Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another look at some of the flicks from BNAT... another attendee fell all sorts of in love with Craig Brewer's BLACK SNAKE MOAN... as he should have. That movie is what the kids call "teh awesome." Enjoy the reviews!

Hey Harry, Kijo here, I’m stilll recovering from the body
rape that was BNAT. What a line-up. I was happy with every
film that played and ecstatic with each of the premieres.
There wasn’t a bad one and you’ve got a lot to live up
to next year. I thought I’d write in a couple of reviews
for the new films that played, seeing as most of the readers
have seen the vintage ones. I’ll start it off with the
festival opener…

BLACK SNAKE MOAN ignited the audience’s passion and
started out BNAT with a positive bang. Some dickhead has
inevitably already made the comment, “What’s Sam
Jackson’s deal with snakes and shit!?” This movie has
nothing to do with snakes in the literal sense. I don’t
want to give too much of the plot away but it opens on Rae
(Christina Ricci) going freakaleek to the extreme with
JT-Lake. We are then introduced to the biggest badass this
side of the Mason-Dixon line, Lazarus (Sammy L.). The story
follows the struggles that each of these characters tries to
endure until they come into contact with each other and form
a relationship that cures both of them of their blues.

The performances in the film are amazing. I wish that this
was being released in 2006 so that both Jackson and Ricci
could get nods for the Oscar. The level of attention that
Jackson demands in every scene owns balls. As far as Ricci
is concerned, she has grown up considerably since her more
underdeveloped days of Casper. The things that Casper might
do to this woman now would cross the realm of
inappropriateness. She is damn fine and her performance is
the best that I’ve seen out of her to date. Craig Brewer
did us all a favor and took a minimalist approach to
wardrobe in the film and has Ricci in as little clothes as
possible for the majority of the film. When I imdb-ed the
film a while ago I remember that I saw the name Justin
Timberlake and immediately scoffed at the casting decision.
And while he is by far the weakest performance in the film,
it isn’t that bad. The kid’s from Memphis and has had
his accent completely removed through his career. It
wasn’t really believable to have him as Rae’s army bound
white trash boyfriend after having watched the Bi, Bi, Bi
video a million times, but he wasn’t in it that much so it
all worked out.

The music in Brewer’s film is quite frankly what I found
to be the greatest aspect. It complements the film
extremely well. The film is essentially a new, better breed
of musical. The characters don’t break into dialogue
driven song, but there are a number of gritty blues numbers
that had tears of awesomeness welling up in my eyes. Brewer
said after the film was over that Samuel L. Jackson really
learned to play the songs in the film and sang all that were
performed. When you hear this dude’s voice, you’ll see
what I mean. Not only can he kill snakes, the mutha fucka
can sing.

After the film Craig Brewer did a brief Q and A and told us
about his interest in music-heavy films that take place in
his home town of Memphis. He’s made his rap movie and his
blues movie and told us that the next on his agenda is one
based around the world of soul music. And one after that
for country (oh my). In my opinion, this guy is one of the
greatest directors working today. Granted, he’s only made
two well-known films, but he’s batting a thousand and
shows now signs of relent. BLACK SNAKE MOAN is a must see
for anyone who really loves good cinema or likes to rock out
to gritty, guitar blues music.

DREAMGIRLS was the next movie that played. Two premieres in
a row, Harry’s trying to knock us out early. The plot is
the typical musician’s biography. They start at the
bottom, rise to the top, experience success, experience
conflict and hardship on all fronts, overcome hardship, come
together in the end despite the hardships. I don’t have a
problem with this formula but something that I do not
particularly enjoy is musicals. The film is beautifully
shot and staged, but there is just something about
characters breaking out into song mid dialogue that really
rings false for me and therefore nullifys my feelings for
the characters. If BLACK SNAKE MOAN is a well balanced,
subtle form of the musical, DREAMGIRLS is a heavy-handed
throwback to the days of old. I couldn’t stop thinking
about how absurd it was that they were singing out loud to
each other about their feelings and the actions that they
were taking/about to take.

The performances are great. Beyonce doesn’t embarrass
herself or Bill Condon too badly. Jamie Foxx takes a back
seat and plays the money driven manager of the group who
loses sight of everything that is of real importance,
leaving his friends and lovers in the dirt. I don’t know
if the male race can get much cooler than this guy. He
achieves awesomeness without effort. Eddie Murphy’s
performance was hyped up a lot before the screening and I
think a little too much. There was nothing in it that I
haven’t seen before on screen or in his previous roles.
I’m among the contingency that’s ecstatic that he’s
not making Dr. Doolittle 3: The Gerbil Adventure, but at the
same time, I felt that he could have brought a little more
originality to the role. The main standout performance was
from Jennifer Hudson. Condon talked after the film about
how he found her and said that she had come in 9th place on
American Idol a couple of years back. After the show Simon
Cowell apparently approached her, urging her to give up on
showbusiness. He said that she’d had her chance and she
blew it. This film is Jennifer’s giant “eat my ass!”
to Simon. When she belts out the lyrics, they come from a
place that is genuine. She has lived the DREAMGIRLS story
and it comes through beautifully in her voice.

Overall, the film is something that I might watch again, but
not something that I would gush over. It may be my disdain
for musicals but this was a film that besides a couple of
the musical numbers, didn’t quite hit me on an emotional
level.

Kijo