Cinema Experts

“Well, Clarice - have the lambs stopped screaming?”
There are characters who make their entrance in the movie world in such a spectacular way that the actor or actress which played that character risks to be associated with him/her for the rest of his/her career. It's notably the case for Clarice Starling, but especially for Hannibal Lecter. From the moment they appeared for the first time, it became evident that Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins would forever be remembered for their iconic roles.
I have to say that it's Hannibal Lecter who impressed me the most. And that's not only the case for me. I allow myself to tell you that anecdote which happened to me. A friend of mine is some kind of horror buff and I decided to test him by showing him "The Silence of the Lambs". He passed the test successfully but I'll always remember his reaction during the famous ambulance scene. When Lecter puts off his mask to reveal his face, my friend instantly gasped. This demonstrates without any doubt the formidable power of Dr. Lecter. His only very presence is frightening. We see him and we are afraid, period.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is the first horror movie in history to be rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Picture. And believe me that it deserves that prize. The Oscars for Foster and Hopkins' acting roles also are. We often associate horror films with ghosts, demons, monsters and other creatures which come from the imaginary and the supernatural. But nothing is more horrifying than what appears real and very plausible. Alfred Hitchcock has already shown that in "Psycho" and director Jonathan Demme raises the bar with this adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel.
The story involves Clarice Starling (played by Foster), a student at the FBI Academy who is also a specialist in serial killers. One of her superiors, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), asks Clarice to interview the terrifying psychopath Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (immaculately played by Hopkins) who is also a brilliant psychiatrist, so he could deliver clues which would lead to the capture of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), another serial killer actively searched by the FBI.
Lecter accepts to help Clarice, but only to the condition that she feed Lecter's sordid curiosity by confessing herself about her childhood's worst souvenirs. Why is Lecter interesting himself to Clarice's worst days? Does he want to weaken her? Does he want the bad guy to win? Or is he only a sadist and a pervert? I would go with the latter affirmation.
I think that it is useless to specify that, of all the characters, Hannibal Lecter is by far the best and the most fascinating. The other characters describe him in such a frightening and horrible way that we fear him well before we see him for the first time. And when we see him for the first time, we instantly remark his cold and menacing eyes, as well as his disturbing grin. Himself a serial killer, we can consider Lecter as one of the worst (or best, depending on how you read it) villains in the history of cinema, even if we see him killing only once. And precisely, his attack is very stylish. He kills both policemen on the strains of Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Goldberg Variations" and once he accomplished his work, we see him stained with blood, just like a painted how has just finished from making a new painting. That scene establishes a shocking parallel between murder and art.
But Lecter is only one side of this story. In fact, he's only a sub-plot. The true story involves Buffalo Bill's actions. Bill, brilliantly played by Levine, acts in nearly the whole Midwest, but his victims always are rather fat young women. Unlike many movies which hide their killer until the very end, we often see Bill in this film, even if we don't know his true identity, nor the frightening motives of his crimes until the end. The only thing we can discover about Bill is his appearing mental problems which push him to kill.
The horrors of the film aren't limited to the killers themselves. The movie is strewn with blood-chilling naturalistic images, especially the images of corpses who got parts of their skin removed. And how could we forget this unbearable image of the dead policeman with an open abdomen posing like an angel who is about to take off?
There's also a good dose of suspense, especially at the end when Clarice is chasing Bill in his labyrinthine basement. The climax of the pitch-black room while Bill is wearing his night goggles to see in the absolute darkness is breathtaking and holds suspense until the conclusion. At this moment, we're totally absorbed in that cat-and-mouse game at the point that we totally forget Lecter's existence.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is an excellent example of the horrors of the criminal acts and of psychological horror aroused by childhood traumas. Overall, the film is an immense metaphor about the horror of modern world and wants to get sure that the viewer leaves weakened and less in security than before he got inside the theater. The sinister soundtrack of Howard Shore adds to the already sordid atmosphere and the Q. Lazzarus song "Goodbye Horses" adds even more with its broken notes which resonate and give goosebumps. Personnaly, each time that I hear that song, I start thinking about Buffalo Bill who cross-dresses in front of the camera with that song playing in the background.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is a grandiose spooky symphony well-carried by Foster and Hopkins whose roles are already a part of the legend. The numerous references of the movie in the popular culture keep it well alive more than fifteen years after its release. Everybody, at least those who are able to stand horror images, should watch this movie at least once in their life… 10/10

“You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Oh yeah? OK.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words then this movie (moving picture) is worth a million words, which is why it has probably generated at least a million words.
