Basic Instinct (1992)

If you can get past the fact the sweaty suited detectives are all males indistinguishable from each other and the women are all deviants whose perverse sexual desires the men must sigh and resignedly sate, then this is for most of its runtime a solid thriller with Michael Douglas doing a good job playing Michael Douglas playing a detective, and Sharon Stone channelling Vertigo's Kim Novak to play the cop's prime murder suspect-with-benefits, a mystery novelist whose bed-partners end up dead by ice-pick.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

The Canon Group intended to release an Allan Quatermain trilogy, but even before this 1986 sequel to King Soloman's Mines is over, there are signs the money has dried up and number three isn't going to happen, for example, while Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) and his fiancée, Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone, reprising her Razzie Worst Actress-nominated role) trek across Africa searching for his brother (Chamberlain's partner at the time, Martin Rabbett), the dangers they face are not massive Indiana Jones boulder setpieces but just incredibly low-budget things like the ditch they stumble across which they simply jump, or the bats they find which simply fly away, or the snakes, two Cecils-the-Lion, and cannibalistic tribespeople they encounter which Quatermain simply shoots, and if anyone remains hopeful for a third in the series after all these underwhelming things, the climactic wire fu endscenes with their conspicuous wires, undisguised safety harnesses, and golden porridge remove all doubt.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Sliver (1993)

A short-lived genre in the 90s was the "erotic thriller starring Sharon Stone" and in this not very erotic nor very thrilling addition, based on the Ira Levin book, Sharon Stone is the new resident in a NY apartment complex that happens to be not just under the thrall of a serial killer but also a shadowy voyeur who has the building under complete video-surveillance, affording viewers a look at what Director Phillip Noyce evidently thinks titillating: highly improbable, choreographed soft porn interactions between Sharon Stone and the likely culprit.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Catwoman (2004)

Badly influenced by the Batman movies that came before it, Catwoman is a camp and shallow origin story featuring an unfocused superhero - part apologetic cupcake-baking, coquettish Bree Van de Kamp and part computer-generated and personality-free Frank N Furter dominatrix - fighting a similarly unfocused villain, a barely featured Sharon Stone representing a vague Death Becomes Her evil vanity.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW