Popular reviews

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  Review by Griffin Newman 8

  1) I can't believe that Michael Douglas' reign as a major star was so long.
  2) I can't believe that Sharon Stone's reign as a major star was so short.

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  Review by eely 🌻 ★★½ 6

  this movie has many unintentionally funny moments but the two that are the funniest for me are 1. the fact that these people describe their vanilla sex as sadomasochistic because sometimes they like to tie each other’s hands to a bed post with white silk hermès scarves and 2. the idea that sharon stone would ever fuck michael douglas

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★½ 51

  I love how the opening scene of Basic Instinct is filmed. You're almost certain you know the identity of the killer, but by never showing the killer's face, you have just the right amount of doubt in your head. Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is a game of Tomcat and Kitty between Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, and it forever changed the mainstream erotic thriller.

  The interrogation scene. Who doesn't love it? Of course, there's the ultimate money shot, but Sharon Stone completely flips the script. She's the one being questioned, yet by the end of the scene, she's the one in total control. That's real fuckin' power.

  Was the San Francisco setting done on purpose? The early '90s was a…

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  Review by lauren ★★½ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  catherine tramell walked so amy dunne could run

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★ 5

  "She's evil! She's brilliant!" Doctor Beth Garner on Catherine Trammel - note the order.

  In Vertigo, a man falls in love with the image of a woman and the woman dies as a direct result. In Basic Instinct, the image takes her revenge. This is a thriller about the seductive power of the thriller, how deep down we're all attracted to killers and psychos, and how fear, excitement, and arousal can all be substituted with one another at will (but whose?). Most Hollywood thrillers are built on a rote good-vs-evil paradigm, but here that prism is irreverently skewered at every opportunity, and we have a villain who might be innocent and a hero who is unquestionably guilty.

  I remember Ebert's…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★

  93

  Sex not just as power, but as the ferocity of power. Captures the energy and the sweat behind the curtains of Noir; a sticky, coked-up dance in early 90s garb. Sure, it's a Verhoeven picture, but all I see is Sharon Stone.

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  Review by pd187 ★★★★★ 4

  found a lot to relate to in this story of an alcoholic loser getting drunk and watching hellraiser & the jeffersons

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  Review by bailey 🏹 ★★★★½

  the women in this movie are very attractive

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  I admit freely that my prejudices affect my viewing. I'll embrace John Waters despite his obvious flaws, and I'll indulge Verhoeven as he revels in the warped sexual thriller genre here. I assume this is satirical because it's Verhoeven, and so I see satire here. Maybe he's just a monster, though; I don't know. Maybe the heightened reality he portrays here isn't a scathing look at the demonization of sexuality. Maybe he just thinks audiences would pay a lot of money to see this, so he made it.

  Regardless, what I see is a mixture of melodramatically distorted noir and pornographic thriller crafted to draw in slobbering hordes in order to twist their minds. Sharon Stone plays a depraved bisexual,…

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★ 1

  verhoeven goes de palma mode and stylistically indulges every possible obsessive, violent, horny impulse and detail of this lurid paperback thriller of a plot that takes the psychology of noir characters to their most perverse extremes. references hitchcock and hellraiser and lives up to both of them. if any line from any movie sums itself up more than "that magna cum laude pussy on her done fried up your brain!" than i'm not aware of it. the fuck of the century!

  full discussion on episode 9 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by mia 🦇 ★★★★

  if i get killed by sexy bisexual sharon stone that is on ME, do not prosecute her because she caught ME slipping

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★½ 3

  Equally trashy and beautiful, a rare combination that’s definitely part of its continued appeal. There just aren’t too many movies this full of shit that are also this good looking. There are parts of this movie that are as silly — or sillier! — than anything in Showgirls. But almost no one seemed to notice that in 1992. Sharon Stone is so goddamn sexy I think she hypnotized everyone into not realizing it.

  Stone here is like a baseball player here with an unremarkable rookie year who suddenly starts pulling down Hall of Fame numbers in season two. She could make a textbook about upper endoscopy procedures sound erotic. And Verhoeven matches her playfulness; every single aspect of the movie…