Every few weeks, a strange string of search terms pops up in our analytics: “shame4k stracy stone.” At first, it looks like a keyboard smash. But dig deeper, and you’ll find a fascinating collision of cinema history, home-media obsession, and two of Hollywood’s most fearless performers.

Now, Criterion or Arrow Video — please release Shame in 4K. And someone get Sharon Stone a copy. She’d get it.

Both Shame and Basic Instinct are about straying. Straying from monogamy, from sanity, from the roles society expects. Sharon Stone strayed from the dumb-blonde typecasting of her early career. Michael Fassbender strayed into a role so raw it reportedly left him emotionally drained for weeks after shooting.

Shame ’s Brandon is a man destroyed by his inability to connect. Basic Instinct ’s Catherine is a woman who weaponizes connection. Both films ask: what happens when sex is not love, but power, pain, or emptiness?