Joanna's Angels Review

sinema reviews by skronker

Wassup with this alt-porn business anyway? Over the past few months, there's been a growing buzz about the genre -- mostly generated by LA art-school grad Eon McKai, whose Kill Girl Kill series injects a dose of underground style into the ol' in-'n'-out. My enthusiasm for McKai has dampened a bit since he apparently got through college without learning how to spell, and gets more mileage from the excellent design folks he hires to work on his title sequences and DVD packaging than he does from actually being a great shooter, but I still think his movies offer something a little different.

I was way more impressed with what his "protege," Joanna Angel, came up with for her VCA debut. With Joanna's Angels, New York-based scenemaker claims the form for her own. Her flick is funky, free-spirited and fucking hot, a caper spoof run amok with tattooed love girls and the men they use like tools.

Of course, if you view things objectively, there’s not a whole lot of difference between this and any standard gonzo flick. Though there’s more emphasis on girl-girl (and girl) pleasuring, tongue-studs, and storyline, most of the boy-girl (or boy-girl-girl, or vice-versa) scenes follow the usual progression. The framing and editing of the action often is more ideal than usual – there’s an emphasis on facial reactions and playful spontaneity among the girls – but at other times (such as Joanna’s surprising DP), it’s perfunctory, as the camera dwells too much on the pounding and not the reactions to it.

But, as fans of Joanna’s website Burning Angel know, there is something different. Shot mostly in Williamsburg, NYC’s capital of hip, the video has the loosely choreographed vibe of the vignette downloads that highlight the site – a grrl-friendly tease and nudie photo revue that doubles as a web community, a party hotline and a celebration of one woman’s polymorphous, punk-rockin’, pussy-loving enthusiasms. Joanna’s out to foil a plot hatched by arch-villain Katrina Kraven (along with James Deen, the sole Porn Valley ringer), which has something to do with secret mind control and luring Joanna’s angels away to LA. The story never makes more sense than that, though it sets up Burning Angel house stud Tommy Pistol as a comic foil (and KK’s willing pawn). It also gives the girls (Joanna, Kylee, Pinky and Sabrina Sparx) an excuse to improvise some skit-like scenes that set up the sex: Saving the known universe, apparently, while text-messaging as they sunbathe under the water tanks of their Brooklyn warehouse rooftop.

Of course, this would only be a giggle if the sex didn’t sizzle. But it does. The opening three-way with Joanna, Kylee and Sabrina will jazz even non-G/G fans (Kylee, especially, has an amazing tongue, as flexible as a snake’s), as it will anyone taken with tattoos, piercings, fetish garb, girly aggression, shaved pussies, and buoyant female bodies and personalities. Though there’s a nice one-on-one with website regular Sleazy Pete Swayzee (who resembles a member of Rancid, the band that supplies the soundtrack) – Sabrina delivers an awesome upside-down blowjob – most of the action is three-way. And while I loved watching Katrina (an all-time fave) dominate Joanna in the “Lair of Evil” sequence, with the durable Deen, spooky candles and a grinning skuil, the best of these features Mr. Pistol. His attempt to kidnap and subdue Kylee comes undone with his zipper as she tag-teams him with blonde cutie Pinky. There’s some nicely shot, rough-BJ action (which the girls seem to quite enjoy) that leads to multi-humping and sloppy facials. Again, in some ways the same as any porno, but in other ways not at all. Joanna’s Angels really foregrounds the female perspective, and a certain kind of female perspective, in a way that isn’t much represented in conventional raincoater porn. It’s a refreshing kick in the ass.