Rating: 
Summary: The best of the serial killer genre!
Review: I revisited this film last night after having just watched the recent 'Hannibal' a few days ago. The viewing helped me to remember just how great this film is and it also helped to show just what 'Hannibal' was missing.'Silence of the Lambs' is one of the most shocking, exciting, suspenseful and tense movies ever released. It pulls no punches from Thomas Harris' novel (unlike 'Manhunter') and is a very stark, unrelenting film. It is easily top of the heap for the suspense or psychological thriller genre and upon a viewing it is easy to see why. The film possesses so many great qualities at the hands of the director and his actors that is a true standout. The film itself is about a FBI trainee by the name of Clarice Starling who has been assigned to interview renowned psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lector. She soon finds herself swept up in the case of a lifetime as the FBI attempts to track down active serial killer 'Buffalo Bill'. It is a wonderful story that has more to it than most serial killer movies because aside from the cops vs. serial killer aspect of the story it has a whole other subplot with the Hannibal Lector character. Two serial killers are better than one. The acting is the best part of the film and while Anthony Hopkins has received much praise for his brilliant portrayal of Lector I feel that Jodie Fosters performance is the best in the film and one of the greatest performances ever to be put on celluloid. I don't think I breathed once while she was on the screen and every word she says is unbelievably powerful. The scene where she talks about the lamb is one of the finest monologues ever. Her and Hopkins performances help to create this great sexual tension which surrounds the film and helps to create its great feel. Jonathon Demme's directing is perfect. It's as simple as that. He creates an atmosphere of true grit and of stark realism. Every shot is used to the film's advantage and in order to create tension. He avoids flashiness and instead brings in extreme maturity and patience to the film. Some stand out directing can be seen in the scenes in the asylum, when the swat team enters the room in the building (if you've seen it you'll know what I mean. Hint: crucifixion) and the final showdown in the basement. The film looks great on DVD with the picture being perfect. The sound had a couple of bad spots but for the most part it was great. The extras are great too with the deleted scenes being very interesting. Check it out. This movie raised the bar for unrelenting suspense and tension and unfortunately its sequel failed to reach that bar. It lacked all of the elements that made this film great. But we will always have this film to re-visit and re-visit again. If you have not seen it I suggest you do. Thanxs...
Rating:
Summary: A Perfect DVD
Review: This is a PERFECT example of an excellent DVD. It has incredible picture and sound quality, awesome extras, and [best of all] it's an unbelievely GREAT movie. First of all, the picture quality is great. I have a regular 36" TV and watching this movie on VHS blurrs some details. For instance the ending scene with Lector walking away free in some forgein country, unlike on the VHS, on the DVD version, everyone of the dozens of people Lector passes by is explicitly clear and is clearly defined. Next, the bonus stuff is super. It has lots of deleted scenes, including a few which introduce the character of Paul Krendler [who plays a major role in "Hannibal"]. Then the Outtake reel was nice, after being so tense watching the movie, it was nice to see outtakes of the characters acting naturally. The featurette was also nice [for a featurette], but what really blew my socks off was the documentary. The documentary, entitled "Inside the Labyrinth" was about 1 hr 10 min long, and was incredibly interesting and well put together. It was surprizing to find all the incredible behind the scenes talent who worked on this movie; like Coleen Atwood, Howard Shore, Kristi Zea. Also, after freaking me out in the movie, it was neat seeing Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill) out of character. Exceptional documentary on an exceptional movie. This is now one of the favorite DVDs, and an incredible addition to any DVD collection.
Rating:
Summary: 'Lambs' on DVD!
Review: "Silence of the Lambs," the first 'horror' film to win a Best Picture Oscar, is a number of things all at once: a suspense thriller, a look into the world of FBI profiling and procedure, and a story of a strong, intelligent woman trying to establish herself in a career dominated by men. Director Jonathan Demme ("Something Wild," "Married to the Mob"), working with a witty, intelligent screenplay by Ted Tally (based on the novel by Thomas Harris), crafts a film that is beautifully acted and produced. Jodie Foster's self effacing performance as Clarice Starling is simply stunning, filled with strength, intelligence and pathos; Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter has been widely praised, and as good as he is, you're always aware that it's Hopkins "pretending" to be a psychotic killer; just as effective,if not more so, is Ted Levine's truly frightening potrayal of Jamie Gumm/"Buffalo Bill." Howard Shore's stunning score avoids all the usual horror film cliches. After watching "Lambs," the truly lame "Hannibal" seems to be even more of a dumb joke. The DVD package is excellent, including a new documentary that features interviews with Hopkins, Demme, Ted Levine, Howard Shore and Ted Tally revealing the film was originally going to be made with Gene Hackman and Michelle Pfeiffer in the leads; the original 1991 "making of" documentary, and series of scenes deleted from the original cut. "Silence" is a great film, and the DVD package does it some nice justice.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: This movie is one of the best film adaptations of a novel that I have ever seen. Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Lector is a scary and yet intreging character. Jody Foster also does a great job in this film as Agent Starling. Once you've seen it, you'll never forget it.
