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DVD (27)
The movie strolls right past absurdity into offensiveness, by trying to pass this pulp nonsense off as noble art.
This is the kind of movie that's best enjoyed as a stylized fantasy, much like Brewer's most obvious model, Elia Kazan's Southern-fried Tennessee Williams adaptation Baby Doll.
The characters never connect, and the movie never takes off. Rae may be the one sporting a padlock around her waist. But it's the movie that's shackled.
Humid and overwrought, with Ricci working at fever pitch and Jackson bringing fire, brimstone and some passable blues licks to the equation, Black Snake Moan is no polite little indie thing, and certainly no formulaic studio exercise.
Black Snake Moan is a trip to that unfamiliar territory well worth tagging along on.
It's a steamy, searing saga of rigorous redemption confronting creepy Southern seediness. But it's not nearly the wake-up call it could have been.
God, sex and the blues are mashed together and deep fried southern style in Craig Brewer's unique Black Snake Moan.
Snaps and crackles with comic verve
With excellent performances, plays on morality and sexual behavior, Brewer composes another surefire classic.
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.
Brewer knows his music, and how to make it the center of a story; if he only did a better job filling in the rest of the blanks, this might've worked.
Moan? You're more likely to be groaning - or possibly hooting with laughter at the implausibility of this messy, misogynistic melodrama.
I did expect there to be a stronger emotional connection between Ricci and Jackson, but that said, the two actors were impressive to watch.
Pulpy Southern immorality tale is for adults only.
Chaining people to your radiator is a Wrong Thing To Do. This is not the opinion of Black Snake Moan.
Its sleazy, scuzzy nature comes not from a forward desire to push the standards of taste but a been-there sense of the ways of the world.
Deception, freedom and redemption all weave themselves into a moody tale that holds our attention for most of the time, compounded by Ricci's striking performance and waif-like appearance
A wonderful original film worthy of a cult following...
...a strange, daring, bodacious concoction from a major studio. (HD DVD Edition)
Basically, the movie is an old-fashioned morality play, for all its lurid details.
(An) overripe gumbo of redneck Freud and blues therapy, but the psychodrama is not half as daring as it pretends to be.
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