Movie Review: Sliver (1993)

Genre: Erotic Thriller  

Director: Phillip Noyce  

Starring: Sharon Stone, William Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Martin Landau  
Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, book editor Carly Norris (Sharon Stone) is recovering from a failed marriage. She moves into an apartment in the "Sliver" building, and learns that the previous occupant died after falling from the balcony. Carly meets other tenants including fitness fan Zeke (William Baldwin), famous author Jack (Tom Berenger), model Vida (Polly Walker), and a kindly older man. With all the apartments under secret surveillance, both Zeke and Jack pursue a relationship with Carly, leading to jealousy and murder.

What Works Well: Following up on her breakout success in Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone projects both vulnerability and strength as a building newcomer uncovering sordid secrets and willing to reignite her seductive tendencies. The voyeuristic obsession with snooping on ordinary people's lives turns the Rear Window premise inwards as prescient commentary on a forthcoming privacy-free society. 

What Does Not Work As Well: With only two viable suspects, director Phillip Noyce fails to generate any suspense, the mood further undermined by one-dimensional performances from William Baldwin and Tom Berenger. Zeke is immediately creepy and Jack is proudly boorish, crippling any investment in the outcome and raising serious questions about Carly's judgement. The shallow character motivations are matched by incompetent police work, and the dull Joe Eszterhas script is incapable of exploiting the surveillance theme implications.

Key Quote:

Zeke (to Carly): Real life, Carly. It's better than any book. Better than any movie. It's a soap opera. It's real life. It's a tragedy, it's funny, it's sad, it's unpredictable.

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Movie Review: Nobody 2 (2025)

Genre: Action Comedy  

Director: Timo Tjahjanto  

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, John Ortiz, Sharon Stone, Christopher Lloyd  

Running Time: 89 minutes  

Synopsis: Supposedly retired undercover assassin Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) never stops working for his handler "the Barber" (Colin Salmon), straining his relationship with his wife Becca (Connie Nielsen). They finally agree to go on vacation with their two kids, plus Hutch's dad David (Christopher Lloyd). Hutch selects the derelict Plummerville amusement park as the vacation destination, because it was the one and only place his dad took him to as a child. Before long, Hutch tangles with the locals, including corrupt sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks) and amusement park owner Wyatt (John Ortiz), but the real behind-the-scenes villain is the ruthless Lendina (Sharon Stone). 

What Works Well: This sequel upgrades the cast, increases the focus on family, and retains the combination of wild action infused with wicked humour. The short duration ensures the next action set-piece is never more than a few minutes away, with Hutch determined that nothing will ruin his family vacation and willing to destroy a small town for the cause. Unlikely star Bob Odenkirk exercises his middle-aged brand of reluctant brawlery in a series of mostly short and sharp encounters with countless goons, the best highlights arriving at an arcade and then on a "duck" boat.

What Does Not Work As Well: Of course the originality is gone, and a sense of stretching the concept creeps in, most notably in a Home Alone at Walley World climax. Sharon Stone is a welcome addition but has to contend with a cartoonish over-the-top character.  

Key Quote:

The Barber (to Hutch): You'll want to de-escalate the situation.

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Movie Review: Above The Law (1988)

Genre: Action  

Director: Andrew Davis  

Starring: Steven Seagal, Sharon Stone, Pam Grier, Henry Silva  

Running Time: 99 minutes  

Synopsis: Martial arts expert Nico Toscani (Steven Seagal) is now a Chicago police detective, having turned his back on the CIA after witnessing the agency's corruption in the Vietnam War jungles. Nico is married to Sara (Sharon Stone) and father to a newborn baby, while his partner Jacks (Pam Grier) is about to be promoted. He receives a tip about an illegal explosives shipment, but FBI agents arrive to sideline his investigation. Nico persists, and uncovers a conspiracy involving an assassination plot, illegal immigrants hiding in a church basement, and his former CIA colleagues.

What Works Well: In his screen debut, stone-faced and soft-spoken Steven Seagal carries undeniable swagger and immediately establishes himself as an upright action hero. His one-against-many martial arts battles almost rescue the movie, while Henry Silva as the main antagonist matches Seagal in the duel of single-expression faces.