Rating:
Summary: Dr. Hannibal Lecter : An Icon Of Horror
Review: Dr. Hannibal Lecter has became into an icon of the most horrifying side of a person. In my opinion the way Anthony Hopkins developed the character of Dr. Lecter was excellent. Hannibal Lecter will remain in Hollywood's history as the most horrible character.
Rating:
Summary: About the new MGM/UA DVD
Review: The new anamorphic transfer on the new MGM/UA Silence of the Lambs DVD is much improved from the Criterion DVD edition, and also noticeable better than the Image DVD version. The picture looks sharp and clean; colors achieve a right balance between being bright in some scenes and subdued in others; black levels are accurately reproduced, a crucial aspect since many scenes take place in the dark. The new Dolby Digital 5.1 track is not state of the art, but definitely a great improvement from the 2.0 mix on earlier DVDs. The much sought-after Criterion DVD edition is, in my opinion, terribly overrated. Its pinkish picture quality is poor, its Dolby Surround sound is [bad], its text material about serial killers can be easily looked up on the Internet, its collection of deleted scenes have unwatchable video quality. Its only worthwhile material is the outstanding audio commentary, but that is not something you want to pay through your nose for now that the DVD is out of print. The Criterion DVD has seven deleted scenes in poor video quality. The MGM disc has 22, including all from the Criterion disc, albeit some are in truncated form. And they all look and sound much better. Some of the deleted scenes that are not on the Criterion disc are quite startling. One of them is a dramatic shot of Lector, close to tears, speaking to the camera about Buffalo Bill's sickness and, via special effects, the prison wall MOVING towards him. Another deleted scene is Lector's offscreen murder of the ambulance driver -- we see a long shot of the ambulance swerving off the road, ending with a closeup of Lector in the driver seat wiping blood from his face, laughing. The MGM disc also has 2 documentaries not on the Criterion disc -- a superficial 10-minute featurette made in '91, and an engaging 1-hour retrospective made for this DVD. Hopkins is the only one interviewed in both. The 1-hour feature has a well-rounded coverage about the making of the film, including production design, costuming, special effects (those moths were "dressed up" since real ones couldn't be obtained), sound design, and of course the various themes of the story. It's too bad Howard Shore's superlative, Oscar-deprived music score is barely mentioned in either documentary. The 1-hour feature also does not overlook the fact that the film was once accused of being gay-bashing. And actor Ted Levine gives a thoughtfully-put analysis of his character, concluding that Jame Gumb is not really gay, but only has fantasies about being that. There are also a theatrical trailer and ten TV spots, one of them reveals something I hadn't noticed before -- the skull figure on the moth is actually made up of figures of naked women. Look closely on the skull figure on the cover of the DVD case.
Rating: 
Summary: Baa! Baa!
Review: An overpraised "classic" with a truly bad title. The bad title derives from a long, boring story that our heroine FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, quivering with naivety) tells to one Hannibal Lecter, a madman locked away in a subterranean prison cell. Clarice is "consulting" Dr. Lecter on a case of ANOTHER madman at large who is cramming bugs down women's throats and then literally skinning them. This second madman, one Buffalo Bill, has been writing letters to Lecter, who is apparently somewhat of a notorious celeb like O.J. Hence, the consultations with the FBI. (The FBI also dangle the prospect of more comfortable living quarters in front of Lecter.) In the process, FBI Trainee Starling gets to get psychoanalyzed by the lunatic (a former shrink). This is all wildly implausible, and provides the writers and director with plenty of opportunities to indulge in Tinkertoy psychological speculation. A simple question gets overlooked amidst all the undergrad Psych-course palaver: who CARES why Clarice wanted to become an FBI agent? It doesn't advance the plot. But maybe we should be grateful for all the pseudo-intellectual distractions, because the plot is stomach-turning, anyway (have I mentioned that Buffalo Bill, a cross-dresser, WEARS the skins of the women he has murdered?). The vomitous details just keep spewing forth: turns out that Lecter is a cannibal on top of being a serial killer; other madmen in Lecter's prison toss body fluids at passers-by . . . ad nauseum. On the plus side of the ledger, Lecter's escape from prison, though utterly unrealistic, is very exciting, and Clarice's rescue of one of Buffalo Bill's incipient victims is an unbearably suspensful sequence. But director Jonathan Demme lets us down again with an out-of-place campy finale, which perhaps reveals better than anything else his roots in Roger Corman's cheesy B-movie productions.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite difinitive edition, but close
