Classic Movie Review Silence of the Lambs

Silence of the Lambs (1991) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme 

Written by Ted Tally 

Starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn 

Release Date February 14th, 1991 

Box Office $272 million dollars 

In many respects, Silence of the Lambs is the most successful horror movie of the 1990s. The film is the second highest grossing horror movie of the decade, behind only David Fincher's Seven, but it also swept the Academy Awards, winning Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Picture among other awards. Oddly enough, it's this remarkable level of success and respectability that causes many to dismiss the idea that Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie. Horror movies are supposed to be shown in drive ins or on late night cable television. Horror Movies do not sweep the Oscars and, in fact, aren't allowed in the hallowed halls of respectable Hollywood. 

And yet, there should be no question that we are watching and adoring a horror movie. Clarice Starling, for all of her respectable traits and awards pedigree, is a terrific example of the Final Girl archetype. Yes, she's dressed up with a terrific actor in Jodie Foster and built with a respect for women that the horror genre typically lacks, but nevertheless, the final moments of Clarice's search for the big bad of Silence of the Lambs casts Clarice as a tremendous example of the Final Girl, the survivor who lives to tell the tale of what happened with the killer. 

A lot of people who claim they don't like horror movies want to knock down the notion that Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie out of their stubborn belief that they don't find such films entertaining. On the other side, there are hardcore horror fans who don't want to accept Silence of the Lambs as a horror movie because it is too respectable, too beloved. It's a horror film for the normies who wouldn't last but a few minutes watching a 'real' horror movie. Silence of the Lambs also lacks in the kinds of transgressive bad taste that is also a hallmark of 'real' horror movies. 

Silence of the Lambs opens on FBI Trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) running through the woods, alone. It might seem like nothing but there is a heft to this image. A woman running alone through the woods a classic horror movie scenario. Whether you are talking about Friday the 13th or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when you place a woman in the context of being alone running through the woods, the echoes of horror movies of the past are evoked. I am going to take the image a little further however, and speculate a little bit about something a little esoteric. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Movie Review Married to the Mob

Married to the Mob (1988) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Barry Stugatz, Mark Burns 

Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Alec Baldwin, Dean Stockwell, Oliver Platt

Release Date August 19th, 1988

Published August 18th, 2018 

Married to the Mob stars Michelle Pfeiffer in one of the best performances in her incredible career. As Angela DeMarco, the increasingly uncomfortable mob wife of ‘Cucumber’ Frank DeMarco (Alec Baldwin), Pfeiffer is the only sympathetic character in a universe of cartoonish killer criminals and duplicitous, weirdo FBI guys. Pfeiffer is the only element of Married to the Mob that makes complete sense.

Angela DeMarco wants out of the life of a mob wife. The bloom is off the rose of being married to a man who furnished their home with items that ‘fell off a truck.’ Angela is tired of the politics that come with being a mob wife which means spending a lot of time with fellow mob wives, a group of shrill, crispy-haired, harridans led by the Boss’s wife, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl), who demands that all mob wives follow her lead.

While Angela is plotting her escape from the mob world, FBI Agent Mike Downey (Mathew Modine) is looking for his way in so he can take down the whole thing. Mike and his partner Benitez (Oliver Platt) have been after mob boss Tony ‘The Tiger’ Russo for a while now and when things break down between Tony and Frank and Angela becomes a target of Tony’s affection, Mike has his way to get after the boss, if he can keep from falling for Angela himself.

Married to the Mob is a strange movie. The title is comically overlong and humorously ill-suited to the actual content of the film. The mob clichés are comically over the top. The Italian accents, the greasy hair, the mob lingo are right out of a parody. The story however, features mob killings that would feel at home in an episode of The Sopranos. Despite the comic accents, Dean Stockwell and Alec Baldwin play their characters with a seriousness at odds with the supposed comic nature of the movie.

Then there is Michelle Pfeiffer who plays Angela completely straight, with none of the comically over-arching touches that Mercedes Ruehl and the rest of the female cast, bring to their characters. When she begins the romantic plot with Matthew Modine’s FBI Agent, posing as a plumber while using Angela as bait to catch Tony, the romance has a light touch but she doesn’t play any single beat with the comedy that director Jonathan Demme appears to be directing her toward.

