Yup, we’re going there. Nine and a Half Weeks (1986). And why not, for goodness’ sake?! Enjoy.
Category Archives: Kim Basinger
Final Analysis (1992)
She chooses he who must choose her. San Francisco psychologist Isaac Barr (Richard Gere) is treating Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman) for OCD and she tells him of her particularly vivid dreams and difficult childhood. When he talks with her sister, Heather (Kim Basinger), about their troubled upbringing, he finds his attentions shifting away from his patient. Heather comes on to him, and he falls head over heels, leading to a secret affair complicated by Heather’s violently jealous Greek gangster husband, Jimmy (Eric Roberts). But the complications don’t end there, as Heather may or may not need some serious psychological help herself when she kills her husband while under the influence of alcohol ... Did any of these eighty-seven patients beat their spouses to death? You could make the case for this as an elaborate play on Hitchcockiana, particularly Vertigo, with actresses called Kim getting frisky in San Francisco; or it’s a discourse on the narrative aspects of Freud; or it’s about the impact of child abuse; and the condition of pathological intoxication discussed here and occasionally induced when some of us watch Gere, never mind when Heather imbibes just one sip of alcohol. And it’s all of these things, together with another nod to Hitch with some great hairdos, numbering a brilliant frightwig for Paul Guilfoyle as District Attorney Mike O’Brien which he doesn’t sport in court, just in shadowy offices. And what about that fabulously phallic lighthouse! Or you could just say that this is what it is – outrageously fun entertainment with Basinger showing us a huge range in a really great role from cowering terrified wife to deranged gun-wielding murderess. Screenwriter Wesley Strick (remember him?) based his premise on an idea by forensic psychiatrist Robert H. Berger (there were rewrites by TV comedy writer Susan Harris) and it’s directed by Phil Joanou who has made a brilliantly overwrought thriller with a stunningly multi-referential finale. Crazy good with atmospheric photography by Jordan Cronenweth whose final film this was. Sometimes a violet is just a violet
Never Say Never Again (1983)
They don’t make ’em like they used to. An aging James Bond (Sean Connery) makes a mistake during a routine training mission which leads M (Edward Fox) to believe that the legendary MI6 spy is past his prime. M indefinitely suspends Bond from active duty. He’s sent off to a fat farm where he witnesses SPECTRE member Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) administering a sadistic beating to a fellow patient whose eye she then scans. She and her terrorist colleagues including pilot Jack Petachi (Gavan O’Herlihy) successfully steal two nuclear warheads from the U.S. military for criminal mastermind Blofeld (Max Von Sydow). M must reinstate Bond, as he is the only agent who can beat SPECTRE at their own game. He follows Petachi’s sister Domino (Kim Basinger) with her lover and SPECTRE agent Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to the Bahamas and then befriends her at a spa in Nice by posing as a masseur. At a charity event in a casino Bond beats Largo at a video game where the competitors receive electric shocks of increasing intensity. Bond informs Domino Largo’s had her brother killed … There’s an incredible motorbike chase when Blush captures Bond and a really good stunt involving horses in a wild escape from the tower at the top of a temple in North Africa but this isn’t handled as well as you’d like and some of the shooting looks a little rackety: inexperienced producer Jack Schwartzman had underestimated production costs and wound up having to dig into his own funds. (He was married to actress Talia Shire who has a credit on the film – their son is actor Jason; his other son John is the film’s cinematographer). With Rowan Atkinson adding comic relief as the local Foreign Office rep, Von Sydow as the cat-stroking mad genius and Brandauer giving his best tongue in cheek as the neurotic foe, this is not in the vein of the original Bonds. It’s a remake of Thunderball which was the subject of litigation from producer Kevin McClory who co-wrote the original story with Ivar Bryce and Ian Fleming who then based his novel on the resulting screenplay co-written with Jack Whittingham before any of the films were ever made. (This is covered in Robert Sellers’ book The Battle for Bond). It thereby sideswiped the ‘official’ Broccoli machine by bringing the original Bond back – in the form of a much older Connery in a re-run of his fourth Bond outing which had been massively profitable. Pamela Salem is Moneypenny and is given very little to do; while Bernie Casey turns up as Felix Leiter. With nice quips about age and fitness (as you’d expect from witty screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. but there were uncredited additions by comic partnership Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais), good scene-setting, glorious women and terrific underwater photography by the legendary marine DoP Ricou Browning, this is the very essence of a self-deprecating late entry – particularly in the wake of Roger Moore’s forays and he wasn’t even done yet: Octopussy came out after this. Fun but not particularly memorable, even if we’re all in on the joke.
Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
I was being romantic then you go and disturb me with your kinky fuckery. Sex is ever thus. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is assistant to a fiction editor Jack Hyde (!) (Eric Johnson) at a publishing company and he has designs on her. She bumps into Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) at an exhibition where her friend’s giant photos of her are the star attraction – and he’s bought them all. He inveigles his way back into her life, screws her, has her boss fired after he comes on to her, and then she gets his job. Only trouble is a girl is following her – subplot one. It’s Christian’s previous submissive – who bows before him causing Ana to have a crisis of at least two minutes because she knows she will never kneel down when he tells her! Then Christian asks her to move in and he instructs her once again. Then he nearly dies in a helicopter crash – except he doesn’t. At his birthday party he announces their engagement and the woman who introduced him to S&M (Kim Basinger) gets teed off and his mom (Marcia Gay Harden) hears about it and banishes her. Like the one night stand that stays for breakfast, this nonsense will just not go away and they even had the cheek to include Jeff Buckley and The Police on the soundtrack. Ms Johnson’s clothes slip off as regularly as Dornan’s accent and it’s all as smooth as those Ben Wa balls. Allegedly not as filthy as the books by E.L. James this is still shit. Barely plotted, it was adapted by Niall Leonard (her husband). Directed by James Foley.
9 1/2 Weeks (1986)
Yes, I’m going there. It’s Friday after all. This was the secret shame of myself and several of my college mates courtesy of a guy who had it on VHS back in the day. We watched it regularly in a darkened room, as you do. Lunchtimes have never been the same since. I think this is how cults begin, isn’t it?! It was a notorious bomb on release and it’s not difficult to see why – how to explain an S&M memoir on date night?! 960 people stormed out of the preview audience of 1,000! One can only hazard a guess at what the remainers were doing. Really, it’s a home movie in every sense! Ingeborg Day nee Seiler (daughter of an Austrian SS officer) wrote for feminist mag Ms. as Ingeborg Bachmann in the Seventies and documented this stage of her life pseudonymously in 1978 as ‘Elizabeth McNeill’. She had a breakdown afterwards. Gallerist Elizabeth embarks on an intense affair with Wall Street broker John who takes her places she’s never been … in her own body. The fact that she is played by the stunning Kim Basinger and he is the then-beautiful Mickey Rourke just makes it all the more, uh, pleasurable. In fact it’s their characterisation that makes this erotica work. Screenwriters Zalman King and Patricia Louisanna Knop (and Sarah Kernochan) turned soft porn into their avocation, while underrated director Adrian Lyne just makes everything appear lovely and astonishing as you’d expect from someone who helped change the look of cinema: you’ll never look at the contents of your refrigerator the same way again. Seriously sexy and the soundtrack is great!
L.A. Confidential (1997)
An instant classic was released late 1997 about institutional corruption in the LAPD following a decade of drought and violence in that bright, guilty metropolis. Set in the early 50s and condensing the original novel by James Ellroy from 8 years to a matter of weeks, it could have come straight out of the era it depicted – if there hadn’t been so much censorship of sex, racism, violence and reality. Hollywood never looked so beautiful, nor so awful. Adapted and written by Curtis Hanson.
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