| DGT ranks THE 12 BEST FILMS OF 1990-1999!; 2K posts in this goddamn shithole | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 4 2011, 02:59 PM (2,303 Views) | |
| <span style=Mister Plum | Dec 5 2011, 08:24 PM Post #81 |
SurviBoy
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maudlin <3 I had to search that in dictionary.com |
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| <span style=midnight problay | Dec 5 2011, 09:15 PM Post #82 |
Disgruntled Vet
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Too bad you think Life is Beautiful is French  Heavenly Creatures! Love that, although it's not top 12 worthy. It's such a weird/fun movie for me. Those girls were crazy. I also really need to see The Red Violin. I caught some of it on TV once but never the whole thing. |
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| <span style=Mister Plum | Dec 5 2011, 09:33 PM Post #83 |
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SurviBoy
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I know better now, for a short period of time.  Life is Beautiful is Italian, Love Me if you Dare is French, Boy in Striped Pyjamas is English 
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| <span style=recyclehumans | Dec 6 2011, 01:22 PM Post #84 |
BOOM! CROASTED.
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Time for a return to normalcy, yes? #11. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS  (1991) directed by Jonathan Demme screenplay by Ted Tally, based on the novel by Thomas Harris starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn and Ted Levine Well… as much of a return to normalcy as this movie can get you. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is generally considered to be the first horror film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It's not quite horror, to be sure, but it's absolutely close enough to count. Where SILENCE's horrific power lies isn't in the image, but the idea. It's a film that, even with some rather nasty visuals to give us squeamish jolts, uses the power of pitch-perfect performance and carefully crafted thematic nuance to invade a viewer's psyche in a way that few other films can. Jodie Foster rightly won her second Oscar for playing FBI Agent-in-training Clarice Starling, orphan since a young age and working diligently to be an equal at the FBI Academy in a male-dominated world. She's attractive and fit and those who meet her make sure to make her femininity the first point of attention served upon her, as opposed to her credentials. She's a little short, she's not the most vocally commanding, and "that accent [she tried] so desperately to shed -- pure West Virginia" is more becoming a diner waitress than a member of federal law enforcement. Clarice will not let obstacles deter her from what she wants, to have the honor of holding a badge, a goal known to her since the murder of her father, a local sheriff. And when Jack Crawford of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit recruits her for "an interesting errand", Clarice is all too eager to agree. And thus, she agrees to interview and help profile Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. Demme's directorial style is apparent in several of his films, particularly SILENCE and later PHILADELPHIA. Demme is fascinated by the effect of characters looking directly into the camera, especially during dialogue scenes and particular moments of action. During dialogue, cuts between characters have each person staring straight at us, as if we are their conversational partner. As he uses it in this film, it's particularly unnerving, especially when Crawford stares us down with eyes that we already know have been exposed to far too much hideousness in his day and says, "You spook easily, Starling?" This style will only to continue serving the tense, disturbing revelations that unfold between our characters, culminating in several key moments I'll address later, ones that can be the stuff of nightmares. Along with Demme's visual style (supported beautifully by the realist cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, whose career is woefully under-praised) is the bleakly evocative score by Howard Shore. For you kids out there who first got to know Shore as the man who made THE LORD OF THE RINGS into one of the great orchestral masterpieces of our lifetime, you have only known… well… maybe 20% of what his career has been built on. You see, Shore's selection as composer of THE LORD OF THE RINGS was a curious one, considering Shore's specialty is traditionally two-fold. He's a hallmark of composition for more intimate films, providing understated score serving to underpin the emotional resonance. He's also a hallmark of horror and shock, delightfully serving as David Cronenberg's go-to composer for almost his entire filmography. What makes his score for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS so exquisitely perfect is that it's a marriage of both these styles. It's a marriage we hear from the very start, unnerving us as Clarice races through an Academy obstacle course, and only continues to ratchet up its effectiveness the further we become exposed to the film and its evils. It must be said without hyperbole that the chemistry between Foster and fellow Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins is the stuff of legend. When Starling is granted access to Lecter (thanks to the director of Lecter's asylum, the slimy Dr. Frederick Chilton), she descends almost literally into the maw of hell, complete with an inmate flinging semen into her face as he cries, "I bit my wrist so I could die… look at the blood!" She walks through this menagerie of living demons, cell by cell, keeping "to the right", every inmate a worse horror than the one before. The worst parade of psychological darkness displayed by each wretch of life. One can only imagine what sort of demented evil awaits her in the final cell -- Lecter's cell -- and what must be the most abject display of inhumanity that could exist before her. She finds this.  "Good morning." Oh my. Anthony Hopkins is on screen for barely more than 15 minutes in this 2 hour film. And he wins an Oscar for it. As Lead Actor. This shot alone gives a fair hint as to why. To only amplify the reasons why our heart should skip a beat upon this sight are what surrounds Lecter in his cell. Gorgeous drawings, original sketches and artwork of sumptuous subjects and sights. All drawn by Lecter. All drawn completely from memory. Horror is beauty. Beauty is horror. Lecter, in this instant, becomes the living embodiment of everything we shouldn't fear, and therefore everything we should fear all the more. Formal, articulate, considerate, intelligent, courteous and unspeakably ghastly. Let's not forget he's also a psychopathic murderer who ate his victims. And as they speak, their interaction becomes one tinged with uncomfortable humor, despite the deep level of humiliation Clarice feels in even experiencing it, let alone discussing it. On her way to Lecter's cell, an inmate named Miggs hissed a rather terrible sentence at her. Lecter asks, "What did Miggs say to you? Multiple Miggs, in the next cell?" Clarice swallows for a moment. "He said, 'I can smell your cunt.'" Lecter smirks ever so slightly. His voice almost lyrically clinical. "I see. I myself cannot." What plays out between Lecter and Clarice throughout the film, in their few scenes together, is the core of this film. There isn't so much a thematic justification for their relationship, a moral idea to take with us, but rather an exploration into two very damaged, very haunted, very driven souls. Their understanding of each other is almost innate, much to Clarice's particular horror. They each need something from the other and exploit every opportunity to extract it. Clarice has been sent to Lecter by Crawford under the guise of needing a psychological profile for research purposes, one that Lecter immediately realizes is meant to help give a behavioral insight into Buffalo Bill, the serial killer skinning his female victims that the FBI is desperate to capture and failing to do so. Lecter admonishes Clarice, emotionally eviscerating her by so precisely honing into who she is, why she is and why she do desperately doesn't want to be it. After only moments of conversation, he stares her in the eye and says this: "Oh, Agent Starling, you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool? You're so ambitious, aren't you? You know what you look like to me with your good back and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition's given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor, white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed? Pure West Virginia? What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? And oh, how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the backseats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the FBI."  …Jesus. One look at Clarice's face shows how thoroughly he has broken her. But she still manages to retort. It's not brilliant, but it's still sharp. And it both repulses and impresses Lecter. And it's that duality that fascinates him. She's willing to engage him in a way that no one else seems to dare -- intelligently and combatively. And when that aforementioned semen is flung at her, Lecter gives her what she wants -- information and the chance of advancement with it. He does have insight into Buffalo Bill, whatever it may be, and is willing to provide it to her. The fact that "discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to [him]" is but a smokescreen satisfactory enough to him as a motivator. I've written a shitload about just this one interaction between Lecter and Clarice, but it's for a reason. It's the scene that establishes literally the entire focus of the film, where it will take us and how it will take us there. In my mind, it's the most important scene of the film, and without proper focus and appreciation for it, the rest of the film's strength is deadened, even if just a little. Clarice begins to make progress on the Buffalo Bill investigation, utilizing clues and hints provided by Lecter to drive Crawford's hunt of the killer. The clock is ticking to find Bill, as his most recent victim is Katherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, and the senator will stop at nothing to see her daughter found alive rather than dead. Though, in exchange for his nuggets of aid, Lecter demands of Clarice just as much as she demands of him. What he wants from her is her. For her to reveal to him something deep-seeded, something monumental to her life that has driven her to where she is now. Something she is repressing and unwilling to acknowledge. Something he senses in her immediately and wants to draw out. It's the course of this quid pro quo that propels their interactions, and only when she reveals her own personal hell does he finally allow her, with his insight into Bill, to find Katherine and try to free her from hers. It's this ultimate revelation of her personal hell that gives us the title of the film, and it's also what gives Jodie Foster some of her most incredible performance work of her career.  <3 Buffalo Bill (whose name is Jame Gumb) is an amalgam of various real-life serial killers, and his ultimate drive is to become a woman. Suffering gender dysphoria and failing to be accepted into gender reassignment surgery in his life, he skins women to create a suit from them, one he wears while tucking his genitals between his legs. He starves his overweight victims to "loosen" their skins before he murders them, and Katherine is soon to suffer the same fate. She is not a passive victim by any means, though. She uses whatever means possible to gain an advantage over her captor, including, using ingenious means, getting Bill's prized dog Precious pulled into the well she's held in and holds the dog as a hostage. It's a role that fits actress Brooke Smith quite well, considering her other empowering work, including the very reality-genre prophetic SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS. Throughout the film, we are constantly put on the defensive, often in ways we aren't even conscious of. Granted, there are bodies and autopsies, psychological analyses of the tormented and deranged, even a dramatic and thrilling escape of Lecter from his captors, including the skinning of one guard's face and wearing it over his own in order to be taken away in an ambulance unsuspectingly. Even slight filmmaking techniques, just as much as overt ones mentioned before, provide disquieting effects. Note in particular one example -- Demme's use of tracking movement and even camerawork in several sequences as right-to-left, something that automatically registers for us as wrong, as uncomfortable. Based on language, so many of us are trained since birth to register information as left-to-right. To force our perceptions to register information in reverse, as it were, is to prey on our nerves without our awareness. Fuck-ups in the progression of the case cause roadblocks, but Clarice presses on, realizing, based on Lecter's case notes to her that only the first victim was someone Bill knew personally. She goes to the victim's hometown to investigate personally, interviewing friends and co-workers. Simultaneously, Crawford uses Lecter's notes and checks them against multiple hospital and shipping records. He informs Clarice with passion -- they've found him. They know his name, they know his face, they know where he lives, and a task force is en route to Bill's address to capture him. Clarice is ecstatic to hear it, and while Crawford does this, she goes to the home of Mrs. Littman, a former employer of the first victim, to continue the investigation. We watch Crawford's team surround Bill's home, seconds away from storming in. An agent posing as a delivery man rings Bill's doorbell over and over. We watch Bill, in his home, panicking at the ringing bell as he races to get dressed, look presentable and make his way upstairs to answer the door. When he does… Clarice is there. One of the film's most effective plays against our expectations is this moment, so expertly edited by Craig McKay. There is not one instant that the film gives any possible hint to the fact that it's Clarice, not Crawford, that has made it to Bill's home. Clarice hasn't even found Bill wittingly -- Bill is squatting in the Littman home, having killed the old woman long ago and taken over her home. Crawford was duped by a false address in Bill's records, long since abandoned by him in his efforts to stay hidden. It's a moment we are so unprepared for, and it's brilliantly executed to give us a final confrontation between Clarice and Bill, one that on the surface plays far, far more to Bill's advantage. Clarice goes into Bill's home just to get the contact information for Mrs. Littman, which he awkwardly, almost half-heartedly searches for. As he does so, she looks around the home. And she spots a moth. Not just any moth, though. A death's head moth, specifically grown and cultivated, a breed that requires significant TLC. A moth whose pupa was found lodged in the throat of one of the victims. A moth that is in the home of this man she now knows is Buffalo Bill. She's trapped with a psychopathic killer. What makes this moment truly horrifying is seconds after her realization, and it's a final culmination of Clarice's struggle for acceptance and understanding in the face of her gender, her looks, her physical body. Despite her best efforts, her eyes betray her realization, and Bill recognizes immediately that she knows who he is. And yet, the pretense of both their presences continues, if but for a moment. Until Bill can't help himself. He starts giggling at her. To him, it's a moment of absurdity. Even as she draws her gun on him and orders him to put his hands on his head, he becomes hysterical. This woman, this thing in front of him believes it can speak to him, can tell him what to do, that it can have any power over him at all. It's absurdity to him. It's just a brief moment that plays out before he escapes to his elaborate basement to evade her, but it's almost Clarice's entire journey played out in this one nutshell. So very compelling, for her so very empowering, and for us so very ghastly.  