Modine’s character as well is really strange. He appears to be a comic character early on as he and Oliver Platt dip into strange banter, they have a weird slow motion high-five that appears for no real good reason. Then there is the bizarre glimpse of his home life where he has a Pee-Wee Herman style set up to help him put on his suit. It kind of fits the bizarre comic tone of Married to the Mob but the joke only serves to make him seem like a weirdo and not a romantic hero.

Everyone in Married to the Mob appears to be doing their own bit of business. The accents, the hairstyles, the odd quirks, every character seems to take a moment to demonstrate an odd trait and none of it appears to fit either in the comedy that the movie kind of is and the mob drama that the movie also kind of is. All of that said, these touches give the film personality but where that personality fits in in terms of genre is a mystery that keeps the film from greatness.

There are great moments throughout Married to the Mob and Jonathan Demme is a fine director who brings personality to the film but he can’t seem to decide whether we are to take the film seriously or laugh at it. Characters like Mercedes Ruehl are playing straight comedy while Dean Stockwell, who was nominated for an Academy Award for this performance, and Michelle Pfeiffer are taking the film relatively seriously.

The film is a tonal mess. Comedy, violence, mob drama and mob comedy, Married to the Mob is filled with personality but it’s a Sybil-esque personality in which we never know which movie is on screen from scene to scene. I don’t have a huge dislike for Married to the Mob but I can’t fully embrace the movie, outside of Michelle Pfeiffer’s star-turn, because it is such a whiplash of weird shifts in tone.

Married to the Mob was released 30 years ago this weekend.

Movie Review Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married (2008) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Jenny Lumet 

Starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin, Anna Deveare Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Debra Winger

Release Date October 3rd, 2008 

October 15th, 2008 

I was not prepared for the emotional experience of Rachel Getting Married. After watching it for the first time in November of 2008 I was left raw and vulnerable and incapable of capturing the experience in words. The film worked me over and the experience is one of the most exhilarating and exciting moments I've ever had at the movies.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married tells the story of a New England family in the midst of a storm of emotions. On the one hand, eldest daughter Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) is getting married in the family's long-time home and a guest list of family and friends is pouring out the windows.

On the other hand, youngest daughter Kym is leaving rehab after an extended stay, recovering from an addiction to pills and alcohol. Kym and Rachel have always had a complicated relationship, the kind that only sisters can have. They have competed, unwittingly, for their parents' attention their entire lives. Kym through drugs and antisocial behavior, Rachel by trying desperately to be the good daughter.

Mom and Dad are divorced. Mom, Abby (Debra Winger) has retreated from her daughters. Dad, Paul (Bill Irwin) has lived and died for every moment of his daughters lives to an uncomfortable degree. He's remarried to Carol (Anna Deavere Smith) who balances his doting with calm presence.

The action unfolds over three days and nothing you might expect to happen happens. Rachel Getting Married never takes the easy way out. It doesn't have major set piece moments that can tie up a good trailer or marketing campaign. What it has in abundance is truth. Truth in how families interact. Truth how small slights can escalate into lacerating arguments.

Truth in how tragedies never really leave us. This family in Rachel Getting Married has had a tragedy and when the film is over that tragedy lingers over each of them. That is not to say that the film is filled with doom and gloom. Far from it. In fact, for as much sadness and heartache as there is, there is also joy, much of it found in music.

In a wonderfully passive way we learn that much of both families blending in this marriage are musically inclined. There is someone playing an instrument somewhere in the background of most scenes and it's all rather incidental and not a greek chorus to underscore drama or meant to distract. It just sort of is there. Music is just part of the lives of these people.

Movies shot with a digital handheld camera can be distracting and disjointed for us in the audience. We were all raised on film and the mostly crisp clean images that film provides. DV can tend to be sloppy and in the wrong hands invite a queasy feeling in the audience as if the camera would stop moving around so much.

However, the DV really works here. It feels as if we are a member of this troubled but loving family. We are more than mere witnesses to their sadness and joy, we are made a part of it by this handheld style, as if we were running the camera.