What Does Not Work As Well: In the routine gallop from one flat action scene to the next, the plot is complicated to the point of incomprehension, the threads of multiple conspiracies tangled into a bundle of distraction. Too many samey set-pieces feature screeching car tires and undefined bad guys emptying their weapons at the indestructible hero, and the acting talent on display across the cast is rudimentary.

Conclusion: Below the line.



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Movie Review: Lovelace (2013)

The sad story of the porn industry's first celebrity, Lovelace is cautionary tale of exploitation and abuse. The film is cleverly constructed but lacks any emotional breakthroughs.

It's 1970 in Florida, and 20 year old Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is living with her oppressive parents Dorothy and John (Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick). Her rebellion is enabled by the sleazy and much older Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), who claims to maybe own a strip joint. Soon they get married, Chuck teaches Linda all about oral sex, and she is remarkably good at it. Claiming money pressure, Chuck pressures Linda into the pornography industry and Lovelace is created.

They connect with producers Anthony Romano (Chris Noth) and "Butchie" Peraino (Bobby Canavale), director Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria) and co-star Harry Reems (Adam Brody). Over a matter of six days in 1972, Damiano films Deep Throat, a relatively artistic porn film capitalizing on Linda's abilities. The film becomes an unexpected breakout hit among mainstream audiences and helps to kick-off the porno chic trend. Linda becomes a household name and travels in celebrity circles, including a meeting with Playboy's Hugh Hefner (James Franco). But behind the surface glamour there is a very dark side to Linda's life involving rampant abuse by the domineering Chuck.

Co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace is a worthwhile companion piece to Boogie Nights. While the Paul Thomas Anderson film rides the breezy waves of pornography's golden era, Lovelace dives beneath the surface to poke at the visible bruises. Lovelace is too emotionally detached and conflicted in its messaging to be the better film, but it nevertheless places on record the horrific price paid by the performers exploited to serve a sordid industry.

As for the film, Epstein and Friedman do try something different. The first half breezes through Lovelace's rapid transition from rebellious young woman to porn celebrity. There are hints suggesting the hell created by Traynor, but without details. The second half retraces some of the same steps and fills in the blanks, exposing the oppressive brutality of his treatment and the degradation she faced. It's a thought provoking structure forcing a comparison between public image and private agony, but Lovelace also emerges as an unbalanced film, hitting discordant notes and mainly moving sideways.

The denouement shifts focus to Linda years after her brief foray into the industry, fighting to reclaim her dignity and identity by publishing a book. It's another shift in cinematic gears, and while the loop is closed, the film is tonally fragmented.

Lovelace delivers one devastating scene, in the least expected context. At her lowest point Linda flees back to her childhood home, and her encounter with her mother is a study of the void exposed by mutually unmet expectations.

Amanda Seyfried displays excellent breadth to convey first adventurous naiveté and then a gradual awakening to abuse. Peter Sarsgaard is fully committed to the role of Chuck Traynor, and sustains the required menace.

Lovelace tells an important story with competence but at the expense of dramatic flair.

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Movie Review: Basic Instinct (1992)

A sex-drenched film noir, Basic Instinct spins a wild yarn of psychologically twisted murder and manipulation. The movie is irresistible, despite careening off the rails of credibility.

In San Francisco, retired rock star Johnny Boz is violently stabbed to death with an ice pick by a mysterious assailant during a kinky sex session. Detectives Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and Gus Moran (George Dzundza) investigate, and suspicion immediately falls on wealthy socialite Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), Boz's frequent sex partner. She is stunningly beautiful, a psychology and literature major, and had previously published a novel featuring the murder of a retired rock star during sex with an ice pick. But there is no physical evidence linking Catherine to the Boz murder and she passes a polygraph test. Instead she quickly turns the tables on Nick, getting into his head, seducing him and starting a torrid affair.

Nick is emotionally vulnerable, still attending sessions with Internal Affairs psychologist Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn) after having accidentally shot two tourists. Under Catherine's influence he resumes smoking and drinking, and she openly tells him that she is using him as the model for the central character of her next book, in which a detective falls under the influence of the wrong woman and ends up dead. Nick discovers that Catherine has been surrounded by death all her life. He aggressively tries to out-maneuver her at her own game, but she always appears to be several steps ahead of all her pursuers.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven at his Hollywood peak and written by Joe Eszterhas, Basic Instinct goes all-in on modernizing noir fundamentals with an uninhibited gloss. The femme fatale, the convoluted plot where everyone has something to hide, the hapless detective who may be more victim than hero, the lavish homes of the rich and suspicious, the incessant smoking, and sex and seduction as super weapons. Updated for the 1990s, the film is unapologetically unsubtle and throws it all on the screen, adding liberal doses of wild sex, drug use and lesbianism as items that could only be hinted at when the noir style was at its peak 45 years prior.

