NEW REVIEWS!!! ........................................ The Butterfly Effect The Cooler Ella Enchanted Eternal Sunshine Hellboy Mean Girls 13 Going on 30 Used Cars The Whole Ten Yards

The first "Silence of the Lambs" movie was considered by the academy, actually, not to exist. "Manhunter" didn't quite live up to "Platoon" that year. The second one swept the Oscars, made a buttload of money, and left the people begging for more. Ironically, most of them wanting another Lecter film were unaware of "Manhunter." Also, many miss the humor in there being a Lecter's Kitchenware store at many malls across the nation.

As a follow up in nature, it holds true to form. It relies quite a bit on the originals, doesn't quite hold up as far as the mystery or suspense go, and made a buttload of money. I'm not saying it wasn't enjoyable. I actually think that was the problem. It was too enjoyable. I was giggling more than I was creeped out, by a long shot. There was never a real sense of unease or peril, except for some of the gross outs. Lecter has taken to picking his nose and eating it! Kidding.

Anthony Hopkins was a sure fire sign-on, seeing how much fun he is allowed to have in this script, a very concise and expertly censored one by Mamet and Zaillian. He gets to do all kinds of twisted things than any Brit seems capable of underneath, those evil bastards! Sorry, just thinking of "The Patriot." Unfortunately, you want to see him go out there and be wicked and evil, so you want him to kill a bunch of people. This is really our first chance to see Hannibal the Cannibal out there on the streets doing what he does best: critiquing art. In between, he does kill a lot.

Julianne Moore went under some fire for being picked to replace Jodie Foster in the Oscar winning role. There was doubt? She's been nominated more times than Elliot Gould and John Goodman have hosted SNL combined. The only reason she lacks awards is that cursed Judi Dench. Julianne Moore may become the female Tim Robbins, except for the writing and directing. She does have a penchant for blending mainstream and art house success, and always being good even if the movie blows, ala "Lost World."

Gary Oldman, also apparently in the film, though you can never be too sure with that slippery sunnovabitch, was excellent if it indeed was him, as Arseface from the popular comic book "Preacher." Rather than being a young boy who ruined his face by trying to emulate Kurt Cobain, he is now a victim of Dr. Lecter, ruining yet another decent comic book origin, but in this case it works. It does, however, make you rethink those buffalo wings you ordered before the movie. Maybe you should have gone with the hot dog instead? Well, considering what they are made of, no. Stick with popcorn, some SnoCaps, and pass on Twizzlers as well, just to be safe.

HORRIBAL

by AG

There's a certain ineffable quality forthcoming sequels possess to which, contrary to my well-honed sense of cynicism, I still fall prey. When the trailers and print ads begin that trickle that signifies the coming deluge, I get a little excited twinge, which I absolutely can't help. Something about seeing beloved characters coming back (it helps if they wear the same costumes) is like finding an undiscovered room in a familiar house. In extreme cases, I even get this response, preconsciously, it would seem, to sequels of movies I didn't even like. A perfect example of this is that, the other day, I actually got an unwilling charge out of seeing the trailer for "The Mummy Returns." Don't ask me where it came from, but there it was.

That's one end of the response spectrum, the "Eagerly Anticipated" Sequel. To a lesser degree on that positive end of things are the "Anticipated" Sequel, the "Okay, They Made a Sequel To That" Sequel, all the way on down to the "I Wanna Burn Down the Houses of Everyone Who Saw the Original and Whether They Liked It Or Not, Boosted the Box Office to the Point Where the Execs Thought It Meant People Really Loved It and Felt the Need to Force A Sequel Upon the World, Thereby Perpetuating the Downward Spiral of American Culture Into the Mouth of the Beast" Sequel (e.g., The Mummy Returns).

Anyway, enough of my running off at the mouth about sequels, and now onto the part where I trash HANNIBAL.

It bit. It bit my ASS. I've actually got a sizeable welt where HANNIBAL leaned over and bit my ass.

I love SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. I absolutely adore it. I think it's one of the smartest thrillers ever, taut as a wire, infused with an unmistakeable and largely inimitable energy, and shrouded in a palpable, intoxicatingly morose fog. It seethed with the terror of unseen things in familiar settings, like the suburban neighbor who has an Inquisition-style basement under his house in which he tortures and kills young women in the interest of making a woman suit. SILENCE, and its predecessor MANHUNTER, are maybe the only movies ever where the refined cannibal incarcerated for some of the grisliest crimes imaginable ISN'T EVEN THE SCARIEST OR SICKEST PERSON IN THE MOVIE. Now, that's an achievement.

Unfortunately, with HANNIBAL, Ridley Scott saw fit to take this achievement out back and take a great big dump on it. Granted, the fault in this isn't entirely Ridley's, although I'll tear into his self-obsessed posturing by and by, in that Thomas Harris, the 800 lb. gorilla behind the Lecter series, sat around for 10 years after SILENCE, and then shat out one of the dumbest betrayals of character and tone ever with the novel of HANNIBAL. To its dubious credit, the movie of HANNIBAL stays fairly faithful to the novel, removing only the most preposterous portions of the book in the process. Unfortunately, without the real whacko stuff, there wasn't much of a story left to work with, and it shows.

We open with Barney the Orderly, one of the least memorable and/or beloved characters from SILENCE, peddling goods from his private Lecter stash to rich, faceless weirdo Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a victim of Lecter's. The makeup job done on Oldman is exceptional, if hideous. He looks like a baby made out of glazed donuts.

Now, here's a problem - we see Barney selling the famous Lecter facemask from SILENCE. Only problem is that mask was used on Lecter in Tennessee just before he escaped, and like as not, Barney, an orderly in a Maryland hospital, wouldn't've been able to put his hands on it. But, let's not put too much weight on that yet.

Elsewhere, our beloved Clarice Starling, (who there's something different about this time around; I can't exactly say what ...) is in deep shit for a botched drug bust which, oh yeah, wasn't at all her fault, a fact to which about two dozen FBI agents could testify, if, ya know, anybody bothered to ask. Anyway, her punishment is apparently to sit in a basement for the first half of the movie. And yet we wonder why Jodie Foster turned the movie down.

Clarice bides her time (and ours, for that matter) listening to taped conversations between herself and Lecter from SILENCE, supplied to her by Barney. How Barney got the tapes from their discussions in Tennessee, which one of them clearly is, is a mystery, but hey. Also, Barney clearly says that Dr. Chilton taped Clarice and Lecter's conversations after their first meeting. So how is it Clarice can now listen to a tape of their first meeting?

Anyhoo, Clarice is contacted by Verger, who's interested in using her, and Lecter's fascination with her, to find the fugitive gourmand. She celebrates this by going back to the basement for another hour and a half.

Hey, speaking of the fugitive gourmand, there he is in Florence, apparently going to the same tailor as Tom Wolfe. Sure, we know the big H has a flair for the finer things in life, but wouldn't you think an internationally wanted criminal would wear something a little less conspicuous than the largest, whitest fedora this side of the Source Awards? Hell, a baseball cap with flashing red letters that spell out "FUGITIVE," a novelty foam index finger saying "I'M NUMBER ONE ... ON THE FBI'S MOST WANTED LIST" and a moving fireworks display that shoots the words "HANNIBAL LECTER RIGHT HERE IN THE HAT" in gold sparks every half hour on the half hour would be easier to hide under than Lecter's Florentine Truman Capote get-up. Anyway, he's trying to take over the curatorship of a Renaissance library when he's contacted by Rinaldo Pazzi, who's apparently the dumbest cop in all of Tuscany. Let me break my narrative for a moment to say that, history of the name aside, this is the worst choice for a character's name maybe ever, since it either comes out sounding like the Anson Williams character on "Happy Days," or, in Anthony Hopkins's midatlantic Lecter accent, "Patsy." Bad, bad character name.

