Basic Instinct (1992, directed by Paul Verhoeven)

Posted on July 18, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) is a San Francisco police detective who, along with his jolly partner Gus (George Dzundza), finds himself investigating the ice pick-stabbing of a rock star. The main suspect is glamorous writer Catherine Trammel (Sharon Stone), who is obviously guilty but manages to outsmart all of the men investigating her by not wearing panties during her interrogation. Nick finds himself drawn to Catherine, despite his own relationship with with psychologist Elizabeth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn). The more Nick digs into Catherine’s past, the more he becomes obsessed with her but also the more he suspects that she may be a serial killer. This is mostly because Catherine obviously is a serial killer and anyone should have been able to figure that out. Instead, Nick, an experienced homicide detective, just gets turned on.

It’s strange to remember how seriously people took Basic Instinct when it was released in 1992. People debated whether it was a throwback to Hitchcock or just a dirty movie. Feminists debated whether it was empowering or exploitive. For several years afterwards, every show from The Simpsons to Seinfeld parodied the interrogation scene. (In Seinfeld’s case, it helped that Wayne Knight appeared in the film as the district attorney who kept shifting in his seat to get a better view.) Sharon Stone was described as being the new Grace Kelly and, for a period of years, was the subject of fawning profiles in which she was asked about the future of sex in movies. For a while, she was inescapable.

Sharon Stone, to be fair, did make the role of Catherine her own. It’s impossible to imagine some of the other actresses considered — Michelle Pfeiffer, Geena Davis, Mariel Hemingway, or Meg Ryan — in the role. After a decade of not getting anywhere with her film career, Stone was hungry to be a star and was also willing to do things on camera that other name actresses would have refused. Sharon Stone was not the next Grace Kelly and Catherine Trammel was ultimately more of a sexual fantasy than an actual character but Stone still deserves a lot of credit for her uninhibited performance in the role. Though Stone later said that she didn’t realize what was actually being filmed during the interrogation scene, it’s her confidence and her unapologetic sensuality that makes the scene compelling. Her performance has the energy that the sleepwalking Michael Douglas lacks.

Today, Basic Instinct is best-viewed as a satire. Director Paul Verhoeven sends up both the cop film and the erotic thriller with a movie that turned everything to eleven. The film’s sensibility is established by the fact that Michael Douglas’s “hero” is nicknamed Shooter because he killed two innocent people while high on cocaine. The film’s main joke is an obvious one. Everyone is too busy staring at Sharon Stone to notice that she’s about to stab them in the back with an icepick. Joe Eszterhas’s script was vulgar to the point of parody and, fortunately, director Paul Verhoeven understood that even more than Eszterhas did.

Basic Instinct has been imitated countless times but it’s never been equaled. To that, the credit is owed to Sharon Stone and Paul Verhoeven.

The Color of Money (1986, directed by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on July 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

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If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably had at least one friend whose father kept a pool table in the garage. This movie was probably the reason why.

Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) was once The Hustler, the legendary pool player who recovered from having his fingers broken with a bowling ball and went on to defeat the legendary Minnesota Fats. That was a long time ago. Now, Fast Eddie is a slick liquor salesman in Chicago. Eddie stills hangs out at the pool halls, despite his bad memories of the game. When he sees a cocky young player named Vincent (Tom Cruise) and his girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), he takes them under his wing and teaches them how to hustle. It’s not always easy because Vincent doesn’t like to lose, even if it means a chance to score an even bigger victory later on. Eddie finds himself being drawn back into the game, even as he starts to wonder who is hustling who.

I always forget that The Color of Money is a Martin Scorsese films. It’s a film that Scorsese made at a time when he had a reputation for only being able to make art films that critics loved but audiences stayed away from. After the box office failure of The King of Comedy and his abortive first attempt to make The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese took The Color of Money to prove that he could work with a studio. This is a Disney Scorsese film, with his signature camera moves but not much of his religious torment. Even if it’s not one of his personal films, Scorsese makes pool look exciting, a battle that is as much about psychology as physicality. Watching The Color of Money, you can smell the chalk on the tip of the pool cue.

