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This Weeks Movie Reviews:

Hannibal Rising Directed by Peter Webber. Written by Thomas Harris. Cinematography, Ben Davis. Music, Ilan Eshkeri and Shigeru Umebayashi. Starring Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans and Richard Brake. MGM, 2007. R. 117 minutes.

The guiltiest of my guilty pleasure films, Top Secret! gave me laughing fits throughout adolescence. Written and directed by the team behind Airplane!, Top Secret! stars a young Val Kilmer as Nick Rivers, an ersatz Elvis Presley who, while on tour in East Germany, becomes involved with the French Resistance. A rich parody of WWII spy films, it’s one of the silliest movies ever made. It’s also one of the most quotable, with lines like “I know a little German.” Pause. “He’s sitting right over there.” The complexity of Eastern Europe during wartime was of no concern to the filmmakers, which probably explains why Top Secret! came to mind as I suffered through Hannibal Rising. For fans of Hannibal Lecter, the similarity isn’t a good thing. Read more…