The Silence of the Lambs (November 7th at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS screens Friday November 7th at 7:00 pm, 9:30 pm, and midnight at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

The entertainment media/pop-culture industry was making money off serial killers wayyy before THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (see Ripper, Jack the...), but the monster success of Jonathan Demme's 1991 thriller was taken by tastemakers to be something of a cultural watershed. Released in a spring movie-off season, the slick, satisfying, sinister picture was a box-office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar, making its murderous antihero Hannibal Lecter a much-imitated screen icon. And it gave film-critic-turned-right-wing-talk-show-host Michael Medved (hey, how do I get on board that gravy train? I need money too) exhibit A for his culture-wars book Hollywood vs. America.

Elysium

Review by Pete Roche

“Blessed are the poor,” opined evangelist Matthew.  “For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

The beatitude figures heavily in the sophomore science-fiction adventure from Neill Blomkamp, the upstart South African director who delighted many fans of the genre (and disgusted others) with his 2009 segregation allegory DISTRICT 9. 

In ELYSIUM, urban blight has gone global by the early 22^nd century, leaving Earth ill, underfed, overpopulated, and crime-infested.  The skyscrapers once occupied by well-to-do execs have been abandoned to street urchins and opportunists, but most of the planet’s millions of luckless souls live crammed in polluted slums and tent cities on the outskirts of the former metropolises.  Sentry robots maintain order with iron hands (literally) and have zero tolerance for resistance or sarcasm.  Astounding advances have been made in science and medicine, but the tech isn’t available to the impoverished 99%.