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…

"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…

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,…

A film that wears its venal vulgarities with a contagious swagger. Utter twaddle from the outset but it knows it is. Dig deep into hack erotica...

With taste and propriety soundly cast aside, this is a synthetic wet dream fusion of Raymond Chandler, Alfred Hitchcock and a dash of Agatha Christie in a shiny synthesis of strutting consumerism, neon noir and splashy eurotrash. Thank goodness for Verhoeven in this, his best American film. I can’t think of anyone else who have had the nerve (or verve) to lay it on so thick without embarrassment.

This is a certain type of middle-aged man’s fantasy: a leather jacketed, crotch-splayed throbbing on a most unsuitable bike going well over the limit on lead…