Shaken, shocked and scared.

I finally got round to seeing The Silence of the Lambs the other day. Having heard so much about it, mostly in terms of “couldn’t sleep for weeks after seeing it”, “scariest film ever”, and similar reviews, I was prepared to be shaken, shocked and scared. So was I?

Well, in short: no. The film did not work for me, I’m afraid. I’m not saying I think it’s a bad film. On the contrary. Jodie Foster was amazing, Anthony Hopkins was amazing. But there were too many parts of the film I didn’t care much for. The whole ‘other serial killer’ story was maybe necessary but rather graphic (was that really necessary other than to simply shock?), the whole FBI doing their work bit was nothing out of the ordinary. Even Anthony Hopkins going all cannibalistic seemed so out of character and – though clever – not awe-inspiring.

What I did enjoy tremendously was the psychological thriller part of it. The meetings between Foster and Hopkins were magical. If that had been the main thrust of the film and if they had downsized the ordinary ‘how-catch-em’ part of it, it would have been a 10 out of 10 for me. There was an amazing tension in those meetings, they both played it so well, I could easily have watched that for hours on end. As it was, it lost some of its tension because of all the other noise going on.

Last line in the film was hilarious though. I’ll give ‘em that. No, I won’t spoil it by saying what it was. Just watch the film (again?) and see what I mean.

🙂

Adrian

Guilty Pleasure

It’s surprising how much negative press this film gets. Everybody seems to dislike it heartily, criticise it for almost everything, or ridicule it to death. To a point where you’re almost ashamed to admit you actually quite like it. But let me be bold: I do like it. In fact, I love it!

Come on, what’s not to love! It’s a splendour of a film what with all the costumes and period features, it’s got a lot of Shakespeare, so it can’t be all that bad, it’s funny, romantic, a little sad even, it’s got loads of tongue-in-cheek references, such as Hamlet’s skull and a “Greetings from Stratford upon Avon” mug in Shakespeare’s room.

Sure, it’s not a deep film. We’re not talking Bergmanesque struggles with the meaningful questions of life, death and religion, we’re not dealing with Tarkovskian atmospheric contemplativeness. But it’s just such a joy to watch, very entertaining, and the Romeo and Juliet story may be as old as the hills, it is still a masterful story and this original telling of it deserves more praise!

Adrian

It did not happen one Roman holiday

Funny how we all recently watched It happened one night and were told this was the original rom-com on which all subsequent rom-coms through the ages have been based. So when I saw Roman Holiday again the other day, I was struck by how right the above statement is. Just replace one heart throb, Clark Gable, with another, Gregory Peck, add a new girl being introduced, and hey presto.

Journalist guy meets runaway girl, recognises her and is hoping for a big news feature. Then he falls in love and subsequently won’t bother with getting his scoop. The similarities are blatantly obvious. Only question was: would he get her in the end? Well, maybe a right royal romance was a bit too much for the screenwriters to stomach….

Having now seen both I can see why It happened one night got so many Oscars. The originality and wit of that film was obviously hard to emulate!

Adrian