Manhunter (1986)

Jumping a bit out of order, but Roommate Russ offered to take me to see this on the big screen; it’s one of his favorites, and a nearby theater was screening the directors’ cut for a couple weeks and he invited several friends to screenings to justify some repeat viewings for himself. There’s also going to be a bit of a temporal disconnect when you hear that this film is actually the first screen depiction of the character “Hannibal Lecter”. Silence Of The Lambs came out five years after this, and focused considerably more closely on the relationship between the serial killer Lecter and an FBI agent seeking his counsel. Here, Lecter is played by Brian Cox, and has only three short-ish scenes to work with – so he doesn’t have as much time to give Lecter much in the way of “quirks”. He’s still very dangerous and clever, of course, but a bit more modest. Instead, this film focuses more on the FBI agent “Will Graham” (Will Peterson), pulled out of retirement by “Jack Crawford” (Dennis…