Word: instinctiveness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There's no need to make a cosmic case against Basic Instinct. It's just another entertainment that went more wrong than right. Maybe its script isn't worth $3 million, but its basic premise is not a bad one. It proposes an untrammeled San Francisco woman named Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) who writes murder mysteries that have a nasty way of predicting actual crimes. They also provide, of course, a perfect alibi. No one in her right mind would create fictions that make their author a prime suspect...
...BASIC INSTINCT Directed by Paul Verhoeven; Written by Joe Eszterhas...
...Basic Instinct is the latest candidate for admission to this inner circle of the cinema's damned. Its script was bought for a record $3 million, and people immediately started saying nothing could be that good. Then location shooting was disrupted by gay activists claiming the film promoted a cruel stereotype -- that lesbians are literally man killers. Finally, when the picture was finished, it was slapped with an NC-17 rating. After a few cuts (less than a minute's worth) and many hot words, that was changed to an R, but such wrangles usually do irreparable box-office harm...
...recent years the tameness and sameness of movie sex have become a bore, which is not a word anyone is going to apply to this film's skin scenes. They may be offensive to some, but they will be a turn-on for others. And, by the way, Basic Instinct cannot fairly be termed antigay. Catherine is certainly bisexual, but it is just another aspect of her cultivated air of differentness, her love of high-risk games and shock effects, which Stone plays very well...
...naming of one of them, in a publicity campaign aimed at undermining the movie). This reflects its fundamental flaw of arrogance, a smug faith in the ability of its own speed, smartness and luxe to wow the yokels. It is its attitude, not its morality, that ultimately undoes Basic Instinct...