From Showgirls to Bound, Gina Gershon makes unwatchable films a little more watchable.
"Gina Gershon Spencer"
"Gina Gershon Seneschal"
"Gina Gershon Ireland"
Elizabeth Berkley imitates a mannequin this scene with a hungry Gina Gershon from Showgirls.
Not since that Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive has a stage show created such emotions... I am assuming they were going for laughter and dismay no? I mean I have expected to see Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in the audience counting their upcoming fortune.
I have seen Bound a couple of times and it has never connected with me. Now after watching that clip above with Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon I guess I'm going to have to see it again until I like it.
Thank God for video because I'm not sure mere words are up to the task of describing how bad the movie Showgirls really is.
More fine acting by Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls... meanwhile our girl Gershon looks like she could be trying out for a more adult Laura Croft.
Why am I reminded of a Love Boat episode or perhaps a Quincy? Is it the set design? The music? or a plot point that wouldn't be out of place in a Brady Bunch episode.
Gina Gershon and Tom Cruise in Cocktail... I'm a little surprised she didn't break poor Tom in half.
Gina Gershon, in a rare clothed role, looking worse than usual walking down the street with Hillary Swank who honestly looks a little better than usual all in the horrible titled film "P.S. I Love You" which is surely about vampire invasions or a plague or something.
Now this is the Gina Gershon we all now and love... cue the Maneater music.
Ah the 1980's when supermodels tilled the soil before those hard working Mexicans invaded our borders and stole their jobs forcing them to move to Vegas and star in badly disguised porn films.
Ah the 1980's when supermodels tilled the soil before those hard working Mexicans invaded our borders and stole their jobs forcing them to move to Vegas and star in badly disguised porn films.
Which is worse Elizabeth Berkley's Acting or Elizabeth Berkley's dancing??? Mystery for the ages I tell you.
Demonlover: 4 out of 10: Wow! What an overlong train wreck of a movie. Before I begin to scratch the surface of the ineptitude of this film let me explain the few things Demonlover does right.
Demonlover does some things very well. It has individual scenes that work on their own either as erotic vignettes; (Chloe Sevigny playing videogames in the nude , an Asian girl seducing a French man at a club after his lover leaves.) or plot actions (dosing a bottled water with Halcion before the film ventures down the rabbit hole twenty odd minutes in).
The general plot of Demonlover is a French conglomerate is looking to buy an adult anime company. Because of this, a rival adult anime distributor has sent a corporate spy to put a kibosh on the proceedings. That is the story. There is some silliness about a for-pay torture and bondage site but Demonlover's story in a nutshell is an Anime buyout scheme.
So how can a thriller dealing with bondage and Hentai and starring Chloe Sevigny, Gina Gershon, and the hot redhead from Devil’s Advocate,Connie Nielsen, possibly go wrong?
Well for one thing, there are cloistered nuns that know more about marketing animated porn online than writer/director Olivier Assayas does. I often complain about movies where the writers and director have clearly never worked in an office (13 Going on 30 for example) but this is over the top. The French, as an example, are worried about a secret website that makes lots of money. If the website makes lots of money… wait for it… it probably is not a secret. Moreover, I am not sure that cornering the online Hentai traffic is an attainable goal. After all, how hard is it to draw new tentacle porn?
In addition, I doubt many corporate spies scale the sides of buildings or poison colleagues. And the action of the corporate spies/spider-men is actually some of the more believable scenes.
I know I lightly praised the sex scenes above but with this cast, I was expecting more, a lot more. In addition I often did not know where the movie was taking place. (are they in Tokyo or France is a popular game you can play.)
Then there is the car chase towards the end that looks like an outtake from Vanishing Point. (As Tom Servo would have said “Meanwhile in another decade”)
The film is overlong, very confusing, somewhat boring and the characters IQ’s seem to drop every scene. After the fifteenth fade to black transition, I actually screamed “end already” at the screen.
In some ways this seems to be a badly done remake of Videodrome.(The movie is so all over the place the film could be a remake of dozens of seperate entities all but in a blender set on confuse.) Olivier Assayas is clearly no David Cronenberg. He cannot even tell a simple story in a believable and entertaining manner. Nor can he take advantage of three of the hottest actresses in the business. A missed opportunity all around.
For full size representation click twice on images below (Takes you off site so use back button to return to Illustrated Journal of Cinematic Diversions)