Good idea lost in the noise

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Remember Joe Eszterhas? The writer who pretty much owned the theaters in the late 80's and early 90's with films like Flashdance, Basic Instinct, Jade and Showgirls? In addition to Sliver, at least two of the films above - Basic Instinct and Jade - could qualify as giallo-style films. When reviewed through the lens of 2018, his films seem puerile at worst and silly at best, gradually becoming goofier the sexier they claim to be.Directed by Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, The Saint), based on a novel by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, No Time for Sergeants, Deathtrap, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil...man, did Ira have his finger on the pulse of pop culture or what?) and produced by Robert Evans (Ever wonder who owns the IOU on my writing style? Wonder no longer, baby. Also, watch The Kid Stays in the Picture to learn how the producer of The Godfather and Rosemary's Baby was often more interesting than the stars of his films), Sliver was originally rated NC 17 due to its sex scenes and some male frontal nudity. Also, there was an original ending - we'll get to it in a bit - that audiences hated.Carly Norris (Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct) is a book editor that never seems to go to her job. While she is there, she spends most of her time gossiping and bemoaning the fact that she never gets to have sex, despite being oh so fashionable and, you know, looking like Sharon Stone in 1993.Somehow, she gets to immediately move into the best New York apartment ever, as the previous tenant (Naomi Singer, who looks exactly like Carly, which is a giallo staple if I've ever heard of one) has recently fallen to her death from her balcony.Everyone in the building wants to get to know her, no one more than Zeke (William Baldwin, Flatliners). Within, oh let's say a day or two, they're having sex all over the place and talking about flying a plane into a volcano. He says that he designs "computer video games" and she's just happy to have a younger man interested in her, despite the fact that she has a six-figure clothing budget (giallo fashion alert) and, you know, looks like Sharon Stone in 1993.Carly also has another suitor, a writer named Jack (Tom Berenger, Major League) who is the most sexist character in the film, but certainly not in Eszterhaus' oeuvre. As more neighbors begin to die, she begins to distrust both Zeke and Jack.Oh yeah - there's also Vida Warren, who is a model, but also a hooker, and also has the worst cocaine snorting scene in the history of film, treating it as a child would Pixie Stix.At the close of the film, we learn that Jack killed Naomi, the original tenant because he was jealous of Zeke, who actually designed and owns the building. Zeke knew Jack killed her because of his network of security cameras, but he didn't want his secret getting out.Zeke invites Naomi to enjoy the cameras, but she eventually destroys his control room, telling him to get a life before she leaves both him and her home.Joe Eszterhas's original ending - where Zeke turns out to be the killer, revealed to a sympathetic Naomi as they fly over and perhaps into a volcano - was "incomprehensible to test audiences," which led to Eszterhas writing five different endings. The re-shot ending, where actors Tom Berenger and Polly Walker wear S&M fashions, had to be filmed with body doubles as the actors did not agree to this in their contracts. Eszterhas hates the film, particularly the new ending and final line.The sex scenes were a big deal when this came out. During the filming of them, Sharon Stone bit William Baldwin's tongue "with such force that he couldn't talk properly for days afterwards." This may be why neither actor would speak to one another by the end of the filming. What remains on the screen is coupling that is at best robotic and at worse, ridiculous. It's still not the worst sex scenes in an Eszterhaus film.Sliver is filled with that trademark Eszterhaus wit. Witness dialogue like Carly saying, "You've been spending too much time with your vibrator." Her friend's reply? "I certainly have - I've been getting a plastic yeast infection!" By wit, I mean copious amounts of the kind of sex talk that CEO's that have been removed thanks to modern thinking and the #MeToo movement would find humorous or normal.Oh yeah! Martin Landau is in this and utterly wasted! There's no reason for him to even be in this movie! He does absolutely nothing other than make you look at the screen and say, "Martin Landau is in this."The giallo themes that the film starts with - Carly being a dead ringer for a murdered woman, high fashion, the promise of kink - pretty much go nowhere. The film was a commercial, if not an artistic success. But it seems like there was so much promise that goes undelivered and the film begs for an Argento or even DePalma touch. Even a late in the movie knife murder reminds you that this film could be all masked faces and black leather gloves, but never goes all in.