Scorsese brings the seedy pool halls to life but it’s Paul Newman’s performance that dominates. The Color of Money won Newman his first and only Oscar and he deserved it. Newman had first played Fast Eddie Felson in 1961, in The Hustler. Returning to the role twenty-five years later allowed Newman to show what would eventually happen to the angry young men that he played in the 60s. Eddie has grown up and he’s got a comfortable life but he’s not content. He finally has stability but he misses the game. He needs the thrill of the hustle. Newman is at his best in The Color of Money, building on The Hustler but also revealing new sides of Eddie Felson.

Newman is so good that Tom Cruise often gets overlooked but both Cruise and Mastrantonio hold their own against Paul Newman. Cruise especially does a good job as Vincent, playing him as someone who is too cocky for his own good but also not as dumb as he looks. Just when you think you’ve got Vincent figured out, Cruise surprises you. The Color of Money came out the same year as Top Gun and Cruise’s Vincent feels like a commentary on the talented, troubled, but cocky characters that Cruise was playing at that time. Cruise, Scorsese, and Newman make a good team in this more-than-worthy sequel.

April Noir: Thief (dir by Michael Mann)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1981’s Thief tells the story of Frank (James Caan).

Frank is a professional diamond thief, one of the best in the business. He’s so cool that he even has his own Tangerine Dream soundtrack. After doing a stint in prison, Frank lives his life very carefully and with discipline. He’s determined not to return to prison. His mentor (played by Willie Nelson) is still behind bars and will probably die there. In fact, Frank has even found himself thinking about abandoning his criminal lifestyle. He’s got two front businesses, both of which are doing well. (Frank’s used car lot looks like some sort of alien world.) He’s fallen in love with a cashier named Jessie (Tuesday Weld) and it’s starting to seem like now would be a good time to settle down and become a family man. The only problem is that Frank is working for Leo (Robert Prosky) and Leo has absolutely no intention of allowing Frank to walk away. As Leo puts it, Frank belongs to him. That’s not a smart thing to say to someone like Frank.

Frank’s an interesting character. He’s the film’s hero, not because he’s a good guy but because he’s a smidgen better than most of the other bad guys. He’s a professional, one who goes out of his way avoid unnecessary complications. When we see him on the job, it’s impossible not to admire just how good he is at stealing stuff. When he uses a blowtorch to break into a store or a safe, the screen is full of sparks and, for a few minutes, Frank looks like some sort of cosmic super hero brought to life. We admire Frank but we discover early on that he’s willing to get violent. He’s willing to pull a gun and threaten his way out of a situation. Frank is loyal. He visits his mentor in prison. He takes care of his partner-in-crime, Barry (Jim Belushi, making his film debut). He truly loves Jessie. But, at heart, he’s a criminal who doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger when he has to. The question the film asks is whether one can just go straight, after years of breaking the law and living in the shadows. Can Frank abandon the lifestyle, even for love? Or is he destined to always be a thief?

Thief was Michael Mann’s feature film debut. (The Jericho Mile was Mann’s directorial debut but it was made for television.) Thief is full of the usual Mann themes and also Mann’s signature style, showing that Mann knew exactly what type of films he wanted to make from the start of his career. The nights are full of shadows. The days are deceptively calm. The neon of Frank’s car lot glows like another dimension. The final bloody shoot out takes place at night, in the type of suburban neighborhood in which most people would probably love to live. And holding the film together is James Caan, giving a coolly centered performance as a man who has learned to hold back his emotions and who won’t be controlled by anyone. Halfway through the film, Caan delivers a seven-minute monologue about life in prison and it’s an amazing moment, one in which Caan shows just how good of an actor he truly was. Thief is an effective and stylish neo-noir, one that sticks with you as the end credits roll.

