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mayAnthony Hopkins
Following are movies and
DVDs starring actor Anthony Hopkins:
The Silence of the Lambs
(Widescreen Special Edition)
Amazon.com essential video Based on Thomas Harris's
novel, this terrifying film by Jonathan Demme really
only contains a couple of genuinely shocking moments
(one involving an autopsy, the other a prison
break). The rest of the film is a splatter-free
visual and psychological descent into the hell of
madness, redeemed astonishingly by an unlikely
connection between a monster and a haunted young
woman. Anthony Hopkins is extraordinary as the
cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter,
virtually entombed in a subterranean prison for the
criminally insane. At the behest of the FBI,
agent-in-training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster)
approaches Lecter, requesting his insights into the
identity and methods of a serial killer named
Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In exchange, Lecter
demands the right to penetrate Starling's most
painful memories, creating a bizarre but palpable
intimacy that liberates them both under separate but
equally horrific circumstances. Demme, a filmmaker
with a uniquely populist vision (Melvin and Howard,
Something Wild), also spent his early years making
pulp for Roger Corman (Caged Heat), and he hasn't
forgotten the significance of tone, atmosphere, and
the unsettling nature of a crudely effective
close-up. Much of the film, in
fact, consists of actors staring straight into the
camera (usually from Clarice's point of view),
making every bridge between one set of eyes to
another seem terribly dangerous. --Tom Keogh
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