We start 1991 not in January, but in February. Partly because it just happened to work out that way. And partly because 1991's movie year - full of legends, beauty and the Beast and Thelma & Louise and JFK and Paris is Burning and Soapdish - can be said to center around the February box office smash that became a home video sensation, with enough heat to win Best Picture a year and a month after its initial release. Yes, yes: The Silence of the Lambs.
The film has an interesting pedigree for a blockbuster and Oscar winner. Based on a pulp paperback thriller, The Silence of the Lambs follows FBI trainee Clarice Starling as she hunts down a serial killer who skins his female victims; in her mission, she consults with the imprisoned murderer-psychiatrist-cannibal-genius Hannibal Lecter, who plays his own mind games with her. The director is Jonathan Demme, who by this time had become more known for his critically-acclaimed comedies like Melvin and Howard and Married to the Mob, though he initially broke through with exploitation pictures for Roger Corman, such as Caged Heat and Crazy Mama. The stars are Jodie Foster, a former child star who, with her Oscar-winning turn in 1988's The Accused, graduated into Serious Adult Actor, and Anthony Hopkins, a Welsh actor more known to the US for serious prestige work like The Lion in Winter or 87 Charing Cross Road. Together with writer Ted Tally, they made what could have been a lurid thriller and turned it into a hit with critics and audiences - and an enduring cinema classic.
Oh, yes, classic. We don't like to think of anything made after the 1960s as a classic, but it's been 35 years, I think we can say it, and The Silence of the Lambs more than qualifies, if just for how ubiquitous the film's iconography has become. Yes, the book series by Thomas Harris was already popular, and Michael Mann adapted Red Dragon into Manhunter in 1986, but it's the success of The Silence of the Lambs that gives us a four-film franchise, two television series (Hannibal and the short-lived Clarice), a musical parody (Silence! The Musical), decades of references (Zootopia 2 just last year paid homage), and even an "unconventional biography" (Brian Raftery's Hannibal Lecter: A Life, published just this February). Even during the film's first month of release, you could feel it: Foster and Hopkins presented the writing awards at the Academy Awards for 1990, just one month after The Silence of the Lambs came our, and were introduced with great fanfare and greeted by loud applause. When the VHS came out in October, it became the most rented video in the country. When the Academy Awards for 1991 were held the next year, the film became the third (and, so far, final) to win The Big Five: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay (adapted, in this case). That's a lot of momentum to carry for a year, but it had the goods.
And to think, in some places it played alongside these films:
Popcorn
release: February 1
dir: Mark Herrier
pr: Ashok Amritraj / Gary Goch / Torben Johnke / Bob Clark
scr: Alan Ormsby (as Tod Hakcett), story by Mitchell Smith
cin: Ronnie Taylor
A slasher film where film school students hold a horrothon fundraiser at a derelict theater and fall victim to a crazed killer with a penchant for disguises. A lot to love here: assorted adults are played by beloved veterans Ray Walston, Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace Stone, and Tom Villard; the films screened at the all-night horrorthon are pastiche pictures paying homage to old-school creature features and sci-fi silliness; and there's a touch of the supernatural, what with psychic/prophetic dreams and the suggestion that our final girl and the killer communicate beyond this plane. It's also patently ridiculous, and you would accuse it of straining credulity in the execution of its plot and, uh, executions, were it not for the fact that it's really not aiming for believability. We're here to have a grisly good time, and by God, it delivers.
L.A. Story
release: February 8
dir: Mick Jackson
pr: Daniel Melnick / Michael Rachmil
scr: Steve Martin
cin: Andrew Dunn
A loving send-up of Los Angeles surrounds a rom-com where a weatherman who's more entertainer than meteorologist questions his life as he falls for a visiting English journalist and begins consulting an oracular traffic sign. The runner of the all-important traffic sign is pretty good, honestly, making the easiest joke about L.A. and finding magic: well, that's what we all do here, isn't it, that's why it's the Dream Factory. And some of the jokes, even (especially?) the most absurd, still ring true, like arriving to a dinner date an hour late and being the first to arrive. I chuckled, I cackled, even, and I told friends who hadn't seen it, "You have to see it, it just gets it." The trick, of course, is that it's as committed to the romance and the aforementioned magic as it is to the friendly needling of a city it so clearly loves. I'm impressed, honestly, it works.
