Black Snake Moan.

"Drenched in explosively charged imagery, Black Snake Moan is exploitation cinema of the grungiest, nastiest, and thus finest order, delivering a volatile batch of extreme sex, extreme profanity, and—most of all—extreme racial and gender dynamics," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "A B-movie with an A-list cast, it's an audaciously confrontational, button- and boundary-pushing work, marked by a sharp wit and a gleeful desire to see just how much it can get away with."

Rob Nelson, writing in the Voice, disagrees: "Alas, after his camera has had its fill of ogling Rae, [Craig] Brewer turns out to have nothing up his sleeve, nothing in his pants, only a little on his mind and none of it, amazingly, to do with race."

Updated through 3/5.

On the other hand, Max Goldberg at SF360: "[L]ike Preston Sturges before him, Brewster has wrestled something genuine and tender from America at its most down-low. A good portion of the credit is due to his leading lady; the film is frequently cruel to Rae, but [Christina] Ricci fights back every step of the way with a diamond-rough performance that's both seductive and terrifying."

"Whatever criticisms we may level against Brewer, there's no denying Black Snake Moan is unlike any other film made recently," writes Matt Singer at IFC News. "You can boil it down to a logline - it's sort of Misery meets The Exorcist meets A Dirty Shame - but even that doesn't do justice to the passion of the filmmaking or the authentic wackiness of the story."

"It's depressing that Brewer dares salacious irony and then backs down," writes Armond White in the New York Press.

Interviews with Brewer: Alison Willmore at IFC News and Ryan Stewart at Cinematical.

Earlier: "Sundance. Black Snake Moan."

Updates, 3/1: Marc Savlov talks with Brewer for the Austin Chronicle, where Marjorie Baumgarten writes, "Black Snake Moan is to the blues what Pulp Fiction is to the dime-store novels: a fleshed-out personification of the genre's tropes."

"I can tell you from firsthand experience that many non-Southern critics simply don't 'get' Brewer," writes Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. "He's not politically correct, not ironic or fashionably oblique, and all of that some people take as offensive. But in my estimation he's one of the biggest talents to emerge in the American cinema in this decade, and no self-respecting Southern cinephile should miss seeing what he's up to. His work holds the promise of a Southern cinema that's true to its own cultural resources, a vision of wit and daring that might end up doing the whole nation a favor."

"No two ways about it: Black Snake Moan is racist, by acute and cumulative degrees," argues Nathan Kosub at Reverse Shot.

Updates, 3/2: "In an early review in Film Comment that is at least as entertaining as Black Snake Moan itself, Nathan Lee has proclaimed Mr Brewer a 'visionary,'" writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "From where I sit, the vision looks pretty blurry, as the movie struggles to square its inherent absurdity with its earnest sense of conviction."

"I heard some days after the screening that [Samuel L] Jackson considers this his best performance," notes Roger Ebert. "Well, maybe it is. He disappears into the role, and a good performance requires energy, daring, courage and intensity, which he supplies in abundance."

"[A]s well intentioned as Brewer seems to be, there's a sense that he's having his cake and eating it, too, as he both comments on lurid S&M imagery and engages in it," writes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post.

"[M]usic as redemption. It's that sense of peace through tradition that takes a potentially violent, over-the-top saga and, ultimately, turns it into Capra for alcoholics and bar-hounds," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler.

"Though Black Snake Moan is unadulterated deep-fried silliness..., Jackson makes it indisputably more palatable," writes Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times. "It's still not a very good movie, but it's intermittently entertaining (and sometimes unintentionally funny)."

Sarah Sundberg talks with Brewer for Nerve.

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek: "Brewer's secret is finally out of the bag: For all that he wants to rattle and disarm us, he's really a humanist in wolf's clothing."

A "gorgeous, life-affirming movie," writes Mike Russell. Brewer "takes raw exploitation material about occasionally ugly people, then turns it into human drama that's smart, powerfully alive and occasionally very funny."

Update, 3/5: "Black Snake Moan ultimately fails at its mission to rile up black/white, red/blue America because it doesn't let Rae and Lazarus have sex - and I mean sprawling, World War III sex," writes Steven Boone at the House Next Door. "Rainer Werner Fassbinder let an elderly German widow and a hulking Black Arab become lovers in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and it brought the neuroses of an entire nation into view.... Brewer succumbs to the fear of a black penis that afflicts the Ho'wood system he's presumably out to bedevil, and sends everybody back to their segregated corners, fully clothed. Do-over."

Posted by dwhudson at February 28, 2007 1:49 PM