Brilliantly acted thriller

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2001)

Even though it's been 10 years since this film came out, "The Silence of the Lambs" is a movie that I still can't believe won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1991. This is the kind of movie that Academy voters usually don't go for, and it was released in February of that year. Movies released very early in the year hardly ever win Oscar's top prize. But in another way I can see why this film went on the become the third movie in Oscar history to win the top 5 Oscars (the other two were 1934's "It Happened One Night" and 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). It's a very well made and brilliantly acted suspense-thriller. Jodie Foster has never been better in her second Best Actress Oscar-winning performance of her great career (following her first, 1988's "The Accused") as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee who goes to visit Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Best Actor Anthony Hopkins), a very smart man who has a nasty habit of eating human flesh (Yuck!). Starling hopes that Dr. Lecter can provide information for her and her FBI team in catching a serial killer who likes to skin his victims, and at the moment has kidnapped the daughter of a senator. "The Silence of the Lambs" is a movie that is quite disturbing to watch at times. Some of the images are ugly and downright horrifying. But those two performances by Foster and Hopkins make this movie as good as it is. I couldn't take my eyes off of them everytime they were on screen. "The Silence of the Lambs" certainly held my attention, and I would have to say of all the five movies nominated for Best Picture of 1991 (the other nominees were "Beauty and the Beast", "Bugsy", "JFK", and "The Prince of Tides"), this one is definitely the best.
***1/2 (out of four)