The Usual Suspects
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It's pretty much as good as you would expect it to be. Kevin Spacey is UNBELIEVABLY awesome as the main character, Gabriel Bryne's great, and Del Toro is a major badass with wicked fashion sense. It's essentially a crime thriller with the narrative structure of something like Citizen Kane and a KILLER ending that I...kinda guessed right before it happened. Still though, it's brilliant, and it seems like one that'll be just as fun to rewatch as it was to see it the first time. Check it out, definitely -- one of the best movies of the 90s.
The Silence of the Lambs
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So I finally saw this, and....am I the only one who thinks it's a bit overrated? Sure, it's a fine movie, but it feels more like a really good one than an all-time GREAT one. I was never really *that* freaked out by it, and that's saying something -- it doesn't take much for a movie to scare me, and this one didn't really hit me at all. With the obvious exception of any moment when Anthony Hopkins was onscreen, it just kinda came off as a decent, well-made FBI thriller -- nothing too special, but definitely enjoyable. However, Hopkins' performance is truly dynamite, albeit a little weakened by its massive level of public awareness. It's sort of like how in The Godfather, the line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" doesn't hold nearly the same amount of potency now that it did at its release, simply because it's so cliche. That's how I felt about a good deal of Hopkins' work here. But nevertheless -- a fine movie, just not one of my personal favorites.