Days of Paranoia: Edmond (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Based on a one-act play by David Mamet, 2005’s Edmond tells the story of Edmond Burke (William H. Macy).

Edmond shares his name (if not the actual spelling) with the philosopher Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke was a strong believer that society had to put value in good manners to survive and that religious and moral institutions played an important role in promoting the idea of people treating each other with respect and decency. Edmund Burke knew what he believes and his writings continue to influence thinks to this day. Edmond Burke, on the other hand, doesn’t know what he believes. He doesn’t know who he wants to be. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel like he’s accomplished anything with his life. “I don’t feel like a man,” he says at one point to a racist bar patron (played by Joe Mantegna) who replies that Edmond needs to get laid.

On a whim, Edmond steps into the shop of a fortune teller (Frances Bay), who flips a few Tarot cards and then tells Edmond that “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.” Edmond takes her words to heart. He starts the night by telling his wife (played by Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon) that he’s leaving their apartment and he won’t be coming back. He goes to the bar, where he discusses his marriage with Mantegna. He goes to a strip club where he’s kicked out after he refuses to pay $100 for a drink. He goes to a peep show where he’s frustrated by the glass between him and the stripper and the stripper’s constant demand that he expose himself. He gets beaten in an alley by three men who were running a three-card monte scam. Edmond’s problem is that he left home without much cash and each encounter leads to him having less and less money. If he can’t pay, no one wants to help him, regardless of how much Edmond argues for a little kindness. He pawns his wedding ring for $120 but apparently, he just turns around and uses that money to buy a knife. An alley-way fight with a pimp leads to Edmond committing his first murder. A one-night stand with a waitress (a heart-breaking Julia Stiles) leads to a second murder after a conversation about whether or not the waitress is actually an actress leads to a sudden burst of violence. Edmond ends up eventually in prison, getting raped by his cellmate (Bookem Woodbine) and being told, “It happens.” Unable to accept that his actions have, in one night, led him from being a businessman to a prisoner, Edmond says, “I’m ready to go home now.” By the end of the film, Edmond realizes that perhaps he is now where he was meant to be.

It’s a disturbing film, all the more so because Edmond is played by the likable William H. Macy and watching Macy go from being a somewhat frustrated but mild-mannered businessman to becoming a blood-drenched, racial slur-shouting murderer is not a pleasant experience. Both the play and the film have generated a lot of controversy due to just how far Edmond goes. I don’t see either production as being an endorsement of Edmond or his actions. Instead, I see Edmond as a portrait of someone who, after a lifetime of being willfully blind to the world around him, ends up embracing all of the ugliness that he suddenly discovers around him. He’s driven mad by discovering, over the course of one night, that the world that is not as kind and well-mannered as he assumed that it was and it all hits him so suddenly that he can’t handle it. He discovers that he’s not special and that the world is largely indifferent to his feelings. He gets overwhelmed and, until he gets his hands on that knife, he feels powerless and emasculated. (The knife is an obvious phallic symbol.) It’s not until the film’s final scene that Edmond truly understands what he’s done and who he has become.

Edmond is not always an easy film to watch. The second murder scene is truly nightmarish, all the more so because the camera remains on Edmond as he’s drenched in blood. This is one of William H. Macy’s best performances and also one of his most disturbing characters. That said, it’s a play and a film that continues to be relevant today. There’s undoubtedly a lot of Edmonds out there.

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ (2006, dir by Robert Iscove)

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Norman Lear has television superstar Conrad Bain under contract and Fred Silverman wants to build a show around Bain and a talented black child actor named Gary Coleman. Entitled Diff’rent Strokes and featuring Todd Bridges and Dana Plato as Coleman’s brother and stepsister, the show is a hit. The three young actors briefly become superstars, much like the amazing Conrad Bain. And then, when the show is finally canceled after ten years, it all goes downhill as Todd Bridges and Dana Plato run into trouble with drugs and the law and Gary Coleman, once one of the highest paid stars on television, discovers that he’s now flat broke. All three of them learn how quickly the world can turn on you when you’re no longer considered to be a success.

Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ was another one NBC’s cheap movies about the behind-the-scenes drama of a popular sitcom. (They also did Three’s Company and Mork & Mindy). Like all of NBC’s Behind the Camera movies, it makes the mistake of thinking that everyone is as interested in the habits of network executives as the people who work for them are. (This time, it’s Saul Rubinek who gets to play Fred Silverman.) The actors who plays Bridges, Coleman, and Plato are convincing enough but the storytelling is shallow, featuring the same information that you would expect to find in an episode of the E! True Hollywood Story. I was disappointed that we didn’t get any scenes of Alan Thicke recording the theme song.

Todd Bridges and the late Gary Coleman both appear as themselves, talking about their experiences with the show and the difficulties of navigating life after Diff’rent Strokes was canceled. Bridges is down-to-Earth while Coleman rambles like someone who was still trying to figure out how his life had led up to this moment. The ending, in which Bridges and Coleman stand at Dana Plato’s grave and Coleman delivers a nearly incoherent monologue, is the one time that the film really captures any feeling of emotional honesty. It is obvious that both Bridges and Coleman are still haunted by what happened to Plato after the show ended. Knowing that Coleman himself would die just four years after the airing of this movie makes the scene more poignant when viewed today.

Back to School #28: Risky Business (dir by Paul Brickman)

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“It was great the way her mind worked. No guilt, no doubts, no fear. None of my specialities. Just the shameless pursuit of immediate gratification. What a capitalist.” — Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise) in Risky Business (1983)

So, this is the film where Tom Cruise — playing a high school senior named Joel, who has been left at home on his own while his wealthy parents go on vacation — ends up dancing around his living room in his underwear. It’s a scene that has shown up in countless awards show montages and which has been parodied, imitated, and recreated to such an extent that even people who have never seen the movie know the scene.

Risky Business is about a lot of different things. It’s a coming-of-age film. It’s both a celebration and a satire of material excess and greed. It’s a time capsule of the 80s. It’s a comedy. It’s a drama. It’s a somewhat twisted romance. It features good performances, clever dialogue, and an excellent soundtrack. It’s a film that does for “Sometimes you just go to say, ‘What the fuck?'” what Dead Poets Society did for “Carpe Diem.”

But ultimately, for a lot of people, Risky Business is always just going to be about Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear.

And why not? It’s a great scene, one that deserves its fame. I’m not just saying that just because I happen to love dance scenes in general. When Joel celebrates having the house to himself by dancing, he’s also celebrating his independence. He’s celebrating the fact that he can do whatever he wants. He’s celebrating freedom. It’s true that sometime you just got to say, “What the fuck?” But some other times, you just have to dance.

And you can’t deny that Tom Cruise is at his most appealing and spontaneous in this scene. Actually, he’s at his most appealing and spontaneous throughout the entire film. Up until I watched Risky Business, my main impression of Tom Cruise was that he was the creepy guy who forced Katie Holmes to abandon Catholicism for Scientology and chop off her hair. I knew he was an okay actor but his greater appeal was lost on me. I think that if I had gotten to know the Tom Cruise in Risky Business before I got to know the Tom Cruise who jumped up and down on that couch and who is rumored to be the secret leader of Scientology, I might have a different opinion of him as an actor.

Anyway, with all that said, here’s that famous scene:

As I said, as famous as that scene may be, there’s actually a lot more to Risky Business than just Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear. In fact, you could remove that entire scene and Risky Business would remain one of the defining films of the 80s. It tells the story of Joel Goodson who lives up to his name in almost every way. He’s a very good son. He gets good grades in high school. He’s a member of the Future Enterprisers of America. His father has decided that Joel is going to go to Princeton and Joel isn’t one to argue. When his parents leave him alone at the house, they also leave him with a long list of rules and they have every reason to believe that Joel will follow every one of them.