The film starts brightly and early on lands a devastating punch with the infamous scene featuring a cool Catherine being interrogated by a band of sweaty detective. The one woman in the room wins the seemingly asymmetrical bout by knock-out, refusing a lawyer, insisting on smoking, and uncrossing her legs. The scene propelled Stone into stardom and the character of Catherine Tramell into movie folkore as one of the most dangerous femme fatales ever conjured up for the screen.

The plot gets more outrageous from there, and into the final third detective Curran is so ensnared in Catherine's web that it's difficult to follow what the overall conspiracy is supposed to look like. Too many names, incidents and events from the past tumble into the present, key plot points are glossed over and unlikely coincidences converge. While the gory murder, energetic sex, and conspiratorial mayhem are never less than fun, the film loses its edge by piling on the contorted lunacy.

While Stone steals the show with a display of overt yet icy sexuality, Michael Douglas plays the emotionally wounded detective perfectly. Curran is barely hanging on at the start of the film, nicknamed "Shooter" and having barely rescued his career from the ignominy of accidentally killing two tourists. He is an easy target for Catherine, and Douglas creates a man who desperately wants to believe he has what it takes to tangle with a clever suspect while he is in fact being hopelessly outplayed at every turn. Jeanne Tripplehorn makes a memorable debut as Dr. Garner, both psychologist and lover to Curran, and hiding plenty of her own secrets.

Basic Instinct is a convolution of connivance, and an enjoyable romp through the excesses of a devious mind.

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Movie Review: The Quick And The Dead (1995)

A western with all the style and none of the substance, The Quick And The Dead is filled with clever artistic touches but is also well short when it comes to essential elements like rounded characters and plot depth.

In the small town of Redemption, former outlaw John Herod (Gene Hackman) rules over the population with an iron fist as a self-appointed sheriff, judge and executioner. The Lady (Sharon Stone) rides into town seeking revenge against Herod for an ancient wrong, and registers to participate in an annual quick draw gunfight elimination contest, hoping to give Herod his due. The other entrants include gunslinger Ace Hanlon (Lance Henriksen), bounty hunter Clay Cantrell (Keith David), and The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio), who claims to be Herod's son. Herod also forces his former partner in crime Cort (Russell Crowe) to join the contest.

Cort has renounced violence and become a priest, but Herod is having none of it, holding Cort in shackles and forcing him to participate in the gunfight series or die. As the contestants are thinned out through successive and increasingly deadly duels, The Kid, The Lady and Cort emerge as the main challengers looking knock Herod off his perch. But beating the old man at his own brutal game will not be easy.

Directed by Sam Raimi and co-produced by Stone, the film is notable for featuring significant pre-stardom roles for DiCaprio and Crowe, both promoted and supported by Stone. In a case of too many ideas all poorly developed, the film tries, with limited success, to be an amalgamation of relevant classic western themes, including revenge, corruption, betrayal, profiteering, redemption and the struggle between religion and the gun.

But Raimi does deliver on all the required aesthetics. The Quick And The Dead looks gorgeous, from Stone's layered clothes to the town's simple layout. The camera angles are often brilliant, the gunfights are filmed with plenty of panache, and the town's clock tower stands witness to all manner of courage and death on the dusty main street. There are plenty of Leonesque touches, from tight close-ups of the eyes to the long dusters used by Herod's men, plus a few special Raimiesque flourishes when it comes to portraying bullet damage.

But The Quick And The Dead is missing almost everything else. The characters are presented in broad brush format, the backstories are rudimentary, the dialogue is a barrage of recycles clichés, and The Lady's revenge motive is borrowed wholesale from Once Upon A Time In The West.

The plot is reduced to a series of successive gunfights, the film falling into the trap of too many punchlines and not enough set-up. Any showdown moment loses its impact when repeated endlessly, and The Quick And The Dead has too many moments when one gunfighter is quick, and the other dead.

