Black Snake Moan

Black Snake Moan

Watch it for the music

Some films exist mostly to showcase music. These films can have fairly simple plots that exist in service to the soundtrack, and if the soundtrack is good enough, it can be worth it. A Hard Days Night did this for The Beatles, The Harder They Come did it for reggae, and Hustle and Flow did it for hip hop. With Black Snake Moan, director Craig Brewer seeks to do for blues music what he did for hip hop with Hustle and Flow,

The plot is pretty straightforward. After his cheating wife leaves him, Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) a poor farmer discovers Rae (Christina Ricci), a young woman with uncontrollable sexual urges badly beaten and left for dead by one of her male acquaintances in front of Lazarus' house. Determined to save her from herself (and redeem himself), he chains her to the radiator of his house until he can "fix" her. It's a simple plot, and frankly at times it can be downright moralistic and preachy, but Jackson and Ricci so subsume themselves into the roles that they help carry it along.

But none of that really matters, the real highlight here is the music. The film features a fantastic blues soundtrack, with Jackson and Ricci even taking turns performing songs in the film. This is the type of film that is best experienced with a good sound system.

Wet Hot American Summer

Mindless fun?

Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer revives a movie trend that was best left for dead 

Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, Hollywood cranked out scores of "teen sex comedies", ostensibly targeted at the teen market, but usually rated R and more popular with young adults. Only in the hands of the most talented writers and directors would something truly memorable like Fast Times at Ridgemont High result. More often it was some forgettable film with "Hot" in the title, like Malibu Hot Summer, Hot Chili, Hot Moves, or Hollywood Hot Tubs.

In hindsight, one of the most remarkable things about these movies is how tame they really were. The aforementioned Fast Times at Ridgemont High originally received an "X" rating, butdespite the titillating titles, there was rarely much explicit sex. Some were too timid to even show toplessness. 

So without the sex, these "sex comedies" were left with just the "comedy" part, which also was often lacking as casting emphasized physically attractive young people rather than comedic talent. All of which adds up to a trend that was best left in the 1980s shopping mall theaters from which they came.

But along comes Wet Hot American Summer to revive everything we never missed about these films. Basically taking it's cues from Meatballs (albeit without a talent like Bill Murray in a major role), Wet Hot American Summer is set at a summer camp, and pretty much follows is a hit (rarely) and miss (frequently) collection of gags over the course of one season at a fictional summer camp in Maine.

Even though the film wallows in early 80s nostalgia, even the soundtrack (usually the saving grace of these kinds of films) is populated with the boring overplayed arena rock by bands also best forgotten like Quarterflash, Foreigner and Loverboy.

Proving once again that there's no accounting for taste, the film has managed to garner a cult following and spawn two Netflix spinoff series, although true to form, there's no nudity, few laughs, and not much to recommend here.