Anyway, through a series of coincidences that would make the head writer on Scooby Doo blush, Potsie figures out he's on the trail of the infamous Lecter, which is tough to figure out since Lecter hasn't bothered to alter his physical appearance in any way. But trifles aside, Patsy gets wind of the reward offered by Verger, and tries to take Lecter down by himself, thus winning the award for DUMBEST COP IN ALL OF TUSCANY. We've watched Potsie spend hours online researching Lecter (by the way, the only thing more boring than hours of online research is watching a movie where a character does hours of online research), and yet he tries to take him down by himself. I just want to reiterate that he is the DUMBEST COP IN ALL OF TUSCANY, MAYBE ALL OF ITALY. The son of Inspector Clouseau, as played by Roberto Benigni was sharper than this tack.

So, Lecter hops a jet to the States, encountering no trouble apparently, despite his high rank on the FBI list. I wonder if he was seated between Usama Bin Laden and Roman Polanski on that flight. Oh what lively chats they must've had. Clarice gets booted off the force, courtesy of the smarmy manipulations of bureaucrat and Verger toady Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) who wants to fuck Clarice's career almost as badly as he wants to fuck Clarice.

Lecter teases Clarice, playing a pointless game of tag in D.C.'s Union Station, only to be outsmarted and captured by Verger's crack team of pig farmers. Lecter's supposed to be brilliant, right? So, what does he do? Goes out in public, KNOWING HE'S BEING FOLLOWED, and is captured BY A TEAM OF SARDINIAN PIG FARMERS. In the immortal words of Foghorn Leghorn, "What, I say, WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Anyway, Clarice follows the captors to the pig farm, rescues Lecter, who then rescues her, and comes up with a way of disposing of Verger that would make the Joel Schumacher-era Batman movies look like prime, pristine film-class examples of narrative complexity and plausibility.

Then there's the end where Anthony Hopkins eats pieces of Ray Liotta's brain while Liotta is still alive. Sorry for the spoiler, but there you have it.

As Pacino put it, "I have just concluded my opening statement."

To follow up so tense and terse a movie as SILENCE with such an overblown, hamfistedly sensuous piece of doody as HANNIBAL is to go a long way toward undoing the exemplary tone, pacing and character development of its predecessor. Part of what made Lecter such a horrifying-for-all-time psycho in SILENCE is that he was behind bars for most of the movie - which relegated his crimes and potential for viciousness to the realms of our collective imagination - and was then forced to McGuyverian lengths to escape, armed only with a ballpoint pen, proving his malicious genius with every whack of that police baton. Now that we know Lecter can walk into any store and buy a knife, it diminishes his fiendishness, reducing him basically to Jason Voorhees. In fact, HANNIBAL's reliance on cheap jolts and gross-outs brings into clear relief its makers' willingness to jettison tension and quality in favor of a lowest common denominator-pleasing "BOO!" factor.

But HANNIBAL's failings aren't just evident when held against SILENCE; HANNIBAL manages to suck on its own merits. With no "ticking clock," as it were, and no explanation of why, after ten years of successfully dodging the law, Lecter is so effectively sussed out in a matter of weeks by THE DUMBEST COP IN ALL OF TUSCANY, HANNIBAL starts out implausibly before unravelling into a pointlessness, and ultimately into camp with the brain-feeding end.

Never having been overawed with Ridley Scott's brand of auteurism, I don't have any qualms about pointing out Scott's self-important artsy-fartsiness (with an emphasis on the latter), his poor sense of pacing, and his utter lack of humor. Also, if you're reading this, Ridley, shame on you for pandering so obviously to an audience just dying to hear Lecter hiss out "The Efffffffff Beeeeeeee Eyeeeeeeeee." This and other such attempts to remind the audience of the brilliance of SILENCE (of which we were already keenly aware, thanks very much) serve only to show HANNIBAL's flaws, and frankly, Rid, we didn't need your help spotting them