It's a phenomenally underappreciated achievement, one that should have earned Jonathan Demme an Oscar nomination for Best Director. On the bright side, Jenny Lumet who wrote the absorbing, exhausting and cathartic screenplay was nominated and will likely win the award for Best Original Screenplay.

Lumet learned so much from her father, the legendary Sydney Lumet, that it really is no wonder she can write something as brilliant as this. She has an ear for dialogue, an ear for the way families speak to one another that few writers can match.

Listen to the way Rose Dewitt and Anne Hathaway talk to each other. The rhythm, the patter, the bracing insight and the quick painful insult. It's remarkable. Listen to the way Hathaway bites off her words, her inflections, the wounded animal way she has of speaking when offended or hurt. Much of it is Hathaway, some of it is Lumet, all of it is brilliant.

I could go on for days about why Rachel Getting Married is one of the best movies I have ever seen, but I think I need to stop gushing now. I will just say that no other movie in the past 12 months has impacted me more and stayed with me longer than Rachel Getting Married and I think if you give it a chance you will feel the same way.

Movie Review: The Truth About Charlie

The Truth About Charlie (2002) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Jonathan Demme

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins, Ted Levine

Release Date October 25th, 2002 

Published October 24th, 2002 

There are many signs of a troubled production. Media rumors of on set strife. Inflated egos inflating budgets. And the ever present internet reviews of scripts and rough cuts, either intentionally leaked or stolen. Maybe the most quiet but telling portent of trouble is the shift of release dates. In most cases once completed a film is immediately put on the schedule. However if the studio releasing the film see’s something they don’t like, they delay the release and do what they can to hide and fix the problems.

Such was the case with The Truth About Charlie. A search of Upcomingmovies.com reveals a number of release dates and that the film was completed over a year ago. What is unclear after viewing the film is what was so bad about it that the studio so unceremoniously dumped it into release with so little fan fare. It’s not that bad.

Charlie stars Thandie Newton as a newlywed of three months who returns from a vacation, taken without her new hubby, to find her apartment and bank accounts empty. Her character, Regina, is informed that her husband Charlie has been killed while on a train ride to, well, no one is quite sure where he was going. Regina had thought Charlie was an art dealer but after the cops show her a number of different passports all belonging to the man she assumed was just her husband she is forced to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew. 

In the meantime she finds herself pursued by people from Charlie’s past who are searching for 6 million dollars Charlie stole from them. Regina, however, has no idea where it is. Throw into the mix an American named Joshua Peters (Mark Wahlberg) who just keeps popping up whenever she’s in trouble. Also throw in an American spy played by Tim Robbins as yet another character with questionable motives.

Based on the 1963 Grant-Hepburn movie Charade, The Truth About Charlie is a classic superfluous spy movie. A love story adventure where characters change sides at a moments notice and motivations change just as quick. Director Jonathan Demme’s sure-handed direction steadies what could have been a confusing and tiresome story. The film clicks along at a quick pace knowing that if it slows down too much, it’s paper thin story will unravel.

The only problem I could sense about the film is Mark Wahlberg as Joshua. Wahlberg seems to be sleepwalking through the role and never generates any palpable chemistry with co-star Thandie Newton. Newton on the other hand is sensational. Though Wahlberg gets top billing for box office purposes, this is clearly Newton’s movie. Give her a co-star who could project the charm and danger projected by Cary Grant in the original version and you might have quite a good film.

In the end unfortunately,`1 The Truth About Charlie is a thin but watchable Saturday night rental. The kind of film you can watch and immediately forget. See it for Newton who get’s more beautiful everytime she’s onscreen.

Movie Review The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Directed by Jonathan Demme 

Written by Daniel Pyne, Dean Georgaris 

Starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Kimberly Elise 

Release Date July 30th, 2004 

Published July 29th, 2004 

The 1962 original The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra, is an unmitigated classic. The film was the brainchild of Sinatra who saw in the complicated satire a chance at an acting comeback after a series of flops. Boy was he ever right, the film brought Sinatra back to prominence as an actor. Despite being pulled from release for 24 years after the assassination of President Kennedy, the film remained a classic.

