Femme Fatales: Sesso e crimini

Just got Femme Fatales Season 1 and 2 with a Christmas gift card for myself and loved them. I don't have Cinemax so I never saw any episodes on TV but I did see a panel at San Diego and thought the show looked really cool and the women talked about how empowering it was for female characters which is something I like to see. I was not disappointed. While there were one or two clunkers, most of the episodes were terrific and it only got better as it went on. I also thought the special features were really good. There's a very funny blooper real and some great deleted scenes and behind the scenes material. All in all, I really recommend this show and thought it was very smart and sexy and the DVD is just as good with a lot of extra stuff that helps give insight into the episodes. I especially enjoyed the commentary with the girls talking about the episodes they're in. What I think is great about this show is you don't know what to expect. Just like The Twilight Zone or Tales From The Crypt or even Tales from The Darkside, each episode is it's own story so it's different. One can be a mystery, a sci-fi, grindhouse and most have some of my favorite cult actors. Early 1st season was Robert Lasardo, the guy whose head gets cut off in Death Race. He's great as a gangbanger who takes a hostage at the local hospital. Also Charlie O'Connell plays a sleazy video promoter who gets his due in another one of my favorites from the first season. Second year is even more consistent in terms of quality but each feels very different. I can't recommend this show enough. It isn't a dark brooding study of the human condition, but rather a fun, pulp show that's well written, acted and is incredibly entertaining.

Finally caught up with this show after a few of my friends told me it was really good. Given it was a show on Cinemax, I didn't' really have any high expectations, but after downloading a few episodes from Amazon I was really surprised. The thing that caught my eye immediately was how good the show looked. Like classic crime thrillers from the 40s, it had a very unique style and some of the same kind of dialogue you expect in an old classic pulp film. Although the twist endings were usually surprising and cool, the thing that really grabbed me was the way characters moved in between episodes giving it the feel of a shared universe in a comic book. And there is even a comic book episode at the end of season 2 which was a ton of fun. For the most part, there are also some really strong performances and memorable femme fatales or femmes fatales, more accurately. There is a dark nihilistic quality to the show that I personally liked and it combines darkness and hmor in the way of a Breaking Bad does. I probably watched about 10 episodes so far and I liked them all, some I loved. The requisite women in prison episode is really a great homage to the 70s classics and the lead performances are all very engaging and the twist totally caught me by surprise. The second episode, Something Like Murder, feels like it came right out of the 1940s, if it weren't for some very sexy and beautifully photographed love scenes with an incredible twist at the end. But as soon as I thought I had this show pegged, it threw a change up with the antic Speed Date, a delightfully wacky screwball comedy with Girlfriends Reggie Hayes who's hysterical as a befuddled dating fraud. It's just a wonderful mash-up of some of my favorite movies. I also enjoyed The Clinic which featured Angus Scrimm, one of my favorite horror actors and The White Flower which had another great twist ending and one of the sexiest femme fatales in the entire series, Tina Casciani. I've only just started watching the second year of the show, other than skipping ahead to the comic book episode because I couldn't help myself. So far the episodes that have been even better and each one has had some of my favorite character actors like Chris Mulkey and Eric Roberts who are in two of the standouts so far. I also really liked Vivica Fox in the Femme Fatales goes to college episode and there's a strange sci-fi episode that feels like an old 70s TV series, the old evil twin chestnut, which got a neat spin, although it wasn't one of my favorites. All in all, I highly recommend the show and am looking forward to watching the rest and may even have to subscribe to Cinemax to watch the third season when it airs.

This might sound nuts to you, but with no Mad Men on TV this summer, my favorite television show right now is a little late night guilty pleasure called Femme Fatales. I know, I'm shocked too. But after seeing a few commercials on Cinemax after a movie I was watching, I thought I'd hit the record button on my DVR and check it out when I was really, really bored when my girlfriend wasn't around. Last night, I ended up starting the first one and watched all three ofthe first episodes and I didn't just like it, I loved it. There's a lot sex but the stories are so interesting and completely different from anything else on TV that I wondered if I was crazy so I actually sat down and showed a few minutes to my girlfriend and I ended up watching all three again with her who liked it as much as I did. The acting across the board was great. I really liked the lead in the premiere and in the second one, the guy I loved in Niptuck was in it and he was great. I almost spit out my soda when he started quoting lines from White Heat which is probably when I realized there was something a tad subversive about this show which I thought was just some late night stroke show and turned out to be something else entirely. So far, none of the three episodes I watched had anything to do with each other which kept me surprised since I didn't know what to expect. And in last night's episode there was girl that I thought was one of the most stunning women I ever saw on TV, the blonde who kills her husband. This is not the kind of show I would have expected to like or even watch but I will definitely be watching from now on and if you happen to be reading this and don't know if it is for you, I would say give it a chance because it's a pretty smart, hip, fairly subversive little show. Who knew?

Well mostly not "cute" that is. Maybe a little QT (the cover art of the Box Sets indicating that this is "Sin City meets Tarantino"), but not a lot either. What it is though, is erotic short stories, with strong female leads. You may not always like where they are leading to, but most of them are very satisfying nonetheless (in more than one way as you can imagine).

Not every short story does the trick, but even the weaker ones have something that is at least worthwhile. Some are more predictable than others and some have more sex than others. Some of them are even connected (characters popping up at different episodes making it a fun watch). Give the show a try. Curious to see if there is a third season with even more guest appearances (second season had Eric Roberts, Vivica A. Fox and others)

*****UPDATED REVIEW******

I HAD ORIGINALLY rated this Cinemax "after hours" series a two. Based on a single lack luster episode (entitled "Help Me Rhonda" - I honestly could not envision myself, at the time, watching the series again after this)that I still maintain, failed to deliver on multiple levels.

However after recently viewing another earlier episode (ironically and by no planning of my own, CONNECTED to the previous episode I'd reviewed)I found it to be shockingly conflicting to the PREVIOUS episode I'd watched, as well as the subsequent review.

The episode "Behind Locked Doors" proved to well surpass my earlier designation of the "adult action" in this series as "feather core" and move well into the standard (albeit, still somewhat lack luster) "softcore" range and while the acting won't be winning any awards, it was far more palatable than the unfortunate assembly of actors had been apparently capable of delivering in the first episode I reviewed.

Overall the after hours fare in this respect lived up to and surpassed my most minimal expectations and the knowledge that it tied into a later episode (again, strangely enough the first one I'd previously suffered through) was an especially alluring and surprising bonus.

Being somewhat partial to a "presentably" made W.I.P. storyline (Jailbait 2014, anyone?) I felt compelled to give this series its day in court and revise my earlier rather scathing review.

Again, this is no award winner, but at least in the case of THIS episode, it delivered MORE than I expected and deserved a retrial and pardon.

Of note: I noticed the latest particular episode reviewed (premier ep.)was almost 43mins long where the later episodes are only in the neighborhood of 30mins. Comparably I'd say even an extra 12 mins could make a world of difference in both the storyline and plot. So let's just call this "probation," for now.