Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones
Novelist Catherine Tramell is once again in trouble with the law, and Scotland Yard appoints psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass to evaluate her. Though, like Detective Nick Curran before him, Glass is entranced by Tramell and lured into a seductive game.
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14 films that influenced Basic Instinct 2
What critics say influenced Basic Instinct 2
It's been 14 years since the original "Basic Instinct," and time - and the miracles of beauty technology - have been kind to Stone.
There is not a trace present of the Hitchcock-inspired suspense that director Paul Verhoeven powerfully exerted over the original "Basic Instinct."
While a certain designed vulgarity in the original "Basic Instinct" raised many an eyebrow and protests from the religious gallery, the success of it demanded a sequel which, 14 years and a session or two under the scalpel later, this is.
After a hot arrival in “Basic Instinct” (1992) and good work in “Casino” (1995), Sharon Stone did a rapid fade – becoming one of the actresses (Jill Clayburgh, Debra Winger, Diana Ross, Ellen Barkin, Whitney Houston) whose careers suddenly fell through the floor.
Fourteen years have passed since the first "Basic Instinct."
That last sentence says “Joe Eszterhas,” who is, of course, source stuffer of this lurid thrill pillow (the film was co-written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean), directed knowingly but with screaming absence of character by Michael Caton-Jones (“Rob Roy,” “The Jackal”).
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones ("Rob Roy," "The Jackal"), it's so utterly convinced it's a tense psycho-sexual thriller that it can't hear the audience laughing at it.
This plodding, pretentious follow-up to 1992's hit replaces Paul Verhoeven's lurid, over-the-top style with the leaden rhythms of Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy), a director who doesn't have a clue what a Basic Instinct movie should be about.
It's left to the director, Michael Caton-Jones (best film: "Rob Roy"; worst: "Memphis Belle"), to heat up the atmospherics with dark photography that punches up the lurid evil of London's most sordid streets.
It is disastrously uninspired direction from a man who once made his name with the glorious Rob Roy .
It's true that Roman Polanski's "Chinatown," a 1974 neo-noir, was bathed in L.A. sunlight; but that film had an inventively sinister plot, and a dark sexual kink.
Then again, Caton-Jones took an unfair critical drubbing for his highly entertaining reworking of The Day of the Jackal.
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Not since Michael Cristofer's Original Sin has the screen been graced with so much overheated trash, though Original Sin had the sense to realize it was what it was and emerged as a kind of trash masterpiece.
Director Michael Caton-Jones ("Scandal") proves himself incapable of handling the rigid demands of a suspense thriller, albeit a poorly written one.
But Basic Instinct 2, directed by Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal) from a script by Leora Barish and Henry Bean, doesn't unfold in a dirty urban pleasure zone; it's more like the London of drizzly old-school British repression.
Nonetheless, from kitsch to sex kitten, Stone owns the film, and director Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal) maintains a grave, seductive mood, even through the convoluted climax.
Another boneror, should I say, de-bonerwas choosing as director Michael Caton-Jones, who couldn’t even make the Profumo sex scandal of Scandal sexy.
In director Michael Caton-Jones's ("Doc Hollywood", "Scandal") anemic follow-up "Basic Instinct 2", we're treated to more horny high jinks concerning the deadly best-selling femme fatale novelist specializing in erotica-related deaths and other varying kinds of kinky mayhem.
London, choked with cash, is now swinging in a way that it hasn't since the late '60s, and even Woody Allen, in Match Point, found the inspiration to make a sexy femme-fatale thriller there.
Tramell enflames the manly parts of a policehired shrink (David Morrissey, a previously — and henceforth — obscure actor) who works in the “Gherkin Tower,” the most prominent member of the London skyline to be erected in many years, the one that reminds you of a Woody (Allen movie, “Match Point”) and is already a cinematic cliche.
Unfortunately, director Michael Caton-Jones ("Doc Hollywood") and writers Leora Barish ("Desperately Seeking Susan") and Henry Bean ("Internal Affairs") view the situation as a chance for a meaningful discussion of a psychological condition they keep referring to as "risk addiction."
In director Michael Caton-Jones's ("Doc Hollywood", "Scandal") anemic follow-up "Basic Instinct 2", we're treated to more horny high jinks concerning the deadly best-selling femme fatale novelist specializing in erotica-related deaths and other varying kinds of kinky mayhem.
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Unfortunately, director Michael Caton-Jones ("Doc Hollywood") and writers Leora Barish ("Desperately Seeking Susan") and Henry Bean ("Internal Affairs") view the situation as a chance for a meaningful discussion of a psychological condition they keep referring to as "risk addiction."
That last sentence says “Joe Eszterhas,” who is, of course, source stuffer of this lurid thrill pillow (the film was co-written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean), directed knowingly but with screaming absence of character by Michael Caton-Jones (“Rob Roy,” “The Jackal”).
Directed by Michael Caton-Jones ("Rob Roy," "The Jackal"), it's so utterly convinced it's a tense psycho-sexual thriller that it can't hear the audience laughing at it.
Caton-Jones' The Jackal (1997) is a much more lurid movie than the original, but it's also a lot more fun.�…