Denzel Washington, starring in the 2004 take on The Manchurian Candidate, has no need for a comeback. He is clearly at the top of game. His director, Jonathan Demme, on the other hand could use a hit after his disastrous remake of Charade in 2002. For the record, The Truth About Charlie was not nearly as bad as the way it's producers dumped it into release. Why Demme would do a remake as his "comeback" is a fair question. Let's just be glad he did because his modernized version is the rare remake that doesn't dishonor the original.

Major Bennett Marco (Washington) is a decorated veteran of the first Gulf war. Though he seems to have it all together he is secretly plagued by nightmares that bring his memories of battle into question. Marco is not alone, other members of his squad who were involved in a memorable incident while on a recon mission in Kuwait have been having the same nightmares. Private Al Melvin (Jeffrey Wright) is slowly being driven insane by his nightmares, which mirror Marco's.

Both remember the incident in which their squad was attacked by what they thought were Iraqi militia members. Both were knocked unconscious and their lives were saved by Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber), who went on to receive the medal of honor because of Marco's recommendation. However, both Marco and Melvin's nightmares play out a different scenario in which Shaw was never a hero, but in fact the entire squad was taken hostage by someone other than Iraqi militants. They were taken to a hospital and reprogrammed and two other members of the squad were murdered.

For his part, Sgt. Shaw is now Senator Shaw, a rising star in his unnamed political party (I think he's a Democrat but it's never spoken of aloud). Shaw is on the verge of being nominated for the Vice Presidency thanks to the backstage machinations of his determined mother, Senator Eleanor Shaw. Raymond also has strange nightmares about brain implants and mind control. As he confesses to Marco midway through the film, he can remember the mission as he has been told of his heroic actions but can't actually remember doing the heroic actions attributed to him.

As the plot unfolds, the mystery is whether Marco is just paranoid or if the things he dreamt about actually happened. We believe Marco because we see what he sees but it's easy for characters in the film to dismiss him especially as Marco grows more and more erratic. We also are privy to things he is not such as the behind the scenes meetings between Mrs. Shaw and the mysterious executives of Manchurian Global. Manchurian Global is a company that profits from America's foreign policy decisions by essentially betting on wars in the stock market.

The parallels with the real life Carlyle Group or Halliburton are completely intentional. Where the original The Manchurian Candidate played on our fears of the Cold War, this new version makes corporations the sinister forces working behind the scenes to rig our system in their favor. It's scarier if you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11and have seen the back room connections between the current administration, Carlyle and Halliburton. Of course, much of what these real life companies do is quite well known and helps you realize that you don't need a sleeper assassin to put your company man in the White House. All you need is a big enough checkbook.

The Manchurian Candidate is not meant to perfectly reflect reality but rather just fan the flames of conspiracy-minded moviegoers. Who doesn't love conspiracies?

The Manchurian Candidate 2004 is a paranoid potboiler with a complex plot and enough solid twists and turns to keep audiences glued to their seats. Who better than Denzel to lead us through all of the film’s complexities? His winning personality, charisma and believably carry us over a number of plot holes. Watch closely his relationship with Rosie, played by Kimberly Elise. Late in the film it hints at a whole other layer to the film’s dense plot and will make you pay to see it again.

Meryl Streep is perfectly on point in a role that won Angela Lansbury an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1962. Streep should also be on track for a nomination as she is the perfect choice for this Machiavellian mother from hell. Most have drawn odd comparisons with Hillary Clinton, although a better more accurate comparison might be Lady MacBeth with her lust for power and willingness to kill to get it. Not to mention the hinted at but little seen incestuousness between Mom and Son which mirrors another historic text.

Jonathan Demme's direction has not been this solid since The Silence Of The Lambs. Those who thought he had lost his touch will be turned around after watching the way he twists and turns the audience with one smart set piece after another.

True, there are plenty of holes in this plot. The script adapted by Daniel Pyne is like a sweater that could unravel with the tug of a string for a long enough period of time. It's best not to dwell on character motivations and small plot points and focus on the stronger elements of the film like it's performances and the timeliness of its references.