Cinema: Brain Food and Soul Food

Hannibal offers plenty of culinary gross-outs, but this superior sequel has romance in its dark heart

FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) has tracked Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) into Washington's Union Station. Now she's lost his trail. She scans the crowd, her back to a whirling carousel. She doesn't notice a hand ruffling her hair--hardly more than a breeze--of someone riding the carousel. Lecter.

A banquet of creepy, gory or grotesque incidents is on display in Hannibal, the corrosive and haunting film version of Thomas Harris' sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. One man is disemboweled and hanged in public, his entrails dangling like a watch fob. Another is thrown to ravenous wild boars as...

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