Word: instinctive
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Jade" is written by "Basic Instinct" screenwriter and quintessential dirty old man, Joe Esterhas, who also was responsible for the early-'80's hit "Flashdance." That movie was just as badly written as Esterhas' later work and has an equally offensive storyline (about an eighteen-year-old woman who is a welder by day, sexy nightclub dancer by night), but has something which most movies do not: Jennifer Beals. In the nineties, Esterhas' biggest movies ("Basic Instinct" and the recent "Showgirls") have recieved a great deal of publicity as being terribly offensive and demeaning to women. The truth is, they...
Esterhas' weak script in "Basic Instinct" was somewhat resucitated by the presence of Sharon Stone. "Jade" is not resucitated by anyone. Any movie that has Angie Everheart and Linda Fiorentino in it is of some interest on a purely visual level. However, any movie in which Angie Ever-heart gives the most believable and compelling performance has some-thing terribly wrong with it. But Chazz Palmintieri is a genuinely good actor, and when even he can't do any-thing with this movie, we know that the core must be rotten...
...Simpson trial has a deeper geography. Sometimes a trial plays out like a culture's collective dream--a vivid, edgy, distorted story that casts up images and characters from the realm of instinct and has them act out the society's deepest passions: its fears, prejudices and desires...
Verhoeven and Eszterhas may have needed the R rating after all. When they made Basic Instinct--a sexy R movie--they deployed atmosphere and innuendo to complement Sharon Stone's swank star turn. Here, with an NC-17 rating, the lads go slack; they let pubic hair and menstruation jokes do all the work. Since their leading lady can't act or dance or dazzle the camera, they've got problems they apparently didn't want to solve...
...surprised he can bear to watch it. The real culprit is Eszterhas, swami of the High Concept. He found Nazis in The Music Box and white supremacists in Betrayed, but cogent drama in neither. His favorite plot hook, sexual mutilation, bore rancid fruit in Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct and Sliver. At least those three had some sick kick to them. But if his women characters aren't psychos or sex-crime victims, the scripts get shrill and turgid. After an hour of naughty chat in Showgirls, you'll start hoping for somebody to kill somebody...