Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | May 14, 2007 | | Summary | Mojave Moon | Content
 | This movie was light entertainment but nothing to rave about,will like though if you are an Anjelina Jolie fan. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 07, 2007 | | Summary | Bad story | Content
| I bought this movie cause I'm a big fan of Angelina and it had to be part of my collection, but the truth is that if you're not such a fan of her you'll be wasting your time. The movie it's pretty bad, it doesnt make much scence. The performances are not that bad, but the story its bad. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 19, 2005 | | Summary | A blue movie for the mind's eye | Content
| Hi. I'm Professor Mom Pressfour writing about *Mojave Moon*. Made in 1996, *MM* is a low-budget B-movie that stars Danny Aiello, Anne Archer, Alfred Molina, Michael Biehn, Jack Noseworthy and Angelina Jolie. My review is specific to the Lion's Gate Home Entertainment DVD edition.
After you slip the DVD into your player, the first thing that comes up on your screen is a beautiful intro page that offers you a Start/Scene Selections/Trailers menu. The page's wallpaper is a tasteful animated montage of several movie pans of the nightime Mojave desert. It makes for a lovely background, these moving, blending scenes of sandy landscapes in rich dark hues. Hanging over the wallpaper on the left side of the screen is the bright image of a full moon. The face of a young Angelina Jolie, smoking a ciggie, fades up within the moon's glowing orb. She glances vampishly in the viewer's direction. Then some short clips from *MM* play inside the moon. The clips run again and again until you click on one of the menu items.
So click the Play button and watch the movie...
Some things about *Mojave Moon* are pretty cool. There's some neat camera work. It seems some of the songs ("Annie Get Your Gun", for example) were recorded especially for the movie. Catchy. A few of the characters--like Ellie played by Jolie, Boyd played by Biehn, Sal played by Molino--keep you entertained. They're just fun to watch in a wacky, low rent sort of way.
But there's a very basic "something" missing from this movie. In French it's called *raison d'être*, the reason a thing exists. The underlying purpose. What I mean, dear reader, is that you are not to blame if at the end of *Mojave Moon* you shrug your shoulders and ask yourself, "What's the point?" Because, really--what IS this film? A neo-noir? A screwball comedy? A romance? A road movie?
I have a theory. In style, but not in content, *Mojave Moon* is quite like . . .
. . . a dirty movie! Make no mistake: *Mojave Moon* is absent of XXX-rated content. But to me its whole style just suggests a porn flick. It has this louche, scatterbrained, goofy-sleazy feel. The story is a lame imitation of the kind of story told by a Quentin Tarantino movie. *MM*'s plot device is a body hidden in the back of a car--the same device Tarantino used in *Pulp Fiction*. But the story told in *Mojave Moon* seems to have a different purpose than to, well, just be an entertaining story. It's as if *MM* was written to take you from one sex scene to the next. But there are no sex scenes.
The viewer picks up on the feel, but because the sex isn't there, he or she is left baffled about what kind of movie *MM* is trying to be. See, it's a dirty movie without the dirt. More precisely it's a movie that hints to the audience, "Here--this scene, that scene--these are places where dirt should be." *Mojave Moon* is a blue movie for the mind's eye.
If my theory is correct, it means that her Ellie Rigby role in this film is Angelina Jolie's only job as an XXX-rated movie actress. But to make her XXX-rated performance visible, you'll have to add a little ingredient of your own. It's called imagination.
You think I'm crazy. I'm not! I'm going to take just a little more of your time to prove what I'm saying. But you'll need to have the DVD version of *Mojave Moon* on hand to see the proof yourself.
Ready? Freeze your *MM* DVD at 57m:37s. Now imagine Ellie and Al (Aiello) in the nude. Need I say more? Advance to 57m:43s. Click the "Step" function of your DVD player to move the action forward one frame at a time. Keep clicking until the scene inside the car ends. Ask yourself: what possible purpose can this scene have other than to suggest a man and a woman having sex on the back seat of a car? Check out the expressions on those faces!
There's a scene beginning at 1h:01m:28s. Here *Mohave Moon*'s sly reference to porn cinema is most obvious. Ellie and her mother Julie (Archer) are in a motel room looking at TV. Julie's got the remote and is switching through the channels. Ellie tells her to switch to Pay TV and press 4. "*Sally Stallions* is coming on," she urges, giving the 'two thumbs up' sign. "Isn't that a dirty movie?" her mother asks. "I'm not going to sit here with my own daughter and watch a dirty movie."
"Mom," answers Ellie in a tone that a mother would use on a naughty little girl, "PRESS FOUR." Mom does, and she and daughter do watch the dirty movie together--though *MM* only permits us to see their faces, not the TV. From what we hear, a woman, a man, and a dog are involved. Ellie and Julie look rapt.
