SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (30TH ANNIVERSARY/4K UHD)

Product Information

The narrative concerns the F.B.I.’s quest to find a killer of young, plus-sized women who’re found floating in rivers, partially skinned. Demme rhymes the violence inflicted on the victims with the aggression that F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) weathers in the corridors of government offices and other realms that she investigates while searching for the killer. Throughout the film, Demme contrasts the diminutive Clarice with her tall and burly male colleagues, revealing her existence to be casually rife with battles for respect that many men take for granted as a birthright. Scenes are often shot from Clarice’s point of view, framing men’s faces so that they’re talking directly to the camera, forcing the audience to confront Clarice’s sense of being under siege as she’s sexually harassed, brushed aside, or endlessly condescended to. Well, here’s where things get a little bumpy for this release. There are a lot of bonus features in this set, certainly enough to make most folks happy, but not everything that was included in Criterion’s incredible assortment from 2018. Virtually everything that’s on this disc has been available in previous releases. They're interesting, but they're also not ones exactly worth revisiting multiple times. The writing, adapted from Harris’s novel by Ted Tally, is succinct but never simple; its subtext is complex and open to many interpretations, while never getting bogged down in the police procedural element of the story. Deceptively simple in plot, the film’s many turns creep up on you and never fail satisfy.

The Silence of the Lambs is a genuine classic. The third and to-date last film to win the Oscar Grand Slam of Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Picture. A classy drama/thriller wrapped up in the trappings of a slasher horror feature, this is a film that sequels and reboots simply can’t touch. After nearly a dozen home video releases later, The Silence of the Lambs makes its first impression on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. The Silence of the Lambs is easily one of my favorite movies of all-time (top 10) and is probably The Godfather of the suspense-thriller genre with incredible performances from Foster, Hopkins and Levine and an all-around great experience. Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster - this documentary focuses on the history of The Silence of the Lambs, from its conception through its evolution and ultimately critical and commercial success. Included in it are excerpts from interviews with Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster, as well as plenty of archival production content. The documentary was directed by Laurent Bouzereau 2005. In English, not subtitled. (53 min). Winner of multiple Oscar Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on this release include new audio commentary by critic Tim Lucas; deleted scenes; multiple archival featurettes; archival documentaries; and more. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

Conclusion

The disc then closes with an 8-minute featurettecreated around the film’s release, and then 4-minutes’ worth of storyboards. The featurette is typical of the time while the storyboard feature offers an animated presentation of said storyboards for a few sequences: the Your Self Storage sequence, Bill’s basement, and the final confrontation. Audio from the film plays over these segments. Unfortunately this isn’t as in-depth as what Criterion had on their original DVD. That release also included storyboards for the escape sequence and then storyboard comparisons. This release also drops some of the rather gruesome concept art for the escape sequence. And, as mentioned previously, this edition also drops the text features about serial killers and behavioral science found on the old Criterion DVD. Criterion’s previous DVD was basically a port of their LaserDisc edition and used a non-anamorphic master. All-in-all it actually didn’t look too bad on a standard 4:3 CRT but upscaled it was, well, not great. MGM’s latter DVD and Blu-ray editions were improvements but looking at the Blu-ray again not too long ago it still has a fairly dated and somewhat processed look that could easily be improved upon. That's the case with Johnathan Demme's thirty year-old police procedural thriller, The Silence of the Lambs. Overall, a pretty average-sounding movie, to be honest. However, the music, dialogue, and production are all top-notch. Deleted Scenes (37:58) – Here we get 22 scenes that were either cut down or removed and might not be in the best condition, but nice to get them here. Included is the outtakes reel and Anthony Hopkins’s phone message.

a tense but often formal mainstream depiction of serial killer profiling which would be something of a progenitor for all the similarly-toned thrillers since, up to and including David Fincher's recent Mindhunter Since he did an impeccable job reviewing this film already, I’m going to give a lot of this space to David Krauss’ review of the 2018 Criterion Collection Edition Jonathan Demme may not be remembered for much before or since (notwithstanding the valiant effort put into the Denzel Washington remake of The Manchurian Candidate, or the underrated Rachel Getting Married, featuring one of Anne Hathaway's best performances) but the early nineties saw two of his features attracting Oscar attention, with his most memorable moment coming in '91, where he crafted a tense but often formal mainstream depiction of serial killer profiling and hunting which would be something of a progenitor for all the similarly-toned thrillers since, up to and including David Fincher's recent Mindhunter TV series. Altogether I found this a really solid set of features, though do sort of miss the material not ported over from the Criterion DVD. The stuff on this disc about profiling and behavioral science is fine though I think I preferred the text information on the old Criterion DVD. It would have admittedly also been great to get new interviews with the cast members, but then this would have more than likely just repeated details already covered in other supplements. Still, even though most of the material comes from older releases, this is the most comprehensive special edition released for the film so far. ClosingClarice Starling ( Jodie Foster) is a headstrong, diligent cadet in training at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She is summoned by her mentor, Crawford, to interview the captured serial killer Hannibal ‘the Cannibal’ Lecter ( Anthony Hopkins), under the unwitting pretext of a general profiling questionnaire. What this leads to is a showdown with an active serial killer by the name of Buffalo Bill, a sadistic butcher of women. During the course of this investigation, Clarice must let the utterly insane Dr Lecter further and further inside her mind to save the next abductee from becoming Bill’s next victim. This film’s every frame oozes tension and terror. It’s unrelenting in its exposure of the crimes these offenders commit, the worlds they inhabit and the banality they prey from, with its choice of locations, its framing, and its drab, understated treatment of the visuals. It grounds the film in a reality of sorts that allows for these larger than life monsters to terrify characters we can instantly relate to, and it does it in such a masterfully subtle way you are never conscious of it. You’re completely immersed in Starling’s plight, both to catch the killer and to prove herself in a man’s world with dignity. And the film? As noted, a magnificent production. Not without Very minor faults, but things that will never be noticed by even the most attentive audience member.