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How many seconds into filming on the first day of shooting for Femme Fatale did it take for every single crew member, extra, and/or passerby within earshot of Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to realize this was someone who should not be the lead in a film? How many bathtubs have all of the enthusiasts for this uuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttteeeeeerrrrrrrr piece of shit fallen asleep in to think this is not just a good movie but a great one? De Palma is so wildly all over the place for me that I never know what I’m gonna get, but if he made a worse film than this, there will be no advance warning since y’all are as untrustworthy as this movie’s narrative

domino harvey wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 4:44 am How many seconds into filming on the first day of shooting for Femme Fatale did it take for every single crew member, extra, and/or passerby within earshot of Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to realize this was someone who should not be the lead in a film? How many bathtubs have all of the enthusiasts for this uuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttteeeeeerrrrrrrr piece of shit fallen asleep in to think this is not just a good movie but a great one? De Palma is so wildly all over the place for me that I never know what I’m gonna get, but if he made a worse film than this, there will be no advance warning since y’all are as untrustworthy as this movie’s narrative

Have you seen Murder a la Mod? It's is pretty awful in my opinion and way, way worse than Femme Fatale. De Palma's eccentric and frequently derivative filmmaking really works sometimes but when it doesn't it's baaaaaad. Are you by chance in the camp where you consider his earlier work much more consistent? Because that's where I'm at.

Femme Fatale is good campy trash and I'd take it anyway over most films from Hollywood that come out nowadays. It's much better than stuff like The Fury and Obsession. But it depends on your appreciation of of films. I enjoy their silliness

The film only has a standing chance for me, as do many of De Palma’s films, if taken as camp; but that “twist” was so absurd that I think I laughed out loud when I saw this years ago. De Palma ups the ante right to the end, the half-realised concept so ridiculous that it just has to be full parody.

dda1996a wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:53 am Femme Fatale is good campy trash and I'd take it anyway over most films from Hollywood that come out nowadays. It's much better than stuff like The Fury and Obsession. But it depends on your appreciation of of films. I enjoy their silliness

I particularly like Body Double for this reason. It's way, way too silly to be taken seriously and as such I'm able to relax and allow the absurdness of everything to wash over me.

Something can be incredibly silly and also be taken seriously which I think is the, intended, case for all the aforementioned films.

How many seconds into filming on the first day of shooting for Femme Fatale did it take for every single crew member, extra, and/or passerby within earshot of Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to realize this was someone who should not be the lead in a film? How many bathtubs have all of the enthusiasts for this uuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttteeeeeerrrrrrrr piece of shit fallen asleep in to think this is not just a good movie but a great one? De Palma is so wildly all over the place for me that I never know what I’m gonna get, but if he made a worse film than this, there will be no advance warning since y’all are as untrustworthy as this movie’s narrative

Oh do go on.

Edited.

This piqued my interest far more than any rave would have, so there's that!

Damn. I thought this thread had popped up cause it was getting a blu-ray release.

Loathe a movie, end up starting the thread for it--the circle of life continues

What else is Domino's purpose except to cause people to talk about movies he doesn't like and the French.

Effusive praise for this movie is Exhibit A in the dangers of auteurism run amok. Funnily enough, it seems like most of my earlier comments for Raising Cain apply here as well

domino harvey wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2017 3:01 am Raising Cain is awful in every way a film can be bad. [...] Such a tiring, broad movie, [...] ludicrously heightened to the point of second-hand embarrassment at its winking "Isn't this just the worst" absurdity. I guess there's an audience for ultra-arch wanking, but no thanks

