The reason why people dig Hannibal Lecter is because he's a slick smart evil bastard.

Trust me, people in general admire ingenuity, even while he's going to lunch on you.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, whatever its the best movie of 1990 is up for debate, but its a very good piece of thriller-entertainment. Too bad that Ted Levine got typecasted for more than a decade as a crazy-ass psychopath. Luckily, he's rehabbed his career with solid work on MONK as police Captain Stottlemyer.

Now HANNIBAL, is a situation where the script is a mess. Of course, I thought the book itself was a mess, which means trying to script a movie out of a wreck of a book is almost a losing proposition.

However, Ridley Scott's direction is superb as always, and he gets decent dramatic jobs from Ray Liotta and the uncredited Gary Oldman. Besides, the ending shot of the movie is just damn evil...

I'm surprised nobody has talked about MANHUNTER, Michael Mann's 1986 adaptation of RED DRAGON. Interesting.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1990) - ****
HANNIBAL (2001) - ***
MANHUNTER (1986) - **1/2
RED DRAGON (2002) - **1/2