Right, I think DePalma is amazing, because he has a great eye, but his work has been so uneven. I didn't like Bonfire, but the material was unwieldy to begin with. (Loved The Devil's Candy and Julie Salamon.) But Femme, it totally worked for me, flaws and all. Silly and over-the-top and incredibly vivid and beautiful.

I'm glad other people believe in DePalma's talent the way I do, but it's impossible to talk about his movies as strictly great or strictly crap. They are always an amazing balance of both. No other modern filmmaker in my mind has his astounding visual skill, but whoa, what awful acting, what wince-inspiring dialogue! It's weird. Anyway, I hope everyone has read the Devil's Candy, great book about DePalma odyssey with Bonfire of the Vanities.

It's hard to believe anyone liked Femme Fatale. When visiting friends in Washington last fall I convinced them to follow my usually acute sense of what people will like to a showing of Femme Fatale. It was so bad we were laughing out loud at it. By the end of the movie, right around the point when she wakes up and they've pulled a Dallas on us -- surprise! the whole movie is a dream -- the whole theater was laughing.

Romijm-Stamos is not an actress, and Bandaras, who can pull it off when provided with good material, looked like he was completely lost.

It was promising but I couldn't help but wonder how the movie would have turned out if DePalma actually cast some actors instead of glossy paper cutouts.

The fact that he sold the movie with what he called "homage to David Lynch," was lame. I mean I enjoy a hot lesbo action like any other person but please.

Just watched this again last night. What a great flick, I don't know how DePalma does it... Well I don't know how any of them do it, but in this case I can't even begin to imagine weaving all the elements of this film together into such beauty.

Take the split-screen gimmick, viewing concurrent events through different lenses at the same time. Total, utter, absolute genius, i.e.; turning potentially mundane plot-advancing events (Romijn enters a cathedral and is recognized + Banderas prints a computer photo and crops it on a paper-cutter) into thought-provoking juxtapositions on many levels (Romijm sees and is seen simultaneously; the nature of photographic perspective, very important to the film itself; the duality her character is about to take on; the "split" in time which is the eventual Hitchcockian twist- all are implied in this one visual device).