What can one say… The obvious: that "Taxi Driver" is great, it is. That it is a masterpiece, it is. What sets this film apart from so many other films, including great films, is that it is an enigma. Every time I watch this film I see something else, I notice something else, I feel something else, I wonder something else. And I am, clearly, not the only one who reacts to the film this way that is why it lends itself to endless speculation and discussion.
Travis Bickle is the sort of person you wouldn't even see if you encountered him on the street - and if you did take note of him, you would make a point to ignore him. He is a non-entity. In his role as a cabbie, you would be aware of him only in the same way you would notice the color of the upholstery or be aware of a strange smell inside the cab.
On the rare occasion that Travis might make his presence felt, you would tolerate his existence - maybe even graciously acknowledge him with a smile or a noncommittal comment. You would only remember Travis if he said or did something particularly rude or offensive or bizarre; and then only as long as you might remember what you had for lunch or what your horoscope said.
There is no reason to remember, or to feel bad about not remembering, a Travis Bickle because he has no real effect on your life. He does a job, he fills a space; just like millions of other anonymous everyday workers. But the sad thing about Travis is that he has no real effect on anyone. Most people have a life - family, friends, interests, a purpose beyond being part of the machinery. Travis only has a job. You would not notice Travis, but Travis might notice you. And judge you: He might decide that you are part of what makes life worth tolerating, but more likely he might see you as part of what makes the world an unbearable hell.
It is the nature of film that when it casts an eye toward the "little guy," the attempt is to show that the ordinary man has something extraordinary about him that society is missing - even if that is just an everyday niceness. This being a Martin Scorsese film, written by Paul Schrader, filmmakers with a near-suicidal view of mankind, the point of Taxi Driver is just the opposite. If Travis Bickle is a remarkable person in any sense, it is in a negative way. Travis is not a good man; he is petty and mean-spirited and bigoted and self-absorbed and judgmental. He views the world with contempt; he has to, he has to have more hate for the world than he has for himself.
Taxi Driver is the story of a man living the proverbial life of quite desperation. In self-imposed isolation, Travis is mentally unstable, and probably was long before the film starts. Travis, like Norman Bates hides his insanity behind a facade of banality and nurses it with his loneliness. Insignificant men with a significant amount of pent up anger. The main difference - and it is a telling difference - is that we don't see Norman's rage until the end, it takes us by surprise; while we never doubt that Travis has inner demons. What Travis does is a foregone conclusion.
Paul Schrader's dark, oppressive script pointedly refers to Travis as a walking contradiction, often at the cost of the story's credibility. He's not particularly bright and at times almost shockingly slow, but his journal entries are surprisingly articulate. He declares a woman to be "an angel," but is dismayed that she is offended by being taken to a porno film. He claims to have an honorable discharge from the marines, yet he seems to have been born yesterday, not even knowing the meaning of a common phrase like "moonlighting." Schrader's superficial screenplay is long on obscenities and racial slurs, but short on simple logic.
The shortcomings of the script are offset to a great degree by solid performances and Scorsese's stylish direction. As Travis, Robert DeNiro is in virtually every scene and even though the screenplay falters at various times, DeNiro holds the film together with a consistency of tone and insight. Forgoing his usual bombastic method posturing (during most of the film), DeNiro plays Travis with a compassion that makes this otherwise horrid little man pitiable, if not sympathetic. He makes us care for Travis, even though the story offers us no real reason to. Jodie Foster, playing the child prostitute to whom Travis hopes to play savior, still has the youthful freshness and wise innocence that made her a treasure as a child actress.
Scorsese sees in Travis' New York City a teeming cesspool, but with cinematographer Michael Chapman, he makes it the most photogenic cesspool imaginable. He doesn't romanticize New York, but he does romanticize Travis' seething hatred of the city. However, he does wisely counterpoint Travis grubby view of the world with a sense of a real world, where friends and co-workers joke and talk and, well, exist. Unlike Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino, Scorsese films where psychotic characters exist in closed worlds where their lunatic behavior seems the norm, Taxi Driver underscores Travis' outsider status by giving us a realistic world that he is isolated from. As such, Taxi Driver has an honesty that his other violent epics lack.
