TeamRocket_Jessie Reviews

Drums o' Voodoo (1934)

Interesting only for historical purposes

[1/10 · 19 July 2022]

Interesting historical snapshot; terrible film.

The Black community will always have people who are Christian and people who practice Voodoo/Vodun and similar spiritual paths. Both are treated with some respect in the movie. We see the Christians obnoxiously saying that Christianity is supposedly the "right" way and that Voodoo worked well enough for "the jungle days" but that something better came along. But Voodoo ends up saving the day, not Christianity.

There's quite a lot of footage of tent revival Christian mass, which is notable for historical purposes. Mass is still something you see in the majority of Black-centered movies today.

However, it's a bad movie, and my bar for old movie quality is very low,, because I love old movies. The Voodoo priestess says she will curse a gangster. There's a lot of "Voodoo" dancing and Christians at church. And then it ends with the gangster getting cursed. He should've been cursed earlier so we could see him be cursed, or we should've seen him doing more bad things before he was cursed. He doesn't actually appear a whole lot in the movie.

Morocco: Love in Times of War (2017)

A Show About Embracing Other Cultures

[10/10 · 25 January 2018]

When writing this, the IMDB reviews thus far have just been soap boxes for hatred of the Spanish or the Moroccans. However, this is a T.V. show about compassion. Melilla, Ceuta, and the Canaries have been a part of Spain for centuries, so it's understandable that the Spanish in the 1920s saw it as a home, and so did the indigenous people from nearby areas. This is a T.V. show about forgiveness and seeing the humanity in people who are different. It's a telenovela (which is a genre), so you can only compare it to other telenovelas, not T.V. shows in general. The acting is great by telenovela standards and the costumes and sets are beautiful. This show has Muslim Middle Easterners, interracial relationships, and interfaith relationships, which are all rare things in telenovelas. Timely, wouldn't you say?

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017–2019)

Pensive Film Noir

[10/10 · 13 January 2017]

The series is exactly like the books but with added backstories, Easter eggs, and a film noir look. My favorite character is Lemony Snicket and his deadpan, droll, dreary, sarcastic narrative style that is the hallmark of the books is front-and-center in the show (often delivered by him; sometimes his book lines are given to other characters in the show). The lines in the show are often verbatim and other times they are updated to be more progressive (ex. challenging gender norms) for this day-and-age. It is peppered with bizarre show tunes that are similar to the ones you hear in the audio books.

The show does a great job of showing the disconnect between the well-meaning children and aloof adults (both those who like kids and those who do not) who only think about themselves. The adults rant about their unfulfilled fantasies and obsess over grammar rules, oblivious to woes or suspicious behavior of others. Yet they are not one-dimensional. The Poe household is invitingly 1950s (the T.V. era where families were flawlessly perfect) to contrast the Baudelaire family literally being in ruin. The Poes, however, are not in such great shape either, since Mr. Poe is ill from working so much. Justice Strauss, a judge with a personal library of legal texts, cannot piece together what is going on right in front of her. She is too distracted by her lack of pride in her work. Even Mr. Snicket, who is researching the Baudelaires, sometimes shifts the conversation to lament his star-crossed love life. The adults, selfish as they may be, all have something important to say. The kids, innocent as they may be, all have something important to say.

Drácula (1931)

Villarias Was The Lonely, Tragic Dracula

[10/10 · 12 January 2016]

Carlos Villarias was a better actor than Bela Lugosi, but Villarias was campy at times and had zero sex appeal. He was also less creepy than Lugosi. Instead, Villarias made Dracula more lonely and and relatable. I feel that made Villarias the better Dracula by leaps and bounds. Villarias was the Dracula that Bram Stoker described. To make up for Villarias's lack of sensuality, Lupita Tovar oozed lust. At times, her hair was messy, tousled, and maybe even a little frizzy. Her outfits were tighter, showed more skin, and her body type was curvy and voluptuous. When she dove in to bite Mr. Harker, she looked like a flesh-crazed beast/a sex-crazed nymph and it's the most sexual moment I've seen in any 1930s movie. Dracula's harem girls were also more sensual than those in the American version. As for the camera work, the camera actually moves and there are more camera angles. As a result, you see more of the small details of the set design and more of the disorienting, unnatural shapes that the stairs, archs, etc. make.