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Words fail me.

I remember seeing the trailer for this on casino royale... Looks terrible (read: So mothafuckin terrible it's mothafuckin hilarious mothafucka.)

I remember hearing about this when I interned at afilm production company... Apparently Brewer has been trying to get funding for it for years (even before Hustle and flow) and because of said film he was able to make it (and getting a huge cast)... I think it looks interesting... can't wait to see Ricci get gang-banged by a football team (or something to that extent)

The link seems to be down.

Is this still coming out theatrically? A February 20 DVD date appeared on Thedigitalbits.com.

Am I the only one interested in seeing this? It looks like an intentionally over the top old school race picture/B-movie.

Yeah, I saw that DVD date over at Digital Bits as well, but the film is also part of Sundance this year so I think it's an error.

Craig Brewer certainly has my attention, and the trailer I thought looked awesome. Hustle and Flow opened doors for him, naturally, so I'll hold judgment on the film until I finally see it.

Try watching that trailer at a movie theater amongst a Jackass crowd in central Florida. You can the seats as the audience shifts uncomfortably. Morons.

Official Site

Trailer

I've seen this and wasn't impressed. The film raises all sorts of potentially intriguing issues but fails to do anything intelligent with them. It lacks the courage of its conceptual bad taste. The cast do their best, but they're not working with real characters and it all comes off rather flat and generic. Ricci's novelty turn will surely be the talking point.

Film Comment review

Harry Knowles (I can use that name here, can't I?) named this as his #2 movie of the 2006. (Because he can see it months before everyone else means it is eligible for his list.) I guess some of us can breathe a sigh of relief, and consider ourselves absolved of the sin of anticipating this film.

Thanks. If Harry likes it it must be crap on a stick.

Nathan Lee also likes it, rendering it very suspect.

I was feeling masochistic, so I waded through aintitcool, the worst graphically designed website in Christendom, and found Harry's Top 10 (also I discovered Harry has a fiance):

10. HATCHET
9. APOCALYPTO
8. THE DEPARTED
7. ROCKY BALBOA
6. THE FOUNTAIN
5. THE HOST
4. 300
3. CHILDREN OF MEN
2. BLACK SNAKE MOAN
1. PAN'S LABYRINTH

Now THAT'S a list!

(He obviously only saw 10 movies last year.)

The L.A. Times interviews Brewer and Ricci. Sounds like she really put herself through the wringer on this one.

I saw an advance screening tonight and this was godawful. As a concept - a film submerging itself in classic blues mythology - it's intriguing, but as zedz mentioned, Brewer can't do anything intelligent with the material. It's by turns nonsensical, laughable and corny and not in the "it's-so-bad-it's-good-way". The only shining moments of the film are those with Samuel L. Jackson playing and singing. Very powerful stuff. Also, Brewer's camerawork for the party scenes is very nice. Otherwise, the movie is a mess. Brewer's main problem is that he embraces African-American stereotypes, but - like in the horribly overrated Hustle & Flow - is unable to transcend them.

The reviews for this are going to be ugly.

I would have liked it a lot more if Brewer hadn't copped out on the ending. When I go so a movie about a half-naked Christina Ricci chained to a radiator by an old blues musician named Lazarus, I have certain...expectations. Early on, I thought those expectations might be met. The great main titles and the dialog during the café sequence with Lazarus and his wife had me prepared for some A.I.P.-style trashy charm. The neat little bow that tied up the end was too much for me though. It really needed to end with somebody being shot in the head.

Speaking of exploitation homages, I didn't realize until after I had seen the film that the actress playing Ricci's mother was Kim Richards. She's better known as the little girl from Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain movies and the star of my favorite scene from Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13.

Antoine Doinel wrote:The reviews for this are going to be ugly.

On the contrary, the reviews have been very good so far.

marty wrote:

Antoine Doinel wrote:The reviews for this are going to be ugly.

On the contrary, the reviews have been very good so far.

Well, it's fairly evenly split.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Well, it's fairly evenly split.

Yeah, maybe a bit that better than that...

(Moved from a similar thread. Sorry, I did a search but it didn't come up with this title.)

I feel this is a much maligned, misunderstood and underrated movie, in part because few people saw it. I had thought for a while that it's marketing was bad, but in retrospect, anything else would have been dishonest and misleading--even though a black man with a chained white woman is bound to turn a lot of people off, even now, and keep them from looking any further. In any case, these are my comments at the time of its release which I stand by 100%:

Mthrfkr! I was blown away. It did everything right: acting, cinematography, dialogue, killer score (for those who've acquired the taste, I bought the CD on the way home), great story, (OK maybe the costumes and decoration were easy), humor, drama, Rici's drop dead...everything, the whole works. Hell even JT shed some tears. Four especially memorable scenes: SJ's first scene with the electric guitar, the two numbers in the Juke Joint (I didn't know SJ could sing, he acted like he'd been doing it for years), "reeling" her into the house, and the split second scene where virginity was lost--these among many.

I read that Brewer said, "If this was any kind of picture--you know, more outwardly respectable--Christina would get an Oscar nomination. She's that good." He also said that casting Samuel L. Jackson was because "he was the only guy I thought has the presence, the authority to truly pull this off."

Problem is it's not a date movie, it's R rated, no special effects to speak of, and it's a complex tale about channeling music for salvation when there aren't that many Blues fans because they don't understand it or don't like it's grit and irony.

As Lazarus (the chainmaster) offered, "To freedom". Even at that, the irony was restrained. Given the audio gag they used (the chain ringing the radiator like a bell), they passed up a golden opportunity for the tag line, "Let freedom ring".

I couldn't find anything wrong with it, just the opposite. I gave it my first 10 in several years. A masterpiece.

I just bought this on BD and decided to sit down and re-watch it, as I haven't seen it since I was impressed with it upon its initial DVD release. I have to say, there is something so alive about this film that has me glued to it from beginning to end. Maybe it's the gorgeous cinematography and skilled direction. Maybe it's the performances, which hit the mark across the board (Jackson's never been better, same goes for Ricci - and I guess it goes without saying that Justin Timberlake will never turn in a better effort). But there's just something so warm about Lazarus, a man trying to do the right thing at the most heartbreaking time in his life. There are moments of connection and tension in this film on par with the excellent Lost in Translation - Black Snake Moan is like that film on peyote - but it never veers into the exploitation hinted at in the film's terrible (but inspired, I suppose) trailers, without which many people would have forgotten that this film was even being released, and it would have faded even further into obscurity than it already has. In reality, there's no comparison between Black Snake Moan and an over-the-top exploitation film - sure it's a bit much at times, and some of the behaviors portrayed on screen could veer into the offensive, but it's never once portrayed as a "it could happen anywhere!" type of down to earth film. It plays out more like a fable, like a 2 hour blues song. Maybe I'm too naive to see what's so offensive about it - but I think this is one of the most overlooked and underrated films of the last decade, if not one of the best.

I don't think it's even close to best-of-the-decade material, (it is often, as you say, a bit much), but it's a lot of fun, and it is emotionally resonant and it feels alive.