Black Snake Moan

Craig Brewer follows up his controversial "Hustle & Flow" with a feverish piece of cinematic juju bordering on camp. Christina Ricci shakes her barely clothed booty all over a small Southern town as local nymphomaniac Rae. Enter Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson), a retired juke-joint blues singer who drowns his righteous anger in a reclamation project: He salves the wounds of the assaulted and abandoned Rae and then chains her to the radiator to salvage her soul from her demons. Call it artsploitation, with a little nudity and a lot of tease, stirred up with the promise of the forbidden splashed across all the promotional ads and trailers: a scantily clad, nubile young white girl chained up by an old black man with relationship and fidelity issues who likes to spout scripture. Brewster keeps the ogle factor high (Ricci squirms and moans as the urge comes over her like a fever) in the overripe gumbo of redneck Freud and blues therapy, but the psychodrama is not half as daring as it pretends to be. For all the tawdry imagery and overheated atmosphere, it all comes down to an awfully familiar tale of redemption and trust and healing (yes, even sexual healing). Justin Timberlake is quite good as Ricci's anxious boyfriend. S. Epatha Merkerson and John Cothran Jr. also co-star. Also available in Blu-ray format

"It's a fable," insist Brewer and crew, who warn against taking the film literally. Brewer delivers the confident commentary track solo, articulating well as he takes us through the production, and joins producers Stephanie Allain and John Singleton and stars Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci for the 27-minute featurette "Conflicted: The Making of 'Black Snake Moan'" (where you learn, among other things, that Jackson had never played guitar before embarking on the film). The 12-minute "Rooted in the Blues" explores the music of the film and features session footage with blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite and others. "The Black Snake Moan" deconstructs the scene where Jackson first plays the signature tune. Among the 12 minutes of deleted scenes (with optional commentary by Brewer) is a black-and-white flashback with Ricci and Timberlake "meeting cute" in a bathroom at a high school kegger — she's taking a tinkle and he's tossing his cookies.