Sliver is a more tone down version of Basic Instinct or the film is probably a wannabe Basic Instinct. It has a couple of little cute sex scenes, and some over the top violence which like the sex, is very occasional. What we get is a peek into a lot of people's lives who live within this apartment block, it's name Sliver. Stone who acts well, far from her Basic Instinct character, and she's, surrounded by some strong performers, plays Carly Norris, an editor who's just moved into this high rise NYe building, catching the eye of two people, a young mysterious hottie (Baldwin) and a successful, and jealous novelist (Berenger). Choosing Baldwin over the latter, an affair blossoms, as tenants start to die, one looking accidental, the next one, murder, but these aren't the first. A Stone lookalike (though honestly, this woman's more Kristin Scott Thomas looking, with the Stone haircut) in he film's beginning, who ironically was the former tenant of Stone's apartment, is thrown off the balcony, of this towering building by a faceless assailant, which has us jumping from one suspect to the other, and you know whom I'm talking about. Sliver has too little sex or violence, in equal measure. It is great to perve in on the lives of people, one such family, the father is interfering with the daughter. Also we get to see Oz's own Austen Tayshus, sitting a loo, on his cell, arguing with someone. Though of course these tenants, are oblivious to the fact they are being watched 24/7 for Baldwin's sole entertainment. When Stone is let in on this big spy room, you can't get her off the control panel. One scene totally without potency, one could say boring, was the Gym scene. It didn't really need to exist. Okay Sliver is a bad film, but doesn't have a bad script. I just think it's a weak film. It's tease ending, I actually liked, as well as Stone's last line, that summed up Baldwin's whole life brilliantly.

If the sight of Sharon Stone and William Baldwin gyrating their way through a series of long and drawn-out sex scenes is appealing, then I'd recommend SLIVER, one in a wave of erotic thrillers that populated the mid-1990s in the wake of BASIC INSTINCT. For movie fans in general, though, SLIVER is a bit of a non-starter.The film's biggest flaw is an overly familiar script, which has an interesting premise involving voyeurism but does little with it (other than inviting the viewer to participate, a theme which has been done to death these days anyway). Sharon Stone moves into a high-tech apartment block where people are being murdered, and we're supposed to care about what happens next.There are flashes of interest and inspiration throughout, usually involving the supporting cast. Watching Tom Berenger chewing dialogue is always a delight, and ROME's Polly Walker shows up too, although sadly not for very long. The talents of CCH Pounder and Martin Landau also end up wasted in favour of dull, slightly wooden turns from Stone (who displays none of the charm and allure she essayed in BASIC INSTINCT) and a sweaty, unpleasant Baldwin.The thriller aspects are unevenly handled, and Aussie director Philip Noyce (who directed DEAD CALM, one of my favourite thrillers) drops the ball more than once, failing to elicit suspense from scenarios which should be tense and atmospheric. SLIVER isn't all bad; the most undemanding of movie fans might even enjoy it, but I'm afraid I've been here way too many times to see anything even remotely interesting.

For long time, Basic Instinct and Sliver were two movies that I avoided watching. The general talk around me about these two movies was that both starred Sharon Stone and the primary theme of the movie was sex. But somewhere as time passed, I ended up giving the movie "Basic Instinct" a try and realized that in spite of being loaded with steamy sex scenes, the movie still had a story and some substance. There was indeed a lot of confusion throughout the movie which makes you wonder what happens next and maybe lay down a bet to predict the end of the movie. What I am trying to say is that, the movie is enjoyable, not for the sex but more so for the story and the element of thrill.Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about this movie "Sliver", which I ended up watching in the hope that maybe people were wrong (as in case of Basic Instinct) that this movie was just sex. And yes, because the story is hardly gripping, the movie does end up being a movie which is all about sex. I was severely disappointed with this movie. The story line did not impress me much and Sharon Stone's character was annoying to say the least. Hardly anything in her character that you can like or sympathize. Nothing! Very shallow! The movie centers around an apartment owned by a pervert with money enough to wire the whole apartment with cameras so that he can watch everyone doing anything and I mean it - anything. The story (if there is something called a story) is lame. It follows how Sharon's character eventually finds this out and how she deals with this discovery and blah blah blah! A very predictable end once you are through to the last forty minutes of the movie. Of course, that does not mean, the earlier part is interesting. It is just a pervert's dream come true and nothing else.All and all, I can say that this is one of the movies you can safely avoid. Even a bad movie, I say to people, go and watch so that you know it is bad. But here is a movie, I can say, there is no need to even watch. You will not be missing anything. And if you are Sharon Stone's fans, well, I don't know what to say. I guess there is nothing much I can say.Overall, disappointing.