Released to box-office indifference in 1986, Manhunter introduced Hannibal Lecter and established the rules of the modern race-to-find-the-serial-killer thriller five years before The Silence of the Lambs packed cinemas everywhere. This was Michael Mann's third feature, reuniting William L Petersen and Dennis Farina from his debut Thief (1981) as FBI agents hunting the killer ...
Writer-director John Sayles's finest film to date is a sprawling, multilayered exploration of American boundaries--cultural, racial, sexual, temporal--set in a tiny Texas town on (naturally) the border of Mexico. Comparable in scope and detail to such wonderful movies as Nashville, Boogie Nights, or Sayles's own City of Hope, Lone Star plays like a fertile novel, ...