The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
release: February 8
dir: George Miller (not that one)
pr: Dieter Geissler
scr: Karin Howard, from the novel by Michael Ende
cin: David Connell
A sequel to one of my all-time favorites, in which Earthbound Bastian finds himself not just reading about Fantasia, but transported into the story, where he has to save the land of imagination from dark forces; meanwhile, his father reads the story of his travels and becomes just as engrossed as Bastian was in the first film. Seven years later, of course, all the kids are recast, but this Bastian with loud recitations and constantly working face just doesn't come across as natural...and neither does his dad (who could replace Gerald McRaney?), though the match in energy feels convincingly genetic. It's still inspired when it comes to the sets, costumes, and score, the initial sequence where Bastian comes to the Silver City, the citizens floating in slo-mo as his boat arrives across an acid lake, being just one great example of all the elements coming together beautifully. The puppertry is noticeably off, which is to say: this is not my Falcor. It's not the original, but it's nothing to be sniffed at.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
release: February 8
dir/scr: Tom Stoppard, from his play
pr: Emanuel Azenberg / Michael Brandman
cin: Peter Biziou
Hamlet from the point of view of the titular supporting characters, who appear in the original play as school friends tasked by the Royal Family with ensnaring him in a trap and appear here as...post-modern philosophical avant-garde clowns? I bet I would like such a thing onstage, but, while I could not say I was ever even annoyed by the movie, it felt like work to finish it. I don't think I mind deconstructions, but if you wouldn't mind a stupid note: onstage, the growing realization that all this has happened before and will happen again, as a drama controlled by the Players; that is, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become aware that they are merely characters in an oft-staged play, can only work on the stage unless you are willing to call back more obviously to previous screen adaptations. Or maybe I just don't recognize the references?
The Silence of the Lambs
release: February 14
wins: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Adapted Screenplay
nominations: Best Editing (Craig McKay), Best Sound (Tom Fleischman / Christopher Newman)
dir: Jonathan Demme
pr: Ron Bozman / Edward Saxon / Kenneth Utt
scr: Ted Tally
cin: Tak Fujimoto
A rewatch! Oh! And here we are, see above. I'll get into my personal thoughts more when we start covering the Oscars.
King Ralph
release: February 15
dir: David S. Ward
pr: Jack Brodsky
scr: David S. Ward, from the novel Headlong by Emlyn Williams
cin: Kenneth MacMillan
An American lounge singer becomes heir to the Throne of England when the entire Royal Family is zapped during a photo op. There's less tension than you'd think, not in the traditional sense, not to me, anyway, and I think a lot of that is owing to the casting of John Goodman in the lead role: you want a guy who's naturally kind and casually American, this is the right guy, and he sells it, not a naif but a genuine soul who can only be who he is while a nation, a world, asks him to be something else. It's maybe too easygoing to the point of being inconsequential, but there are worse ways to spend 96 minutes. Peter O'Toole appears to be wearing eyeliner, which looks awful, but I forgive, because he gives a reliably wonderful performance.
Nothing But Trouble
release: February 15
dir: Dan Aykroyd
pr: Lester Berman / Robert K. Weiss
scr: Dan Aykroyd, story by Peter Aykroyd
cin: Dean Cundey
A rewatch! Back in college, I bought this as a cheap DVD and my roommates and I watched this ol' haunted house-inspired comedy about Manhattanites who wind up off the grid in a backwoods hellhole run by a decrepit judge and his evil sense of justice. I just don't know how to adjudicate something like this, something that is so beholden, a valentine, to Old Hollywood spook-goofs like The Cat and the Canary, its heart in the right place, and yet with an execution that is...well, it's bad. I guess I do know how to adjudicate this: the set designers and construction workers did their thing, the prosthetics team earned their keep and then some, but as an experience, it's akin to watching the best person you know, the hottest and most charming guy or girl you know who everyone knew was destined for greatness, trip over their own feet and, in the fall, wet themselves while sobbing, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean this, I'm so sorry, please don't hate me." It's a chore.
