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January 3, 2020 · 2:15 pm

The Set of 400: #174 – My Favorite Basket of Lotion

Today! Because his pulse never got above 85, even when he ate her tongue –

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Directed by Jonathan Demme (x2)

Starring Jodie Foster (x2), Anthony Hopkins (x6), Ted Levine, Scott Glenn (x2), Anthony Heald (x2), Frankie Faison (x2), Stuart Rudin, Brooke Smith, Tracey Walter, Diane Baker, Roger Corman, Charles Napier (x2), Brent Hinkley, Kasi Lemmons, Paul Lazar, Chris Isaak, Daniel von Bargen (x2), Harry Northup

Come on, you had to figure if I’ve got #255 Red Dragon on the list that Silence of the Lambs was on the way, right? And I think both of these movies work for largely the same reason – not too much Hannibal Lecter. See, when they move Hannibal to the center of the story – à la Hannibal – he’s sort of too much. It’s like the key to every great Muppet film – you reserve Miss Piggy for the second act. Hannibal Lecter is the Miss Piggy of the psychological horror genre.

Ah, what could have been

Buffalo Bill is a pretty interesting villain in his own right – not unlike the Tooth Fairy in Red Dragon – and the manhunt for him is equally compelling. The difference, quite obviously, is the Clarice/Hannibal interplay leading up to the finale. Where Will Graham and Hannibal had all this backstory between them – coloring everything that happens in Red Dragon – Clarice is coming at this whole thing a bit under-prepared, and so needs to navigate their relationship on the fly through this dicey kidnapping/murder investigation. Also, in Red Dragon, you know going in there’s no chance Hannibal is going to end up busting out at some point. While here… Continue reading →

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Tagged as Anthony Heald, Anthony Hopkins, Clarice Starling, Favorite Movies Ever, Frankie Faison, Hannibal Lecter, Jodie Foster, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine, The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

September 12, 2019 · 1:17 pm

The Set of 400: #255 – My Favorite Flaming Wheelchair

Today! Because I am not a man. I began as one, but now I am becoming more than a man –

Red Dragon (2002)

Directed by Brett Ratner

Starring Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson (x2), Anthony Hopkins (x3), Harvey Keitel, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman (x3), Anthony Heald, Frankie Faison, Ken Leung, Bill Duke (x2), William Lucking (x3), Frank Whaley (x2), Mary Beth Hurt, Ellen Burstyn

First of all, let me just say SHUT UP. I know the later Hannibal Lecter movies are not exactly beloved by audiences at large. This especially seems to apply to Red Dragon, mainly because of Manhunter, I guess? And okay, I get that – it came out first by quite a bit, and is a solid movie, so if you saw it first and were bitter Brian Cox didn’t get cast in Silence in the Lambs or something, okay. You hang on to that bitterness.

But no one can convince me that Manhunter is actually a better movie. It didn’t have the built in obstacle of needing to overcome a director like Brett Ratner at the helm, I’ll give you that – Michael Mann is by-far the superior filmmaker – but I feel that Red Dragon improves upon the original with every single actor in the film. Again, this isn’t necessarily to slight Manhunter – it’s a fine movie – but this seems to be the main argument against this movie, and I think it is ludicrous beyond words. The only aspect that I might say the original handled better is Lecter himself – because that movie didn’t treat him like he was somehow the star. The Red Dragon story has very little to do with Lecter, and when the original was released – five years before Silence – no one would’ve been clamoring for it be about him. This movie, of course, was concocted as a way to keep making Anthony Hopkins/Hannibal films, giving it that lingering cash-grab feel that people couldn’t shake.