But then Joel meets a prostitute named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) and he makes an enemy out of Guido the Killer Pimp (Joe Pantoliano) and then his father’s car ends up rolling into a river and, next thing you know, Joel is partnering up with Lana to turn his house into a brothel and they’re making $8,000 in one night.

And really, as good as Tom Cruise is, Rebecca De Mornay is even better because she has a tougher role to play. As written, Lana is essentially a male fantasy figure. (And there’s still a part of me that suspect the entire film was meant to be Joel’s daydream.) But, as played by De Mornay, Lana actually becomes a real human being and someone who definitely has something important to say. If Cruise gives the film its energy and its heart, De Mornay gives the film a brain. It’s no coincidence that Joel is the one who dances in the living room while Lana is the one who sets up business deals. With her no-nonsense approach to life and her love of money, she comes to symbolize the film’s own conflicted views of wealth and success. It’s not by chance that the American flag appears on TV while Joel and Lana are fucking in the living room. Together, Joel and Lana are the perfect American success story.

Embracing the Melodrama #44: Normal Life (dir by John McNaughton)

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Out of all the sin-in-the-suburbs films that I’ve watched recently, 1996’s Normal Life is one of the best. Judging from the lack of reviews of this film online, it also appears to be one of the least known. So, allow me to rectify that by telling you a little about Normal Life.

In Normal Life, Luke Perry plays Chris Anderson, a seemingly naive police officer. From the minute that we first see Chris, it’s obvious that he’s a cop. With his thinning hair, his anonymous mustache, and his deliberately calm and controlled manner, there’s no way that Chris could be anything else.

One night, Chris goes out to a bar and sees Pam (Ashley Judd) getting into a fight with her date and cutting her hand. Chris, playing the hero, bandages it and then asks her for a dance. For him, it’s love at first sight. Soon, Chris is taking Pam on dates to the shooting range and, before you know it, they’re married. Pam, it soon becomes obvious, is emotionally unstable. She deals with disagreements by threatening to kill herself and trashing the apartment that she shares with Chris. She makes little secret of how little respect she has for Chris’s family and she often goes out of her way to embarrass him. However, Chris will never leave her because he’s in love with the idea of being the only one who can save her. And, even though Pam may not admit it, she wants to be saved. Chris gives her stability while Pam gives Chris a taste of excitement that his life would otherwise lack.

Unfortunately, even after Chris loses his job, Pam continues to spend money extravagantly. Soon, in order to support his wife, Chris starts to utilize his law enforcement experience by robbing banks. Now that they finally have money, they are able to move to a perfect house in the suburbs and Chris is able to pursue his lifelong dream of opening and running a small used bookstore.

However, Pam eventually discovers that Chris is a bank robber and soon decides that she wants to rob a bank with him. Chris knows that it’s a mistake to involve the unpredictable Pam but, as the film makes clear, he will always chose her happiness over everything else…

Normal Life was directed by John McNaughton, who also directed the seminal serial killer film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. And while Normal Life is a far less disturbing film than Henry, it does utilize a similar technique of emphasizing just how banal Chris’s suburban lifestyle really is. When Chris isn’t robbing banks or dealing with his suicidal wife, he’s essentially a rather boring guy who is perfectly happy to spend his days running his little bookstore. The best scenes in the film are the ones where Chris simply walks to the doorway of his house, the placid calmness of the suburbs providing a strong contrast to what we know is going on inside that house and inside Chris’s head.

Of the two lead performers, Ashley Judd has the showier role and she does give a fantastically brave performance, providing an honest and sympathetic portrayal as a character who is not always pleasant to watch. Luke Perry, however, is even better. Whereas Judd is playing a character who is literally incapable of hiding her emotions, Perry has to play a character who keeps all of his emotions hidden. Judd’s performance is almost totally external while Perry’s performance is largely internal and, when those two techniques come together, it tells us all we need to know about why Chris and Pam are fated to be together.

Normal Life is a film that you need to see. And you can watch it below!