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Movie Review: Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991)

A bungled suspense thriller about a writer drawing inspiration from a spooky house, Where Sleeping Dogs Lie never finds the right tone and fades into dreary insignificance.

In Los Angeles, Bruce Simmons (Dylan McDermott) is a struggling and broke writer. His agent Serena Black (Sharon Stone) prods him to come up with something original to publish, but Bruce is drawing a blank. As a side job he is asked to help sell a long abandoned Hollywood mansion. But the recently evicted Bruce has a better idea: he takes up residence in the mansion to try and gain some inspiration.

He soon learns that an entire family was murdered in the house, and the crime was never solved. Bruce starts to write his book as the diary of the murderer. This excites Serena, who sees a potential best-seller, as long as the diary can be passed off as the true confession of the killer. To help pay the bills, Bruce welcomes the mysterious and tentative Eddie Hale (Tom Sizemore) as a roommate at the mansion. Gradually Eddie and Bruce become friends, and Eddie starts to contribute ideas for Bruce's book.

Directed by Charles Finch and co-written by Finch and Yolande Turner, Where Sleeping Dogs Lie is filled with derivative and incomplete ideas. The story is weak and very little ever actually happens. Bruce and Eddie are underdeveloped and consequently shallow characters, while Sharon Stone provides plenty of sizzle in her few scenes but her over-sexed, high-fashion book agent defies belief. Serena slumming with Bruce is an incongruous relationship that shines an unfortunate spotlight on a destitute script.

The attempts at moments of suspense are of the childish bumps-in-the-night, blood-on-the-wall variety, and the injection of a layer of religious-driven violence is never adequately explored. Even the supposed big reveal, which occurs way past the point of anyone caring, is yawn-inducing in its predictability. Dylan McDermott and Tom Sizemore struggle manfully against the limp material, but are crushed by the dominating ineptitude.

Where Sleeping Dogs Lie is no mystery: the answer is a dull, fetid corner.

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Movie Review: Broken Flowers (2005)

A contemplative drama about lessons in life from lovers of the past, Broken Flowers enjoys an entrancing premise and a serenely tormented Bill Murray performance.

Don Johnston (Murray) is a rich but lonely man, having made his money in the computer industry. On the same morning that his latest girlfriend Sherry (Julie Delpy) dumps him, Don receives an unsigned letter from a woman claiming to have been his lover about 20 years ago. She wants to let Don know that she was pregnant when they broke up, and that Don has a 19 year old son who may be now looking for him.

Next door neighbour Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an amateur detective of sorts, convinces Don to head out on a trip to connect with four former lovers who may have written the letter.  Reluctantly Don agrees, and sequentially reconnects with widowed free spirit Laura (Sharon Stone), married real estate agent Dora (Frances Conroy), animal communicator Carmen (Jessica Lange), and trailer park trash Penny (Tilda Swinton). One of them may be the mother of the son he has never known, but finding out the truth will not be easy.

Directed by Jim Jarmusch with a subtle mix of pathos and humour, Broken Flowers is a wistful look at the what-may-have-beens of life. The film is an astute examination of emotional yearning through a journey to the actual present of the idyllic past. Well written with a hefty dose of sardonic realism, Broken Flowers may occasionally try a bit too hard to be an artistic amalgamation of Lost In Translation's curious style and Groundhog Day's riff on middle aged angst, but overall Jarmusch creates his own attractive life mystery tickling for a resolution.

Don knows that he has deprived himself of something better than a very empty house. What he finds on his trip are four contrasting alternate lives occupied by four women he once loved. Laura has not lost the spark of youth, despite losing a car racer husband in a fiery crash. Laura's daughter Lolita (Alexis Dziena) is doing everything possible to live up to her name in an interlude that reminds Don how old and lonely he is. Never mind his son; he could have had a daughter old enough to seduce men his age by now.

Dora is stiff, miserable, and married to Ron (Christopher McDonald), and the one woman who may still be harbouring feelings for Don. Dora has transformed from a carefree hippie teenager to a soulless adult salesperson, and Don reminds her of a life before conformance. Carmen has not sold out, but has instead veered into the pseudo new age crap of animal communication, and likely a lesbian relationship with her receptionist (Chloë Sevigny). Carmen rebuffs every attempt by Don to rekindle a connection.