Then there's a scene in Al's apartment at 11m:35s. Ellie tells him, "I've gotta see the bedroom." What follows just doesn't add up--until you remind yourself, hey, this is a porn movie without porn. Ellie and Al go into the bedroom, get on the bed, kiss a little--but nothing develops. Ellie just tells Al she needs to go to Mojave, and he offers to drive her. Next scene. Wha...? Ah, but use your mind's eye to see what really happened in Al's bed. Then you'll know why he was so eager to bring the girl hundreds of miles into the desert!
And of course there's Ellie's striptease-and-shower routine that starts at 48m:17s. This practically leaps off the screen BEGGING you to get your imagination in gear! Ask yourself: why does Sal phone Al just as Ellie knocks on Al's door? Why does Julie show up a few minutes later to talk to Al while Ellie is in his shower? It all seems so dumb because *Mojave Moon* offers no reason for these events to synchronize like that. In a porn film Al would tell Sal to get his butt right over because hot tail is banging on the door! Instead he just moans, "Can't talk now Sal, gotta go", making this phone call scene a complete waste of time. Soon afterward Al's got two hot women in his pad. But he stands around listening to them talk about hair and soap while he keeps a worried look glued to his mug. In a porn film we'd see Al, Sal, Ellie and Julie get down to a hot foursome--and we'd know, yeah, THAT'S why the four of them turned up at the same time in the same place!
*Mohave Moon* is chock-a-block with loopy scenes crying to have their blank spaces filled with hot sex. Just one more: at 20m:40s Ellie gives Kaiser (Noseworthy) a smirky look and asks, "Still wanna do it?" "Yeah!" he grins. He lifts her over his shoulder and carries her offscreen as they howl in glee. According to the plain vanilla version, that's just them agreeing to get married. Yeah, right.
The point is, if you just take at face value what *Mojave Moon* shows you onscreen, you're left scratching your head wondering "Why did they do it like THAT? What does it mean? Is this supposed to be funny?" No, it's supposed to be dirty! But you have to supply the dirt yourself, from your imagination.
Keep that in mind. Watching *Mojave Moon* can be fun.
[Footnote 1: An objection to my theory that *Mojave Moon* is a blue movie for the mind's eye. "Angelina Jolie made movies far more racey than this. Why are you pretending that Ellie is her sexiest role of all? You say we need to add imagination to see *Mojave Moon* as a dirty movie. Forget imagination. Just watch the unrated *Gia* or *Original Sin*."
My reply: It's true there's zero porn content in *MM*. There's a very short scene of Ms Jolie in the shower, bare from the waist up. But this is glamour, not porn. Yes, the unrated DVD versions of the Jolie films *Gia* and *Original Sin* have sex scenes that qualify as soft porn. But these movies were not planned to BE vehicles of pornography. They have OTHER purposes than to just show you sex. If you watch them ONLY to find sex, you miss the films themselves. *Mojave Moon*, on the other hand, works better the MORE you look everywhere for the sex that isn't anywhere!]
[Footnote 2: Ms Jolie told the press that *The Bone Collecter* (1999) was the first movie to run her name "above the title." What this means is, during the opening sequence of *TBC* her name is screened even before the title of the movie comes on. That's a sign she's a big star. But *The Bone Collector* was not the first movie to run Ms Jolie's name above the title. *Mojave Moon* did it three years earlier--at a time when she was almost unknown. In fact the names of all of *MM*'s six leading actors run above the title. A compensation, I suppose, for their having to work in such a cheap movie. Come to think of it, when Ms Jolie talked about *The Bone Collector* she may have said it's the first BIG-BUDGET movie to run her name above the title. That's perfectly correct.]
[Footnote 3: A foretaste of Gia. In my review I described a scene that begins at 48m:17s. Al answers a phone call from Sal at the same time someone knocks on his door. He tells Sal he can't talk, hangs up, then opens the door. It's Ellie. The way Ms Jolie acts in this scene, the words she speaks and how she speaks them, her clothes and hair, are a foretaste of her role in *Gia* (1998). If in your mind's eye you replace Danny Aiello with Elizabeth Mitchell, then this scene works well as a Jolie take on the character of Gia Marie Carangi.]
|
| Rating | | | Date | July 15, 2005 | | Summary | Early Angelina really strutting her stuff | Content
| If you're a fan of Ms. Jolie, buy this and enjoy her in it. She plays a 20 year old vamp who seduces Danny Aiello in a flagrant, delicious way that only Angelina could. If you don't feel a sudden intake of breath when she struts into the diner early in the movie, then you need to switch back to Regis and Kelly. Angelina's not a major character, but she's on screen enough for me to feel fine about my mini-buck investment. The movie itself is a bizarre little noir that has it's moments (decent acting, OK script, good desert atmosphere) and its non-moments (uneven directing, plot holes), but not bad. The movie rates a 3, Angelina rates a 5, you do the math. |
|
Picture 01 (20)
