and very exciting. All the way up until the disappointing ending I was on the edge of my seat just trying to guess what kind of crazy shit was going to happen next. I never would have predicted the taxi scene in a thousand years!

Nudity, ultra-violence, great camerawork, lots of laughs, rape, murder, attractive females, torture, testicles crushed, blood all over the place, cannibalism, knives, guns, a turd...check it out! The sheer amount of psychotic violence and extreme anti-human behavior in this film makes I SAW THE DEVIL a good double-feature with EBOLA SYNDROME. "You want to bully me?"