Red Dragon, 2002

In an American Film Institute poll, Hannibal Lecter was chosen the #1 villain of U.S. movies. I too love his fastidious madness, the elegant logic behind his cannibal cravings. To me, though, The Silence of the Lambs was to me a competent but pallid version of Thomas Harris' soul-chilling novel. Ridley Scott's sequel, Hannibal, was a creepy treat, but including it here would break my one-film-per-director limit. So here's the Brett Ratner-directed Red Dragon, itself a remake of Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter, the film that introduced Lecter to movies. Anthony Hopkins' Lecter is a supporting player in the central drama of a sad killer (Ralph Fiennes) and the blind woman (Emily Watson) he may be befriending. I've written before that the power of Harris' novels and the films made from them derives from their daring to walk into the haunted house of madness, and live there. You may not care to move in, but Red Dragon makes for a memorable visit.