Sliver (C+ or 2.5/4 stars)
One year after Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone stars in 'Sliver' (directed by Phillip Noyce), yet another sexy noir thriller. Stone plays Carly Norris, a successful book editor & recent divorcee who moves into an exclusive, upscale NYC "sliver" high-rise. There, she meets a plethora of other tenants including Gus (Keene Curtis), a prof. of videography at NYU, Jack (Tom Berenger), an author, Zeke (William Baldwin), a video game designer, & Vida (Polly Walker) a fashion model who likes cocaine, moonlights as a call girl, & knows a few too many secrets. They all tell Carly that she bears a striking resemblance to the previous tenant of her apartment, who fell to her death from her balcony {GREAT opening scene}.
Despite this alarming news, she finds it in her to begin a steamy relationship with Zeke. Meanwhile, Jack stalks Carly & warns her that Zeke is ... "sick". As Jack's behavior becomes more erratic, Gus & Vida die under odd circumstances. Zeke reveals to Carly that he is the owner of the high-rise. And as owner, Zeke installed a ubiquitous video system throughout the building, allowing him to spy on all the tenants from his own secret surveillance room. So, Zeke has been hiding that from her. Jack is smarmy & weird. 2 tenants are dead. And Carly feels like she could be next. Who is the killer? It all unfolds in a tense climax with broken hearts, death & a great closing line of Carly telling a certain someone to "get a life" before the screen turns to black.
This is one salacious, trashy movie -- like flipping through a trashy novel on the beach during the summer "trashy". That said, trashy novels/movies can be fun. There is an appeal to it -- a voyeuristic element to it AS you watch; even aside from the voyeur component in the plot. And hey, it's not a bad time to be watching Sharon Stone & William Baldwin going at it in the bedroom; gotta say it, haha. Having said that, this is not a particularly good film. Trash is trash and, no matter how much you shine a turd ... a turd is a turd. Furthermore, scriptwriter Joe Esztherhas decided to not only change the identity of the killer(!), but also change the ending of the book completely. More to that: the other ending was filmed, but not used because an actual accident came from it and, perhaps, it would be in poor taste to use it. Oh, and a host of deleted scenes left some story gaps. As for the quality of the plot: messy. The dialogue: simplistic.
But despite the messiness, trashiness of the proceedings & misfires ... the misfires are interesting. I enjoy high-rise movies. I love curling up to a murder mystery. The film looks cool. The music is pulsating. The finale is kinda clever. Sharon Stone is not nearly as good here as she was in Basic Instinct, but she's always appealing. William Baldwin is seductive enough to make you second guess if he's good or not. I enjoy Polly Walker {of '92's Enchanted April}, but she's not in the film much. You know, 'Sliver' spawned a series of real crimes in which voyeurs planted hidden video cameras on unsuspecting persons. Here's a movie where real life problems during the production & real life post-film controversies made the film more interesting than it actually was. But yeah, I dug it in a twisted sort of way.
Despite this alarming news, she finds it in her to begin a steamy relationship with Zeke. Meanwhile, Jack stalks Carly & warns her that Zeke is ... "sick". As Jack's behavior becomes more erratic, Gus & Vida die under odd circumstances. Zeke reveals to Carly that he is the owner of the high-rise. And as owner, Zeke installed a ubiquitous video system throughout the building, allowing him to spy on all the tenants from his own secret surveillance room. So, Zeke has been hiding that from her. Jack is smarmy & weird. 2 tenants are dead. And Carly feels like she could be next. Who is the killer? It all unfolds in a tense climax with broken hearts, death & a great closing line of Carly telling a certain someone to "get a life" before the screen turns to black.
This is one salacious, trashy movie -- like flipping through a trashy novel on the beach during the summer "trashy". That said, trashy novels/movies can be fun. There is an appeal to it -- a voyeuristic element to it AS you watch; even aside from the voyeur component in the plot. And hey, it's not a bad time to be watching Sharon Stone & William Baldwin going at it in the bedroom; gotta say it, haha. Having said that, this is not a particularly good film. Trash is trash and, no matter how much you shine a turd ... a turd is a turd. Furthermore, scriptwriter Joe Esztherhas decided to not only change the identity of the killer(!), but also change the ending of the book completely. More to that: the other ending was filmed, but not used because an actual accident came from it and, perhaps, it would be in poor taste to use it. Oh, and a host of deleted scenes left some story gaps. As for the quality of the plot: messy. The dialogue: simplistic.
But despite the messiness, trashiness of the proceedings & misfires ... the misfires are interesting. I enjoy high-rise movies. I love curling up to a murder mystery. The film looks cool. The music is pulsating. The finale is kinda clever. Sharon Stone is not nearly as good here as she was in Basic Instinct, but she's always appealing. William Baldwin is seductive enough to make you second guess if he's good or not. I enjoy Polly Walker {of '92's Enchanted April}, but she's not in the film much. You know, 'Sliver' spawned a series of real crimes in which voyeurs planted hidden video cameras on unsuspecting persons. Here's a movie where real life problems during the production & real life post-film controversies made the film more interesting than it actually was. But yeah, I dug it in a twisted sort of way.