Black Snake Moan
Yet another movie that sorta leaves me lost for words on a first viewing, and, y’know, my whole thing with my reviews is about encapsulating my personal experience of a movie, like kind of a more-for-me-than-for-you sort of attitude, I’ll come back and re-edit later if I wanna publish a book, and in this case frankly I’d be lying if I pretended it wasn’t in large part due to the presence of Ms. Ricci’s boobies that I find myself without a lot to say, lol. I wish I could put that another way, but honestly, I can’t – I know she bared them in Prozac Nation, but to date I’ve still only seen stills of that movie (sue me, I had to look, I’m a very very horny person lol) – but to see those things in motion at this stage (quick update for those who don’t know me: I had a hugebigscarycrush on her between the ages of about 12 and 17) is to me like seeing my sister’s or something lol, it’s just … weird lol. But anyway, I’m sure many many people will enjoy these moments. Me, I just wanted to put a blanket on her, lol.
Kevin Smith recently said on his Smodcast that this was, I think the words were, “a f*ckin’ genius flick,” and for the first 20 minutes of this movie at least, possibly more, I really couldn’t see it. Though Christina Ricci’s performance is fine (though nothing on her performance in Monster, which I personally think matches Charlize Theron’s) and certainly this movie belongs in her better slate of slightly more artsy film appearances (Buffalo ‘66 over Small Soldiers, The Man Who Cried over Bless the Child, Monster over Anything Else ... etc), the movie just never looked like it was going to take off the way it seemed to be preparing for. It’s incredibly trashy, deliberately so, but I kind of couldn’t see beyond this surface for way too long. And usually I’m really good at “getting” movies like this – but for the bulk of its runtime, for whatever reason, this one just made me go, “Why?”
If I’m honest, it’s only in the very last scene that it all came together for me. But boy how it comes together – in just a short series of shots, I lost it. It was enough to make me want to watch the whole thing over again, and I’m 90% sure that on another day, after another viewing, I’ll read this back and say, “what the f*ck was I thinking?” So, in short, err, hopefully my next review later in the year will make more sense than this one. Oh, Justin Timberlake is pretty effing amazing too, and the scenes of Samuel L. Jackson singing are pretty damn glorious to behold.