What's really scary is watching him play a good guy. Though Bill puts up a determined and clever fight to stop her, Clarice is able to defeat him. He kills the power and blankets the underground setting in pitch black darkness. She's blind and helpless, aiming her gun without direction, her arms outstretched to find some sense of presence, her eyes exploding with awareness that she is likely moments away from death. Bill has the power, wearing a pair of night vision goggles, following her silently, closely, even outstretching a hand to maybe touch her face, amused by her complete lack of awareness of what she's doing. But when he raises his gun and cocks back the hammer, Clarice whips around instantly, the mechanical sound playing right to her heightened instincts, giving her her target. Before Bill can get a single shot off, she's already pivoted and opened fire, felling him with every bullet in her barrel. And just like that, Clarice Starling accomplishes what to many became an impossibility -- finding Bill and putting him down. She's rescued Katherine, still alive. She's a hero. And now, with honors, a graduate of the Academy. She's an agent. She has a badge. She has a career. A future. She has what she's been so desperately striving for in her life. And then Lecter places a call to her. It's brief, congratulatory towards her for capturing Bill and achieving Agent status. He even hints that he must be off, as he's "having an old friend for dinner" as he stares at Dr. Chilton from an unassuming distance. He asks if "the lambs have stopped screaming", if she has been able to quiet the demons she's lived with as a child… demons she's created for herself. Though she doesn't address the question, we see it in her face in Clarice's last shot of the film -- the lambs will always scream. Calling Lecter's name, fully aware he's disconnected the call but incapable of saying anything else, aware all too well that the lambs will always scream. Even in triumph, there is no silencing of our failures, our hauntings. We will never be able to overcome that which cripples us. And in finally achieving what Clarice knows is what she ultimately needs, Lecter deals his fateful, artful blow. So why THIS movie? THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is ultimately about the futility of escape, to me. It speaks to a very bleak, very nihilistic psychological condition that for many is pervasive and universal, yet one not admitted to. It speaks to the idea that we all seem to have at points, if not all, of our lives, in our attempts to deal with our pasts, our failures, our demons in life. We so often strive to rectify and repair what has been broken in our pasts by making future choices, accomplishing future goals. It's so difficult to accept an event in our pasts as irrevocably final, to recognize that anything that has happened to us, any decisions we've made, anything we've faced, will always be just that, and that there is no way what has happened to us can be changed, altered or fixed. But that doesn't stop us, does it? Our pain so frequently pilots us into the decisions we make because our pain illogically wants to be cured, taken away by what we do now. It's like our minds, hearts and souls want that which haunts us to be expunged from our life record with enough good work, like an annoying misdemeanor on our criminal histories. In its own way, maybe it's easier for us to think of life this way, to think of our solutions in this way. But it's not quite the case. And THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS speaks to this uncomfortable habit of humanity in such a clear way that few films are even close to being able to accomplish. Also, it's fucking terrifying. SCORE SAMPLE: "Lecter Escapes" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IcKWIz9DLs |
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| <span style=Josseppe95 | Dec 6 2011, 02:13 PM Post #85 |
[00:18] goohst Jones: ninja is a sex pervert
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Seriously one of my favorite movies of all time. GREAT choice. ETA: This made me wanna re-watch it which I just did, STILL AGREE. |
| ChloeEnvy1 (11:55:08 PM): showing you gts will forever be my biggest mistake of our past friendship | |
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| Eyka | Dec 6 2011, 02:41 PM Post #86 |
ORG GOD
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That was an amazing write-up, and so so so so true. Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins and Ted Levine were all stunning in this movie. |
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| <span style=ts2 | Dec 6 2011, 02:51 PM Post #87 |
Mother Hen
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OK I find this list credible again. |
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| <span style=Teighteen | Dec 6 2011, 03:10 PM Post #88 |
Clinically Cocky
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Silence of the Lambs is amazing. "I can smell your cunt" is one of my favo movie lines ever. <3 |
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| <span style=Thomas Jefferson | Dec 6 2011, 03:28 PM Post #89 |
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
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This movie definitely deserved to be on the list. I know it's more of a thriller than a horror flick, but it's one of the only movies to ever legitimately frighten me. Maybe THE only movie. And my favorite line was, "Are you about a size 14?" 