But Scorsese provides us with at least two scenes that ring utterly false. His own gratuitous cameo as a passenger graphically boasting of his plans to murder his wife seems to be Scorsese's way of showing that there are people who are even crazier than Travis. Why? To suggest that Travis is justified in his paranoia? Also the final climatic bloodbath provided only a cheap shock at the time and now seems like a tiresome cliché of special effects gore. Such over the top mayhem doesn't underscore the brutality of the violence, it trivializes the rest of the film. Taxi Driver, like DeNiro's performances, is best in its still moments of quiet desperation.
The irony of the violence is that it eventually makes Travis famous, though it could have just as easily have made him infamous. The bullets that kill the pimp could have killed the politician. In Travis' mind they are pretty much the same. Unfortunately, I don't think some people get that. Travis, in the end, is not a hero, he is a murder. He is not purged of his demons; they are just temporarily placated. The famed "you talking' to me?" scene has reached iconic status, symbolic of tough-guy cool - not unlike Dirty Harry's "Make my day." But both Travis and Harry are dangerous icons; filmgoers delude themselves into accepting their insane displays of violence because the right make-believe characters get killed. They are protected by the fantasy of film; in the real world they would eventually be revealed to be the monsters. To his credit, Scorsese at least suggests that in the end Travis Bickle is still insane, and armed and dangerous.

Even so, the ending is uncomfortably ambiguous: I don't think that Scorsese is as afraid of Travis' insanity as he is in awe of it… 10/10

“My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I've told you my name: that's the Who. The Where could most readily be described as a prison cell. But there's a vast difference between being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison. The What is easy: recently I planned and set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery. That's also the When. As for the Why: beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple... because I can. Which leaves us only with the How; and therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.”
Spike Lee is one of the most consistent directors out there. Save for some more uneven pictures like She Hate Me and Girl 6, Lee's body of work is just plain impressive. And while Inside Man is not up there with Do The Right Thing, Clockers and 25th Hour, it is definitely an entertaining and intelligent thriller that does things a little differently than most cookie cutter thrillers you see in theaters nowadays.
A bank robbery in New York has gotten out of control, and it's up to police detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) to act as hostage negotiator and get the bank personal and customers out safely before things turn even worse than they already are. This turns out to be a tough case, since the leader of the bank robbers, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), turns out to be a very smart individual, who has everything planned to perfection, and who throws up surprise after surprise for Frazier and his men. But while the people around Frazier are slowly getting more and more nervous, he himself does not lose his mind, and begins a high stakes battle of wits with Russell. Things are further complicated, however, when the mayor of New York introduces a mysterious woman to Frazier. This woman (Jodie Foster) wants to protect something that is hidden in one of the safety deposit boxes inside the bank, and she will stop at nothing to force Frazier to let her inside the bank and make sure nothing happens to the contents.
This all sounds like an intriguing premise for a thriller, but the movie goes a few steps further than just having an interesting plot. Because while Inside Man does hit all the right notes when it comes to keeping you guessing about what is really going on, it is also very successful in mixing the grittier moments with comedy elements. At times, Inside Man is very funny, but in a way that does not deflate the tension. The dialogue is sharp, with the conversations between Frazier and Russell being especially fascinating, and both actors are at the top of their game. Washington's Frazier is an intense but laconic individual, who has a permanent smirk on his face but who reads the bank robbers intentions better than anybody else, while Owen is charismatic and fascinating as the mastermind behind the bank robbery. I was a little disappointed however with Jodie Foster's role. While her part is potentially fascinating, she does not really get the chance to do anything with it other than look cool and act tough. Yes, we all know that she is very good at that, but with a bit more background story, and a bit more screen time, her part could have been even more interesting.
With Inside Man, Lee showcases an interesting way of directing thrillers. He ignores the usual build up that you see in thrillers, which consists of an introduction, a chronological development of the main intrigue, followed by a final act in which everything is wrapped up neatly (even flashing forward several times, thus revealing some important developments before they have happened), and this only serves to make Inside Man a movie that is more than your regular suspense movie.
I can highly recommend this movie, it is never boring for a moment, what's more, I was enjoying it so much that as events were progressing toward the climax, I was wishing it would go on. And that's very rare for me in the movies nowadays… 9/10