Scenes from a Mall
release: February 22
dir/pr: Paul Mazursky
scr: Roger L. Simon & Paul Mazursky
cin: Fred Murphy
A long-married couple goes to the mall on their anniversary and discovers that their decades of happiness may be built on deceit. Or maybe in just being happy enough, one of the beautiful things about this movie is that it never judges or derides, even as its characters do, instead allowing the space for its protagonists to take on multiple roles - protagonist, antagonist, observer - sometimes all at once. I was shocked to learn this was a critical bomb; to me, not only are Bette Midler and Woody Allen perfectly matched as performers (hard to believe it's only happened this once, with Paul Mazursky), but even on a script level, it's an incvisive observation of happily-married success stories who still have itches they need to scratch, secrets they need to keep, and carnality that hasn't been unlocked. Every single person I've ver met, no matter their tax bracket or relationship status, feels that absence of something, real or imagined, and this flick is a great depiction of how we fill those voids, whether through affairs, or parties, or indulgence at a one-stop shop for American capitalism. And then there's Bill Irwin as a silent mime throughout!
The Doors
release: March 1
dir: Oliver Stone
pr: Bill Graham / Sasha Harari / A. Kitman Ho
scr: Randall Jahnson and Oliver Stone
cin: Robert Richardson
A rewatch! A favorite film of my dad’s, I just remember coming home one year and not only was it on all the time, but the soundtrack was in constant rotation in the car. As you guess from the title, it’s about the 70s rock band The Doors, though it’s especially focused on lead singer Jim Morrison, suggesting that his early death at age 27 was somehow preordained, as the specter of a Native American haunts him during moments of release, celebration, degradation, and fall-on-the-ground drunkenness. Sometimes it’s too much, with on-the-nose dialogue, the worst wigs you’ve ever seen, histrionic performances, and a curious lack of either joy or mischief, curious for a biopic of young musicians: a little levity might add some complexity, not to mention believability, to the relationships. And yet, there’s no denying that when it’s working - the desert trip, the concerts as occult bacchanalia, Val Kilmer’s channeling of some truly Weird Energy - it’s compelling stuff, so one can’t just outright dismiss it…very typical of Oliver Stone, honestly.
New Jack City
release: March 8
dir: Mario Van Peebles
pr: George Jackson / Doug McHenry
scr: Thomas Lee Wright and Barry Michael Cooper, story by Thomas Lee Wright
cin: Francis Kenny
Wesley Snipes is a drug kingpin, Ice-T is an undercover cop, and 1980s NYC is their battleground. Just because this is about the streets doesn't mean we have to be drab: the slick and sexy (and colorful) wardrobe, the unusual interiors where expensive-looking nouveau deco furniture seems to just float in otherwise empty loft spaces, the stylized cinematography - it almost feels like the previous year’s Dick Tracy in its approach. But that feels accurate: these aren’t subtle people, these are exploiters suddenly flush with money who, by necessity, must keep close to their customer base, what else are they gonna do with it? A hell of an ending, just one big punch to the gut...and the floor collapses just as you land.
Defending Your Life
release: March 22
dir/scr: Albert Brooks
pr: Michael Grillo
cin: Allen Daviau
Albert Brooks dies and is sent to an in-between afterlife, where he must defend his conduct on Earth to see how he will spend eternity. Very sweet, just simply asks us to interrogate the safe choices we all make and ask, was this a life, not even well-lived, but lived at all (and once you learn how the Afterlife works in this movie, it puts quite a spin on “the meek shall inherit”)? Rip Torn is a gas as the defense counselor who’s always laying on the bullshit, making a meal out of phrases like “big bearrrrr” and deploying that guffaw just perfectly. Lee Grant’s effective as the opposition, and, of course, Meryl Streep as the Perfect Woman Brooks meets in the afterlife is, uh, heavenly. Just utterly charming.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
release: March 22
dir: Michael Pressman
pr: David Chan / Kim Dawson / Thomas K. Gray
scr: Todd W. Langen, based on characters created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird
cin: Shelly Johnson
A rewatch! Sequel to the 1990 sleeper hit about, uh, teenage mutant ninja turtles, here we see them confront their origins, face an old enemy, and square off against new mutant creatures. A new April O'Neill, a surprisingly game David Warner, cutie-patootie Ernie Reyes, and a finale dance-off featuring Vanilla Ice: ha, well, OK! Much more energized than the previous entry, this one seems more definitely targeted towards children, not a bad thing, but it feels...slighter. As a kid, I preferred this one, as an adult, gimme the original, even if this one does boast that unexpected "Momma" moment.
Tomorrow, we hit the road with Thelma & Louise…
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