The Silence of the Lambs

1991

Jonathan Demme's thriller became only the third film ever to sweep the top five Academy Awards. Jodie Foster plays Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee sent to interview an imprisoned psychiatrist in the hope that he can help her profile a killer still at large. Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal Lecter and won Best Actor on remarkably little screen time, with Scott Glenn as Starling's supervisor and Ted Levine as the man she is hunting. Its power comes from restraint and from everything Demme keeps just outside the frame.