The Silence of the Lambs

Year of Release: 1991

Director:  Jonathan Demme

Screenplay:  Ted Tally, based on the novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Starring:  Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, Ted Levine

Running Time:  118 minutes

Genre:  Crime, horror, psychological thriller

FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Foster) is investigated a brutal serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill", and finds unexpected advice from notorious incarcerated serial killer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Hopkins). 

Based on the 1989 novel by Thomas Harris, this film became an unexpected box office smash and swept the Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.  To this day it remains hugely influential and has become a pop culture touchstone.  It is a perfectly constructed thriller.  there is the race against time to stop Buffalo Bill before he kills his latest victim, and the psychological gamesplaying and weird kind of romance between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling.  Jodie Foster is perfect as the rookie FBI agent, coming across as a mix of toughness and vulnerability, which is a woman in a very male-dominated world.  Frequently she is seen surrounded by men towering over her.  Anthony Hopkins creates one of the great movie monsters as the reptilian, laser-eyed Lecter, leering at us from the screen, seldom blinking.  The Silence of the Lambs was the second novel to feature, Lecter.  The first, Red Dragon, was filmed as Manhunter (1986) with Brian Cox as Lecter (or "Lecktor" as he is called in that).  While Manhunter is a great film, and well worth checking out if you haven't already, Hopkins remains definitive.  The film has come in for criticism in recent years due to it's depiction of trans issues.  Be that as it may, this is one of the greatest thrillers ever made.

Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs

Meek's Cutoff

Year of Release: 2010

Director:  Kelly Reichardt

Screenplay:  Jonathan Raymond

Starring:  Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson

Running Time:  104 minutes

Genre:    Western, drama

This film is set in 1845 during the Oregon Trail, a small group of settlers throw in with disreputable guide Stephen Meek (Greenwood), who claims that he knows a short cut through the Oregon High Desert.  As a journey of two weeks becomes five, tensions among the group increase, as food, water and other supplies start to run low.  Things come to a head when the group kidnap a lone Native American (Rod Rondeaux), and try to force him to show them where they can find water.

This meditative, slow burning Western may not be to everyone's tastes, but if you stick with it, it casts a surprising spell.  The film is beautifully photographed, with long still shots, often depicting the characters in the middle distance, dwarfing them among the grandeur of the landscape.  The cast is note perfect, and it rings the changes with the traditional Western by staying mainly with the women, left out of the main decisions and debates which are held at a remove with the sound muted.  Very little really happens in the film, with it being mostly characters trudging through a beautiful but bleak landscape with occasional muttered discussing and arguments.  It tried my patience at first, but after I had got used to the film's rhythms and pace I really got into it, and, if you go along with it, it is really absorbing.  

  

Michelle Williams in Meek's Cutoff