I refute absolutely that Femme Fatale could be sincerely considered a "good" film, and browsing through fawning responses here and Letterboxd and even Ebert (who hilariously compares the film to Mulholland Drive, which is some next level delusion) makes me feel like I'm in a really specific and boring variant on the Truman Show. No good movie with noir-ish or twisty aims is scored like a DTV rom com starring Amy Smart. No good film has Antonio Banderas spend like fifteen minutes doing an unconvincing and broad lispy gay swishfest so untethered that we all have black eyes by the time it's put to rest (and given his time on Almodovar sets, he knows better too-- this is just a bad "This is so bad, isn't it?!?" elbow-nudging choice). No good movie makes the fatal error of hiring Romijn-Stamos to carry the film seemingly without first asking her to read a single word out loud or practice emoting a credible response to anything at all-- it is one of the worst perfs I've ever seen, and like Leigh Taylor-Young in the Big Bounce, despite lingerie bump and grinds et al, Romijn-Stamos is ultimately completely sexless and a black hole of anti-eroticism because the character choices (and perf) so wholly engulf the raw materials of the comely actress (and at least there was a narrative function for such a disconnect with respect to Taylor-Young in her film!). And exactly one good film got away with an ending like this, nearly sixty years before this was made, and the sheer pointlessness of this film's redemptive arc in the face of Romijn-Stamos' character being so aggravatingly unlikable at every juncture of her journey is a good summation of the film at large: so much effort for worse than nothing. This is a credible exemplar for the worst film ever made by someone who knows better.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 4:31 pm Effusive praise for this movie is Exhibit A in the dangers of auturism run amok.

I read this as "autism" at first and thought, "Wow, Domino is really pissed off to an unhealthy extreme about this movie..."

DarkImbecile wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 4:33 pm

domino harvey wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 4:31 pm Effusive praise for this movie is Exhibit A in the dangers of auturism run amok.

I read this as "autism" at first

You're thinking of Joker

Or maybe people can sincerely enjoy it without worrying about auteurism. I'm fine with you disliking it, but that doesn't render my liking of it invalid. I think I've argued against auteurism often enough to be given the benefit of the doubt on this.

No good movie with noir-ish or twisty aims is scored like a DTV rom com starring Amy Smart.

When I think of Ryuichi Sakamoto's score for Femme Fatale I usually think of this gorgeous theme, or the Bolero-inspired theme from the opening scene. Was there a particular cue that sounded rom com that I'm just not remembering?

Sorry to say I didn’t like any aspect of the score as it appears in the film, especially the film’s opening “Bolero” riff, which as it plays out is pitched into lighthearted twinkle mode in one of the endless bad choices of the film (I don’t remember the score sounding like your linked file, either— was it re-recorded?). I would go so far as to call it one of the worst scores I’ve ever heard too (at least in terms of how it works with the film itself), so this may just be another Me vs the Rest of you...

Also, back to Big Ben’s initial question, I haven’t seen the super early De Palma movies, and it may stay that way!

Where do people stand on Passion? I thoroughly enjoyed that one and thought it was a return to form to his 80s ‘red’ period work.

nitin wrote: Wed Oct 09, 2019 3:01 am Where do people stand on Passion? I thoroughly enjoyed that one and thought it was a return to form to his 80s ‘red’ period work.

We have a whole thread full of thoughts here

Thanks, I did search for it, but still missed it.

I probably haven't really liked any De Palma films since Snake Eyes (and even that's a film that a lot of people hate!). I don't remember Femme Fatale or Passion enough to know whether I liked it/disliked it so consider me a "they were OK". He still has a good enough body of work (considering the genre he works in) to excuse the duds.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 10:00 pmI don’t remember the score sounding like your linked file, either— was it re-recorded?)

The piano version of "Bolerish" (as the composer himself calls that theme) does appear in the film somewhere (in the final shot?), but what I linked is probably an expanded re-recording of the film cue. It's been a while since I've seen Femme Fatale so I honestly thought there might've been some "mickey-mousing" cues that I'd forgotten about, but I suppose your take on the opening music might fall under that category (though I disagree).

This is, transparently, just Domino lashing out at the fact that Brian DePalma made a movie called DOMINO.

I do hate Harvey