TV Review: Femme Fatales: The Complete Second Season (2013, DVD)

Review By: Rob Sibley

It's 2 in the morning, you can't sleep, your getting tired of infomercials for the George Forman Grill, The Shammy, Joel Osteen won't shut his religious yap so what do you do? You need a midnight snack for the brain so you flip to cinemax and what might you find? The incredibly sexy, pulpy second season of Femme Fatales. A guilty pleasure by all means, it's pure junk food for the brain and it's damn entertaining.

Femme Fatales is an anthology TV series, each episode usually features a hot chick in over her head. All this leads to her usually sleeping with 1 or more partners, popping the top whenever she can and she usually ends up with a gun in her hands. This is pulp at it's finest. This is a show that knows what it is, it's purpose is to entertain... not to enlighten. I previously reviewed season 1 of the show and found it to be satisfying but it was a little to bi-polar for my tastes. The season season is more focused and what's nice is they brought in many favorite B-movie actors for cameos. Some of these B-movie gods include Eric Roberts (an A-movie actor in my books), the infinitely handsome Casper Van Dien (Still trying hard to regain his Starship Trooper days of glory) and fuck even the Stuntman himself Steve Railsback shows up. This time though he's not dealing with soul sucking vampires or the tyrant known as Peter O Tool. Oh yeah and Vivica A. Fox shows up to class things up a bit.

Movie Review: Psycho III (1986, Universal/Scream Factory)

...ya' know?? Horror film franchises are very much like that old game played around the campfire, on a crisp and chilly night...you know, the one where one person makes up a scary story, introducing characters and situations, and forging a few lines of imaginatively wrought creeps and scares. Then, the story is passed onto the next person, who weaves further development and intrigue into the initiated proceedings, taking the characters and situations into...depending upon the person...equally imaginative directions. And of course, the story is carried forth by the next person...and the next person...and so on...until the last person in the circle, who hopefully takes everything that's been literarily place onto the table, and ties everything together, into a reasonably gripping finale. Again, given the level of creativity and imagination amongst the participants of this little game, the story may well have it's share of embraceable high points, as well as it's lackluster low points. We, the devoted purveyors of horror cinema, have engaged many a chapter in numerous movie franchises...as far back as the Universal monster classics of yesteryear, up to and including the contemporary horrors of today (...the Freddy's, the Jason's, the Leatherface's, and so on)...which utilize this very method of storytelling, with similar high and low points, depending upon the storytellers involved. And without exception, considering that ONE certain horror movie franchise, genuinely contributed in the inception of those aforementioned, as well as laid the seed, in which a certain splattery sub-genre in the horror film realm was eventually conceived...well, my fine folks, shall we look no further than ol' Norman Bates himself, in examining such hand-over-hand storytelling evolution...hmmmm?? Come on...let's go around the corner, just over there...where it's dark.....

Movie Review: Sushi Girl (2012, Magnolia)

...before gleefully and dutifully engaging this review, let's start off by saying that this viewer is a sucker for a good movie trailer. Beyond the generated hype & publicity of a movie, the advance viewing & review by critics, the suggested star power & creative hand...both behind & in front of the camera, the leaked footage & behind-the-scenes video commentary...it is a stand-out, well crafted movie trailer that quite literally grabs me by the shirt collar, slams me resoundingly up against the wall, and insistently commands my utmost attention. Granted, as does happen from time to time, some movie trailers DO exclusively feature what is best about a specific movie, with the movie itself, on a whole, proving to be something less than what the trailer promised; that's part of the gamble, I suppose...the nature of the beast...when one gets irresistably and invariably pulled in by the suggested content of the movie trailer, and as the result, committedly lays down one's hard earned samolians for the feature film, itself. However, when a movie carried through on the promise...'walks the walk', rather than merely 'talk the talk', via it's intendedly influential and compelling movie trailer, one cannot help but praise that artfully creative little two-to-two-and-a-half minutes of tease...that eye-and-mind-catching vanguard of great things to come...in the same light as the film itself proves to be...the trailer, being merely a tantilizing taste at the bottom of the shotglass...and the film, harboring the numbing contents of the whole bottle...