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| <span style=saxmachine69 | Dec 6 2011, 03:28 PM Post #90 |
~So Saxy~
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American history X is the best movie ever made, I don't know how it can't be in the top 12 
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~Saxy Stats~
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| <span style=Teighteen | Dec 6 2011, 03:42 PM Post #91 |
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Clinically Cocky
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I remember in my film class in university, I had to analyze like a 10 minute scene from this movie and break down every single shot. Like this, so awful. #1 Scale: mcu to cu Angle: Lower angle Movement: static Time: shorter 7 sec Subjects: Clarice starts to walk down the stairs; she quickly aims the gun down the stairs Mise en Scene: rustic stairwell; directional lighting from right; handgun Sound: slightly suspenseful background music; footsteps Comments: appears as if someone is looking up at Clarice from downstairs; Clarice pointing her gun sets up the next shot |
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| <span style=growsonballs | Dec 6 2011, 04:49 PM Post #92 |
Amazing Ace
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GREAT movie! A classic in every way. |
| Why aren't you pointing your finger at grows, who I have provided sufficient evidence against? She is the starter of all things evil in games. | |
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| <span style=recyclehumans | Dec 6 2011, 05:05 PM Post #93 |
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BOOM! CROASTED.
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#10 Hint: it's from 1998. The next batch of honorable mentions... WIT  THE COLOR OF PARADISE  THE CRUCIBLE  DECONSTRUCTING HARRY  PRINCESS MONONOKE  SECRETS & LIES 
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| <span style=midnight problay | Dec 6 2011, 06:24 PM Post #94 |
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Disgruntled Vet
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The Silence of the Lambs deserved to be higher IMO. It'd crack my Top 10 easily and Jodie Foster is so fucking good in it. I seriously don't think I've ever been as on edge in a movie as when she was roaming around in the dark at the end! Ugh, Princess Mononoke and Secrets & Lies needed to be higher too! Secrets & Lies is probably my favorite Leigh movie, and Princess Mononoke is my favorite Miyazaki The Crucible is kind of a hot mess though.Movie from 1998... if it's The Thin Red Line then even more deserving movies will have been slaughtered before their time  If it's like, Shakespeare in Love though I'll be happy cause it's so underrated nowadays. Just as long as it's not that other WWII movie that I hate.Watch it be like, Pleasantville or Out of Sight or something though. |
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| Blueberry | Dec 6 2011, 06:27 PM Post #95 |
GOD of ORG GODS
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1998? Armageddon
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| <span style=CO | Dec 6 2011, 06:30 PM Post #96 |
A stunning physical specimen
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I'm surprised SotL is out this early actually. One of my favorite movies ever. |
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| <span style=crazyalexi | Dec 6 2011, 06:34 PM Post #97 |
Token Brit
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Secrets and Lies will probably be one of my top five movies ever. Also, has anyone ever really closely examined the movie poster of SOTL?  Adds a whole another level of the picture to me. |
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Top 5 Placings Stranded: Madagascar- Cristina The Pursuit of Happiness- Thomas Paine Glee- Emma Big Brother Fighters- Cameron Diaz Survivor: Isla Redonda- J.P | |
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| <span style=recyclehumans | Dec 6 2011, 06:36 PM Post #98 |
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BOOM! CROASTED.
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None of you will guess it. But sweet merciful baby Jesus. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE will never touch this list. |
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| <span style=midnight problay | Dec 6 2011, 06:41 PM Post #99 |
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Disgruntled Vet
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Gross. |
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| <span style=GnarlsOakley | Dec 6 2011, 06:53 PM Post #100 |
WWLVD?
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I predict the 1998 film to be the 1998 Goya winning masterpiece Barrio |
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