Review: Over the last couple of years, it seems the major studios have taken the hint from Criterion and decided to release the kind of "special edition" discs they made famous. As a proud owner of the Criterion release of Silence of the Lambs, I almost passed on this one. But I had a feeling about it, since it sports a new Hi-Definition, anamorphic transfer and Dolby 5.1 sound, as well as a new documentary and its own collection of deleted scenes. I was not disappointed by the purchase. While it is missing the wonderful Criterion commentary track, the documentary is surprisingly good; the deleted scenes - one in particular with Hopkins doing a surreal monologue about what makes a serial-killer tick - are quite illuminating. The picture looks great. The sound has greater definition, too - I can actually hear nuances in the orchestration of Howard Shore's moody background score that are simply lost in the Criterion release. As for the film itself - by now, everyone knows that it's a Campbell-esque "hero's journey" dressed up as a gothic horror/suspense yarn. Unusually, the hero is a woman - FBI agent trainee Clarice Starling (played by the deservedly Oscar-winning Jodie Foster). Her humanity is played against the rather baroque extremes of self-loathing serial killer Jame Gumb (Ted Levine), who kills women and skins them to make himself a "girl suit" and escape his identity. It is a meditation on institutional sexism as much as anything else, as Clarice must fight the continued "little woman" stereotyping and perverted leering of her almost exclusively male coworkers. The subtext rather uncomfortably reminds us that the serial killer's behavior is really just an extreme version of what often passes as normal "boys will be boys" behavior in the "real" world. In this respect, Silence of the Lambs is, paradoxically, a very feminist film about men who destroy women because they - again, paradoxically - hate their own male-ness and see it as a fraud. Except for Dr. Hannibal Lecter (the brilliant, also Oscar-winning Anthony Hopkins). He does not hate women any more or less than men. He hates rudeness, and is an equal-opportunity killer. The grim joke is that he is the most civilized and humane male character in the film: he treats Clarice with courtesy and respect. Hannibal is like the Shadow Self inside all of us - that vampiric character who stands at the end of the long, dark hallway of our nightmares, the one with the quiet, insinuating, evil voice. In Thomas Harris' novel of Hannibal, he becomes Clarice's shadow in an almost literal sense, and she learns to embrace him. But we can't have that in the movies, so Silence of the Lambs restricts its focus to the mythic/heroic aspect of the story, which ends up working very well, if it also ends up lacking a certain edginess or depth present in the novels. I would recommend buying this disc along with Hannibal, then watching the two films one right after the other, to get the full effect. Thomas Harris, in his novels, did not want us to get so hung up on Clarice as a hero that we missed the bigger picture about the seduction, corruption, and eventual purification of the human soul. Both films of his Clarice Starling books aim a lot lower, but they do manage to hit their somewhat reduced targets.
Rating:
Summary: Anthony Hopkins is AMAZING!!!!
Review: I only just watched this movie a few weeks ago, and my god, it's an awesome movie... I basically rented it just so I could watch Anthony Hopkins performance, and well, it was perfect... from the first time we meet Hannibal Lector, there is an errie aura around him... obviously because he is a psychotic cannabalistic killer, but we only know that from what we are told in the movie when we see him first... Hopkins makes us believe he is a deranged killer, even when he is acting somewhat civilized... the first shot of Lector, the way the camera moves in to his cell, it's so errie... there he is, standing perfectly still, calm and collected in his glass cell which is a total contradiction from the other cells... however, the most exciting part of the movie is when Clarice goes to the house where Buffalo Bill lives... I thought the direction was superb... you have both Clarice and the FBI outside two different houses, and it's done in such a way that you believe the FBI are outside Buffalo Bills house, when really it's Clarice all by herself... then when you finally realize this, well it's pretty cool... and the scenes actually in the house are pretty intense as well... I thought this movie was awesome, however I gave it only four stars because I didn't think Jodi Fosters performance was up to par with the rest of the movie... the direction was awesome, Anthony Hopkins was amazing... definately a must watch... now I just need to rent Hannibal...
Rating:
Summary: MGM Special Edition vs. Criterion DVDs
Review: This is the fourth version of the movie I've owned (VHS, w/s VHS, Criterion, MGM special edition). And DVD is better than VHS so let's forget about those ancient relics known as tapes. If you just want to watch the movie, the MGM edition is best. It has the 5.1 sound, and the picture is much nicer. However, the Criterion does offer a lot more insight into the film. Criterion has a commentary track with Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Jonathan Demme & Ted Tally, and the FBI agent that Jack Crawford was based on. I found this to be very interesting and it really let you understand the film better. Although the MGM edition's deleted scenes fill in some holes (the John Hopkin's help, that card Clarice is holding when calling Crawford, etc.) the scenes are far too short and only show excerpts from what were probably full scenes. Criterion's deleted scenes, again, help you gain a different perspective on the film. MGM has a solid documentary about the movie, but Criterion has those direct quotes from actual serial killers. The choice is a tough one to make. Personally, I'm glad I have both.
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