Silence... or Se7en?

Both.

You are sin.

Silence of the Lambs. It won Best Picture because of how much substance it has as a horror film. Seven isn't anywhere as great as Silence/Lambs.

Metallica, Iron Maiden, and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan

There is no comparison between the two.

<“Every man of courage is a man of his word.” - Pierre Corneille>

I'm probably in the minority, but I prefer Se7en.

Silence fan through and through. I did like Se7en, as I think Kevin Spacey is a great actor. I just did not like Se7en the same way I love Silence.

Unfortunately, I just cannot stand Paltrow.

((Damn the remakes, Save the originals.))

I like Se7en, but mainly because Fincher is a consummate visual stylist, a virtuoso. He never makes an unwatchable movie.

For example, I found the premise of "Panic Room," to be completely oblique and hard to relate to (unless I summer in the Hamptons and golf with Donald Trump), yet Fincher forced me to like the contrived nature of it (a daughter stuck in a vault who needs insulin shots, with no mini-fridge, of course; and a cell phone that can't get a signal within its walls... good design and planning, lol) by making engrossing entertainment.

Se7en is an appetizer before the entree, and "Fight Club" is Fincher's main course statement piece.

But I don't think Se7en is in the same league as Silence, despite - or in spite of - the IMDB rankings (Let's get rid of this 20th century art-house trash and make room for another comic book movie, you guys! This one crammed at least 20 superheroes onto the screen at once! Screw Kieslowski, Kubrick and Kurosawa. That's only one letter of the alphabet, I know, but Nolan is one of the Top 3 / 5 directors of all time - living or dead - according to IMDB!) The latter has depth, psychology, and something meaningful to say.

Silence is like the host of the house party who takes you to a comfortable sofa in a quiet corner and asks about what you're going to do with your life after college, how you are handling your painful breakup after a 5 year relationship, or how you are dealing with your parents' divorce. He cracks a light-hearted joke or two so you laugh instead of cry over the uncertainty and doom and gloom.

It could have been all about him that night - in a series of superficial meet and greets - but for a while, he made it about you.

He is so charming, cool, genuinely concerned for your well-being by making a human connection.

Se7en is more like the younger brother of the host, who is envious of all the attention that his sophisticated, older, first-born sibling is getting. They both have the same values passed down from the parents, they both went to the same schools, they both majored in the same thing at college, and they both want to get into the same line of work.

Se7en is a bit insecure, and has to prove himself by over-compensating and acting like a flashy douchebag at the party and is now getting increasingly blackout drunk. Se7en, naturally, is going to invite some of his best friends: "The Usual Suspects," "The Sixth Sense," "Inception," "The Prestige," and "Now You See Me" (all interesting movies, a few very fine / original even, but of the same "You Might Also Enjoy" vein for me.)

Despite surface appearances, Se7en actually has less in common with his older brother Silence and more in common with the squad of his best friends.

They all stand around at the party being smug, trying to out-do and smugly impress each other with parlour tricks, gimmicks and loud spectacles. They need to make sure everyone in the room knows just how clever they are. Look at me, LoOk aT Me, LOOK AT ME!!!! I'M SO CLEVER YOUR BRAIN IS GONNA 'SPLODE!!! NO, *I'M* MORE CLEVER! TELL UR FRIENDS!

There's a fine line between the kind of clever presenting a mind-frackery that feels organic to the raison d'etre or core story (The Matrix and its world physics, Eternal Sunshine, Memento for the most part) and the kind of clever that self-consciously draws attention to itself, to its director / auteur, and to the way the screenplays were artificially constructed by their respective writer(s).

When Starling found an auspicious resolution to her problems, I was happy for her. A poignant end.

Now, this may be a consequence of unconvincing acting from Pitt / Spacey / Paltrow, but in contrast, when Paltrow's head was in a box or whatever , I remained unmoved. It was kind of cool that Spacey's smug character got his way and made his point.

I'm still mad that Paltrow's trifle of a role in "Shakespeare in Love" that year robbed Cate Blanchett's "Elizabeth" that was so well-acted it felt, at times, like a sumptuously shot documentary.

Some industry big shots and GOOP "haters" may have suppressed a giggle and found it delightful that in "Contagion," Paltrow dies again and has an autopsy scene that is hardly glamorous.

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Also, Se7en came out after Silence. I feel that the genesis of the spec screenplay ("Stop the serial killer, and, oh btw, in real life, serial killers have intelligence levels that fall on a averaged out bell curve like the rest of us, but a character who isn't nice in this movie just so happens to have a high IQ and is out to mess with someone else's head... I just came up with that on the spot, y'all") was influenced by the buzz of industry insiders, bestseller book lists, and Silence being shopped around years before that. It feels SO OBVIOUSLY derivative.

To me, Se7en just shoehorned Kevin Spacey (who, in "The Usual Suspects," smugly plays the smartest guy in the room and in Se7en he smugly plays the smartest guy in the room again) into a proven formula (the skeletal outline of Silence.) And amped up the grisly.

Silence walked on a dangerous tightrope years before that, taking all sorts of acrobatic (read: artistic) risks on edgy subject matter for the time period - even though there was a chance to fall flat on its face.

Silence was innovative, a smashing commercial and critical success - almost inventing a whole new sub-genre-as-viable-revenue-stream in the years that followed.

Se7en is the opportunistic Me Too parasite, only capitalising on what was already established to be successful, in a refinement attempt. Whether it refined anything and to what degree is up for debate. Whether it would have existed at all, or been green-lighted - without Silence as a predecessor - is also up for debate.

Silence = iPhone 3G (touch screen phone), iOS (touch screen O/S with app store delivery system), Macbook Air (radical minimalist machined metal form factor laptop excising both optical media drive and mechanical hard disk), Nintendo Wii, Facebook status, Amazon Echo, Game of Thrones (no one is safe because this is political chess moving towards an endgame) ... Se7en = Galaxy S, Android, ultrabooks, Playstation Move and XBOX Kinect, Twitter, Google Home, The Walking Dead (no one is safe because we want to kill fan favourites to shock you.) With A Stylish Twist!

Only the iPhone and the Macbook Air deserve to have permanent installations at The MoMA - not Samsung's Galaxy S and trendy "lighter and thinner" ultrabooks from other me-too manufacturers.

After Silence, I doubt any other movie centred around a serial killer slash police procedural will ever again win any combination of Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay - let alone all at once. (I hardly take the Oscars as a year-to-year barometer for cinematic quality, but securing the Big 4/5 is a monumental feat for any film, let alone a thriller / horror genre piece, categories that the Academy tends to largely ignore for more "serious" fare. We have to keep in mind that the Big 4/5 were awarded almost a full year after the movie's release - yet another monumental feat.)

And in 50 years' time, I predict that Silence will be the first (and only ?) serial killer movie academics, film students, and couch potato streamers will reach for.

For me, it has been the apotheosis of the sub-genre for decades already. The bar was set really high.

Ya, I honestly couldn't choose between these two. I gave them both 10's and I see Se7en is currently ranked #22 while Silence is at #23 haha.

...and all Thom wants is a moon upon a stiiiick