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

Repulsion

Year of Release:  1965
Director:  Roman Polanski
Screenplay:  Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach and David Stone, story by Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach
Starring:  Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Horror, psychological thriller

Carol Ledoux (Deneuve) is a young Belgian woman living in London with her sister, Helen (Furenaux).  Carol is extremely withdrawn and detached, and has difficulty dealing with the people around her, however she does hold down a job as a beautician, and due to her looks, she has no shortage of male attention.  However, Carol finds men and their attentions repulsive.  One man in particular, Colin (Fraser), seems to have a growing obsession with Carol, although she does her best to ignore him and avoid him.  To make matters worse, Helen has a boyfriend, Michael (Hendry), who Carol deeply dislikes.  When Helen and Michael go on holiday to Italy, Carol is left alone in the flat, with the isolation causing an increasing strain on her already fragile sanity, as her reality lowly descends into a hallucinatory nightmare.

This was Roman Polanski's second feature film, following the acclaimed Knife in the Water (1962), and his first film in the English language, which he didn't speak at all well at the time.  This is a strange, disturbing film, detailing a woman's descent into madness.  The film starts off in relatively realistic territory, detailing Carol's day to day life at work and at home and the persistent harassment that she experiences on the street.  There really are no sympathetic male characters in the film, they are either boorish, stupid, unfaithful, bullying and mostly would-be abusers (which is kind of ironic considering that Polanski himself was convicted of sexual abuse thirteen years later).  Later on the film takes on a more surreal, expressionistic tone, with memorably nightmarish imagery, such as cracks appearing in the wall, hands reaching out from the wall to grab Carol, the flat seeming to grow and shrink, and dark figures glimpsed in mirrors.  There is also the rabbit that Helen is going to cook early in the film before abandoning it, and Carol leaves the plate of meat out to get increasingly rank.  Catherine Deneuve gives a memorable performance as the tormented Carol.  The film is very well made, and stylishly directed.  If it wasn't for Roman Polanski's crimes, this could be seen as quite a progressive film and, ironically,  in the age of "Me Too" and lockdown it is surprisingly relevant to today.  It certainly is a must-see.

  Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion

                

Play Misty for Me

Year of Release:  1971
Director:  Clint Eastwood
Screenplay:  Jo Heims and Dean Riesner, from a story by Jo Heims
Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills, John Larch
Running Time:  102 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

In the picturesque Californian city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Dave Garver (Eastwood) is a late night radio DJ .  One night in a bar, Dave meets Evelyn Draper (Walter), a fan of his radio show, who calls up every night requesting the jazz standard "Misty".  Dave and Evelyn have a one night stand, but Evelyn soon reveals herself to be an obsessive stalker.  Dave, who is in the process of reuniting with his ex-girlfriend, Tobie (Mills), repeatedly rejects Evelyn, who becomes increasingly violent and dangerous.

This chilling psychological thriller marked Clint Eastwood's debut as a director.  Looked at today, the film has dated, but by and large it holds up.  Although largely written as a deranged obsessive, Jessica Walter gives her portrayal of Evelyn some real depth, playing her as a confused, vulnerable and hurt woman, crucially she is always a sympathetic, if terrifying, character, and there is real chemistry in her scenes with Eastwood.  There is an interesting dynamic in that, while we never really fear for Garver, as he visibly struggles to contain his temper, we worry what he may do to Evelyn.  Throughout much of the film Garver doesn't really take Evelyn all that seriously or seem particularly concerned about the real threat she represents to him.  Mostly he treats her as a nuisance.  Directed largely in a straightforward, unflashy style, the film allows the tension to build up effectively, and at times it looks like a quasi-documentary, particularly the scene at the Monterey Jazz Festival.  One sequence which really feels out of place though, is the love scene between Garver and Tobie, where lyrical shots of nature and this beautiful verdant forest culminates in the two of them having sex in a isolated natural pool, all to the strains of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" by Roberta Flack, and ends up looking a bit like the cover of a paperback romance novel. 
Veteran director Don Siegel, who made several films with Eastwood and was one of the biggest influences on his filmmaking style, has a small role as a bartender.

Jessica Walter and Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for Me   

The House That Jack Built

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Lars von Trier
Screenplay:  Lars von Trier, story by Jenle Hellund and Lars von Trier
Starring:  Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Grabol, Riley Keough, Jeremy Davies
Running Time:  150 minutes
Genre:  Horror, thriller

Jack (Dillon) is an engineer, and aspiring architect who wants to build a house, he is also the brutal serial killer "Mr. Sophistication".  Telling his story to a mysterious interviewer (Ganz), Jack relates five of his murders, or "incidents" as he calls them, that took place over a period of twelve years.

This is kind of a violent horror art-film.  If you are familiar with the work of notorious danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, than you'll have an idea of what to expect with this.  It mixes scenes of shocking brutality, with images of striking beauty, odd digressions, archive footage and animation.  It's constructed in five chapters, and an epilogue.  Von Trier always seems to be trying to shock, provoke and frustrate his audience, and this will certainly do that.  I have seen many horror films, and even I found some of the violence hard to watch, which includes a graphic, but simulated, scene of animal torture, and documentary footage of historical atrocities.  However, it is also fascinating, striking and often darkly funny.  It is shocking, disturbing, offensive, funny, breathtaking, fascinating, dull and frustrating.  It kind of frustrates expectations at every turn, and the ending is frankly bizarre.  The performances are good, but this is really von Trier's show.

Riley Keough and Matt Dillon in The House That Jack Built         

Creepy

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Screenplay: Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Chihiro Ikeda, based on the novel by Yutaka Maekawa
Starring:  Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yuko Takeuchi, Teruyuki Kagawa, Haruna Kawaguchi, Masahiro Higashide, Ryoko Fujino
Running Time:  130 minutes
Genre:  Psychological thriller, horror,

A year after being stabbed by a suspected serial killer, police profiler Koichi Takakura (Nishijima) has resigned from the force and is now lecturing about serial killers at a university.  He and his wife Yasuko (Takeuchi) move out to a quiet neighbourhood to make a new start.  Yasuko soon becomes suspicious of their weird neighbour Nishino (Kagawa) who apparently lives with a wife who never leaves the house, and their teenage daughter Mio (Fujino), who exhibits disturbing behavior.  Meanwhile, Takakura becomes drawn into an ex-colleague's investigation of the mysterious disappearance of three members of a one family six years ago, which left only one traumatised witness (Kawaguchi).

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa came to recognition with horror films, such as Pulse (2001).  Despite the title, Creepy isn't really a horror film, it's more of a psychological crime drama, although it does have horror elements, particularly in the second half.  It's handsomely made, and well performed (with Teruyuki Kagawa particularly memorable as the sinister neighbour).  The problem is the pace is so sedate it just never grips.  It also feels to meticulous to really be atmospheric.  For most of the film, it's like a mystery drama that feels more like an intellectual puzzle, which probably most viewers will have solved more or less for themselves.  There is a detached feel to most of it.  My attention drifted several times during the film, but it was still interesting enough to stick with it until the end.  Based on a novel, I can see that the story would probably work better as a book than a film.  It's main problem is the length and the pacing, and even at it's two hour plus running time, some plot elements just seem to be abandoned.

                 Yuko Takeuchi and Teryuki Kagawa in Creepy