Word: verhoeven
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...book's first part is devoted to a savage critique of the Seminar and its methodology. The group, writes Johnson, was "self-selected" not on grounds of quality of scholarship (he notes pointedly that one of its members is Paul Verhoeven, whose credit as director of the movie Showgirls is far more recent than his Ph.D.), but on prior agreement on a goal. The goal, he maintains, is to discover a Jesus devoid of anything "mythical" or concerned with the actual possibility of a world to come, but reflective instead of the countercultural attitude favored by liberal academics. Although Johnson...
...display the effect is hypnotic. Ace really believes that he sells dreams, and his naivete is contagious. The shots of the Las Vegas Strip are are as seductive as have ever appeared in film. Whereas Mike Figgis presents a gloomier view in his exceptional "Leaving Las Vegas" and Paul Verhoeven fails to leave a lasting impression with "Showgirls," Scorsese chooses to focus on the intertwining glamour and power in this fickle town...
Would that it were. Hollywood films often wallow in bloodlust and sexual smirking--it's the Kingdom of Leer--but genuine eroticism is hard to find. Maybe Verhoeven is right when he says, "Americans have a problem accepting sexuality. American society is more impregnated with Christian beliefs." And to those who find the very idea of sex unholy, it may be as pointless to prefer the erotic to the lurid as to choose a call girl over a hooker. But Showgirls is cold, antierotic. It just ain't sexy; it's only...
...Verhoeven and Eszterhas may have needed the R rating after all. When they made Basic Instinct--a sexy R movie--they deployed atmosphere and innuendo to complement Sharon Stone's swank star turn. Here, with an NC-17 rating, the lads go slack; they let pubic hair and menstruation jokes do all the work. Since their leading lady can't act or dance or dazzle the camera, they've got problems they apparently didn't want to solve...
...blame Verhoeven, the director of two sleek, inventive Hollywood fantasies (RoboCop, Total Recall), for making this movie--though we're surprised he can bear to watch it. The real culprit is Eszterhas, swami of the High Concept. He found Nazis in The Music Box and white supremacists in Betrayed, but cogent drama in neither. His favorite plot hook, sexual mutilation, bore rancid fruit in Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct and Sliver. At least those three had some sick kick to them. But if his women characters aren't psychos or sex-crime victims, the scripts get shrill and turgid. After...