And finally Penny is in the abyss, living in the ramshackle muddy middle of nowhere with a hick boyfriend. She simply can't handle any reminders of a past that actually held promise. There is a fifth woman who was also Don's lover from about 20 years ago, by Don has to visit Michelle at the cemetery: she died five years ago and could not have written the letter.

Laura, Dora, Carmen, Penny and Michelle provide a short odyssey of lust, regret, rejection, hate and death. Would Don's life have been better with any of these women? And more importantly, is one of them the mother of his son? As with any journey that seeks a definitive answer, Don returns home with plenty of new questions and the nagging certainty that the solution to the anonymous letter puzzle is just tantalizingly around the next corner. And now every young man takes on the appealing prospect of being, just maybe, his son.

Bill Murray is enormously watchable, remaining well within himself while slowly allowing Don to succumb to the gnawing doubt filling the empty spaces of his soul. The actresses portraying the four former lovers get short shifts, and they all leave an impression. Tilda Swinton, in just her one scene, portrays what it means for a life to disintegrate under the weight of what must have been some truly shocking decision making.

Understated and heartfelt, Broken Flowers is an ode to the mysteries of life's alternative destinies.

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The Movies Of Sharon Stone

All movies starring Sharon Stone and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Above The Law (1988)

Total Recall (1990)

He Said, She Said (1991)

Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (1991)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Sliver (1993)

The Specialist (1994)

The Quick And The Dead (1995)

Casino (1995)

Broken Flowers (2005)

Lovelace (2013)

The Disaster Artist (2017)

The Laundromat (2019)

Nobody 2 (2025)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Specialist (1994)

A galumphing revenge drama aiming for a cool vibe but for the most part stumbling on a puerile script, The Specialist teams Stallone with Stone and the results are predictable: plenty of well-toned body parts and a tone-deaf absence of plausibility.

Explosives specialists Ray Quick (Stallone) and Ned Trent (James Woods) used to be partners in the CIA, conducting covert operations to blow up drug barons in South America. After a bitter dispute over civilian casualties, both of their CIA careers come to an end and Ray becomes a reclusive explosives-expert-for-hire. Ned blames Ray for ruining his career, and joins a brutal Miami criminal cartel, led by the father and son team of Joe and Tomas Leon (Rod Steiger and Eric Roberts).

The sultry May Munro (Stone) repeatedly contacts Ray, imploring him to accept an assignment to kill Tomas and two of his henchmen. May was a young girl when Tomas killed her parents in cold blood; now she wants revenge, and she instigates a romantic affair with Tomas to get close to him. After initially refusing to help, Ray accepts the job and starts blowing up Tomas' inner ring. Joe gives Ned the task of uncovering the identity of the bomber. May's revenge plan will flush Ray into the open, where Ned will be waiting to pounce.

The Specialist starts with plenty of style and few explosions. It ends with plenty of explosions and no style. Director Luis Llosa appears to be fully aware that the material is quite thin, and initially he makes up for it with a brooding vibe, Stallone's Ray angry at the world and coming out of hiding only to play with his tech gadgets and blow bad guys up, while Stone's May is paraded outdoors in ever shorter mini dresses or indoors mostly naked. It's the type of film that attempts to shift focus from the nonsense actions of the main characters to the coolness coefficient of the characters themselves, and Llosa gets away with it for about 30 minutes or so.

Then it all gets really silly, May embroiling herself in a distasteful romance with the abusive Tomas, and Ray falling in love with a voice over the phone, while James Woods as Ned accelerates the rate of his angry-man one-liners. Woods becomes the most watchable thing in the movie, and not in a good way. Ridiculously inserted overnight by Joe into the senior ranks of local enforcement authorities, Ned spends most of the movie either throwing tirades or chasing one step behind Ray and providing dry commentary on his explosive handiwork. It's an over-the-top performance that serves as a reminder of how absurd the whole plot really is.

Rod Steiger cruises through the movie wondering when other characters inspired by faint recollections of The Godfather will make an appearance, while Eric Roberts as Tomas suddenly seems to be about the same age as Sharon Stone's May, although he is supposed to be a good 15 years older in order for the revenge plot to make any sense. After May switches sides from good to evil and back enough times to make sure that it really does not matter, The Specialist ends with Stallone unleashing his explosive fury on an entire city block. When the ideas run out (and in this case, a long time afterwards), just blow everything up.

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Movie Review: Total Recall (1990)

One of the last non-digital science fiction adventures, Total Recall is a combustible combination of director Paul Verhoeven's ultra-violent tendencies and Arnold Schwarzenegger's bulging brawn in a brisk adaptation of a thoughtful Philip K. Dick story.

It's the year 2084, and Mars is colonized and being actively mined for a precious mineral. On Earth, construction worker Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger) is having inexplicable nightmares about Mars. He tries to convince his wife Lori (Sharon Stone) that they should relocate to the red planet, but she is not interested. Instead, Quaid hires the Rekall company to implant false Mars vacation memories into his brain, and requests the special "secret agent" package to spice up his fake recollections.

But something goes wrong during the process, and Quaid is catapulted into a seemingly real life-and-death struggle, finding himself the target of vicious assassins led by Richter (Michael Ironside), who is taking orders from the ruthless Vilos Cohaagen, the governor of Mars. Quaid receives a message from himself recorded in the past: he used to be government agent Hauser, working for Cohaagen, before switching sides and joining a rebellion against the governor. Subsequently his memory was erased and he was given a new identity as Quaid. Now he must travel to Mars, connect with resistance fighter Melina (Rachel Ticotin), and help the mysterious rebel leader Kuato.

An army of screenwriters including Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon laboured for years to adapt Dick's We Can Remember It for You Wholesale story, and the result is a chase movie filled with wild wit and woolly violence. But amidst the dangerously high levels of kinetic energy, Total Recall remembers to build tension around fundamental conflicts, such as defining life's value either through past actions or present decisions, but not both. What makes Quaid human becomes a core challenge, since his rational mind can no longer be necessarily faithful to over-written memories, but his heart can chart a path back to commitments made but not necessarily understood. None of the philosophical aspects of the film are belaboured, and Verhoeven manages to incorporate the interesting queries without causing long pauses in the action.

Total Recall's visual effects won a Special Achievement Academy award, and the look of the film is admirable. The Earth of 2084 is not as grim as the world of Blade Runner (1982), but Total Recall's modernity is infused with a kitschy undertone that keeps the future in its place. The movie brazenly leaves plenty to be desired in the technology of the future, the cars looking clunkier than their twentieth century counterparts, Mars conquered but its climate-controlled spaces apparently not worthy of equipping with shatter-proof glass, and the weapons, outfits and hairstyles of 2084 don't look that much different than the styles of 1990. The Mars colonization is imagined as an austere early industrial age outpost, red mountains being systemically strip-mined, the motif of suffering completed with the Venusville red light district where mutants try to hustle a living.

Meanwhile, Verhoeven is busy finding innovative ways to throw globs of violence, blood and gore onto the screen, outdoing himself with an escalator gun battle in which Quaid defends himself by using an innocent bystander as a (very dead) human shield, the lifeless body repeatedly punctured with ever more bullets. Not able to resist a gruesome exclamation mark, Verhoeven ends the scene with a bad guy taking a squishy step on another dead body. The level of violence in Total Recall is beyond anything necessary, but excess is Verhoeven's calling card, and here he works it to his advantage.

Arnold Schwarzenegger continued his upward career trajectory as an action hero, reaching new heights with Total Recall. Although still nowhere near able to convey subtle emotions, Schwarzenegger brings a confident swagger and good comic timing to the role of Douglas Quaid. His physicality is still by far the dominant feature of the performance, but Schwarzenegger convinces in a role notably more complex than his more typical revenge operas, and filled with necessary confusion.

The supporting cast is comparatively bland, but a pre-stardom Sharon Stone catches the eye as Quaid's supposed wife Lori, mixing kittenish seduction with kick-ass martial arts, not to mention negotiating a most violent divorce. When Verhoeven meets Schwarzenegger, even marital conflicts get settled with a bullet.

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Movie Review: Casino (1995)

Inspired by true events and real-life characters, Casino celebrates Vegas before it was scrubbed clean and gentrified. Martin Scorsese delivers another intense, if not perfect, journey into the intriguing and violent world of Crime Inc.

Expert handicapper Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Robert De Niro) always possessed a talent for making money from gambling. In the early 1970s his mid-west Mafia associates, backed by the Teamsters, reward him by giving him his own Las Vegas casino, Tangiers, to run. Ace operates a tight joint, weeding out the lower class criminals, disposing of cheats, and maximizing profits, becoming a well-respected man about town, in as far as Vegas respects any man.

Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) was Ace's extremely violent sidekick on their way up in the shadow of the criminal world, and Ace is not thrilled when Nicky also relocates to Vegas. Ace meets and marries professional hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), a gorgeous but money-hungry gold digger with an unhealthy attachment to small time hustler Lester Diamond (James Woods). Eventually Ace's life begins to unravel: he insults the wrong local power brokers and runs afoul of Vegas' licensing requirements; Nicky's violent methods reflect badly on Ace's business; and Ginger looks to rob him blind and make off with their daughter.

Further developing the visual style of GoodFellas, Scorsese directs the front end of Casino with plenty of colour, movement, and panache, the intermittent narration by De Niro and especially Pesci adding sharp humour and plenty of personality. Scorsese recognizes in the sights, sounds, underlying sleaze and unbridled greed of Vegas the perfect playground for criminals looking for a veneer of respectability as they rake in the easy profits.

The last third of Casino slows down to a lumbering pace, the disintegrating relationship between Ace and Ginger sucking the life out of the movie. The crime and casino elements take a back seat to the interminable melodrama of Ginger betraying Ace at every opportunity, his refusal to decisively kick her out of his life a blot against his otherwise sharp judgement.

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci play against each other with ease born from intense professional familiarity. After Raging Bull and GoodFellas, Casino represents their third collaboration with Scorsese, and once again the characters of Ace and Nicky share a destructively dependent relationship. They need each other yet manage to also repeatedly trade biting insults and hurtful betrayals. Casino lives off the energy of De Niro and Pesci, the former eager to transition from a life of crime to the appearance of respectability, the latter more interested in maximizing profit in a city that rewards abject criminality.

Ginger probably represents the pinnacle of Sharon Stone's acting career, and she deserves credit for holding her own opposite De Niro and Pesci. Ginger embodies the single weak spot that Ace has, and Stone grabs the role with relish, earning herself a nomination for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Ginger's obsession with materialistic wealth and ability to manipulate men perfectly fits Stone's screen persona, with the added spice of Ginger having a blind spot of her own in the shape of Lester Diamond. The relationship between Ginger and Diamond adds undeniable tension to Casino, but it's non-development also represents a lost opportunity.

At nearly three hours, Casino does overreach the scope of the available material. But the better moments leave a lasting impression, and while the movie does not deal a royal flush, it delivers a full house.

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Movie Review: He Said, She Said (1991)

A lightweight romantic comedy plays with an interesting premise, achieves little, and walks away leaving a mildly irritating impression. He Said, She Said is a talented cast mostly wasted with a dearth of ideas.

Dan (Kevin Bacon) and Lorie (Elizabeth Perkins) meet as young and competing reporters working for the same newspaper. He is a wild womanizer with shoot-from-the-hip opinions, she is seeking a more mature relationship and has more considered opinions. Opposites attract, and eventually they embark on a romance while gaining increased career fame as duelling columnists and TV personalities. But their differing levels of willingness to commit to a common future catches up with them and the relationship crashes publicly with Lorie throwing a mug at Dan's head on-air.

Script writer Brian Hohlfeld has spent a career writing material for various children's Winnie The Pooh type movies. With real humans and adult emotions he is unfortunately out of his depth. He Said, She Said is rarely funny, only tepidly romantic, and the challenges faced by Dan and Lorie and bland in the extreme: she doesn't wash her coffee cup! He doesn't want to commit! It's all fascinatingly unoriginal, and faced with a script lacking in any spark, co-directors Ken Kwapis and Marisa Silver can inject little life into the proceedings.

The one gimmick is in telling the relationship story, all in flashback, twice over: the first half of the movie represents Dan's viewpoint, while the second half replays the same events but from Lorie's perspective, with sometimes not so subtle differences in their respective recollection of events. While the technique is somewhat engaging, the sad truth is that there is barely enough of a story here to be told once, let alone twice.

Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins do their best, but they come across as more likely to be friendly work colleagues than lovers, and neither can bring any conviction into the romance. Sharon Stone does a fly-by as one of Dan's more serious and durable of many sex partners, but she is really just playing Sharon Stone, able to crush any competing woman with a single cold stare.

He Said, She Said, but nothing interesting was actually said.

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