Black Snake MoanBluesmen and nymphomaniacs  February 28,
2007 5:43:32 PM
Craig Brewer, the promising director who hit it with Hustle and Flow, seems to harbor a need to exorcise his white burden through films centered on black music. In H&F it was a pimp with rapper ambitions; here it’s a spurned husband who plays the blues while trying to right a wayward nymphomaniac. By the time we see a black man with a white woman at the end of a chain in just her panties, the bar for shock has already gone through the roof, what with Rae (Christina Ricci), a trailer-trash wildcat who’s just sent her man (Justin Timberlake) off to the service, getting an itch and screwing half the town. Samuel L. Jackson provides the touch of humanity as Lazarus, the broken soul trying to redeem Rae. In the end, the two actors do rise above the hoo-hah. Still, Ricci, possessed and ripping off her clothes like a rabid succubus, is the film’s only lingering accomplishment.
|
 |
|
- VIDEO: Michael Bronski assesses the gay-porn career of O'Reilly Factor fave Matt Sanchez
- Oral is the new second base, the “mostly” girls keep on kissing girls, and the Bro Job has arrived (but is still not ready for its close-up)
- Never mind its tough-girl alt-porn feminism: SuicideGirls has already moved on to a new generation
- Solving the press’s credit problem
- Black vote + uncommon charisma = quantifiable advantage
- Whither the Boston Irish?
- How one little post-war doughnut shop became synonymous with Boston’s identity
- In The Edge of Disaster, a security expert warns that the US is not prepared for future disasters
- Last year’s New Times–Village Voice media merger pitted two kinds of journalism against each other. Guess who won?
- Who’s looking at you, kid?
- Veteran New York editor Lance Gould to helm the weekly
- The abiding lessons of civil-rights-movement-era journalism
|
-
Pretty hoky stuff
-
And a Lifetime saga
-
So much testosterone...
-
Running on empty
-
Without Cage, an infernal flame-out
-
Game, but lacking in relish
-
A kick to Diane Keaton's shin
-
No remorse
-
You'll howl
|
- Pretty hoky stuff
- Shakes class lines
- And a Lifetime saga
- No such luck
- It'd take a miracle
- 16 years in the waiting
- The remains of a country in the midst of war
- Bong Joon-ho stirs up the muck in The Host
- 2 or 3 things we know about Godard
- So much testosterone...
|
|
|
|