350th Review: Sinners

        350 films can do a lot for one guy. I distinctly remember just being cooped up in my apartment and deciding to just review my small movie collection. Anything to kill time for seemingly forever pandemic that affected everybody. I just gotten my degree with a minor in film studies, so to me it made sense to use something where it can’t be applicable in the real world. As soon as I expanded my horizons and viewed more movies via streaming and joining my local film club, it cemented what I love doing. I’ll admit that my earlier stuff isn’t good but there a part of my growth and why it’s such a sharp contrast with what I’m talking about in any film. With all that reminiscing, Sinners is my favorite film of the year. 

1. One Night By The Delta

        I remember back on Twitter when news broke that Ryan Coogler was going to shoot his next film. The initial idea was that it was going to be a gangster film with vampires peaked my interest with how he was going to execute it. He’s one of the few directors to have a hot streak and slowly becoming the next great auteur directors. Just watching his films and seeing how far he’s come is really something to see. While I’ll talk about him later, this film is sort of like a culmination for him. 

        Just before I talk about the film, I find it odd that this year was the year of the twins. You may not notice it but take a dork like me to notice it and to see how everywhere this odd motif popped up just about in some movies. Like, Warner Bros. had their films like this one, Mickey 17, The Alto Knights and Superman have characters where there’s a copy of one character or one actor portraying multiple versions. To the point that Disney is guilty with films like Elio and Predator: Badlands. It was just a questionable studio mandate to have one actor/actress portray multiple characters. And have it be everywhere if you really pay attention.  

        I got that out of my chest so now we can talk about this film. As I mentioned earlier, the initial gist of the film was that it was a gangster film with vampires. When seeing the final product on the big screen, there’s so much where it’s a miracle that it’s like a well-oiled machine that everything just clicks. We start by seeing a young man covered in blood going to his father’s church. Interpsperse with brief seconds of flashbacks of what he’s seen and what we’ll slowly see in a matter of moments. Just seeing him cut and tattered got us hooked now to ask and inevitably find out what happened to him. 

        So the story is like this. We follow twins Smoke and Stack as they arrive in the Mississippi Delta to start their life anew. It’s established that they were in Chicago when lived like mobsters. Michael B. Jordan plays both the brothers and it’s nearly flawless with how the footage and special effects make them share the screen. They concoct a plan to open a juke joint for the locals to dance and drink.

        Meanwhile, we see that Sammy is their cousin and going to be the performer for the joint. I like the first half of the film as we see the individual brothers split and get help to assemble their club. All of it has a point where we get introduced to the secondary characters like Delta Slim and Annie. The latter having history with one of the twins as they used to be lovers. Their introductions is good and all since they have that good chemistry with the twins and Sammy. 

        Might as well talk about Sammy. Even though Michael B. Jordan gets topped billing, the whole story centers on Sammy. Actor Miles Caton makes his film debut and he’s the best part in the film. It’s established that he has a penchant for singing the blues and playing it as he has his guitar that he treasures. He holds it in high regards since the twins gifted it to him by saying that it was a famous musician’s guitar. And you better believe that the music has to slap just as much with the amount of action that comes after. 

        It wouldn’t be a Ryan Coogler film without his regular composer Ludwig Göransson. The duo is sort of like Steven Spielberg and John Williams; each are like the peanut butter and jelly with the individual projects. Anyways, the music is the ultimate secret weapon that the film has. At first, I wasn’t expecting this film to have any musical bits. Albeit not a musical but have the music be the central focus and have it be diegetic where it enhances the story. The beginning of the film establishes that music can be transformative by bridging the past and future.  And of course bring in outside threats.

        I should at least talk about my favorite moment in the film, and possibly the best moment of the year in my opinion. We see the Juke Joint popping as the music and people dancing to the song. When it’s Sammy’s turn, that’s when the film immediately sells itself to me. We get echoes of Delta Slim and Smoke’s ex Annie talk about the blues and music. Sammy plays and then we see dancers from the future and past pop up and dance to the beat. It’s sort of weird but more dancers appear and the song keeps going and then the whole joint lights up in fire. Literally, Sammy is on fire as he’s singing and playing the guitar. 

        While all that is good, the villain of course wants to be a part of the camaraderie. We get an introduction to Remmick as he’s running away from the local Choctaw tribe. What makes it better is that when he arrives to a Klansmen’s shack, vultures are circling by. Remmick isn’t an evil person per say, but he’s the type that want’s to belong to a collective. When seeing the music pop in the joint, Remmick wants to be a part of it. Like, there’s a lot of backstory that we only hear and see tiny glimpses of what he was possibly like before he turned seemingly immortal. 

2. Ryan Coogler

        If you know me, Ryan Coogler is becoming my next favorite movie director. It was a decade ago that I saw his film Creed where I loved everything about it aside from being a Rocky sequel. Just his style and how he shoots his films gives him that edge of grounded ruggedness. I’ve already talked about his blockbuster Black Panther. And seen his other film that he produced Judas and the Black Messiah. I’ll admit that I still haven’t seen his debut Fruitvale Station, but I’m all for him to make more films that are pushing the envelope on race. 

        Anyways, how he handled this one is nearly flawless by making the whole film be a period piece of the 1930s. It’s very clear that he made the film to combat the Jim Crowe era that was pervasive during that time, by having the twins lift other civilians in the town up. To the point where I wasn’t even aware that there were Asians living by the Delta in Mississippi. Coogler went authentic with the setting, and made it work within the context of the story. 

        Now, part of the story feels like it’s been done before. That’s only because it was when back in the 90s, you had Robert Rodriguez direct From Dusk Til Dawn with George Clooney starring. Both films are somewhat identical, with having criminals dealing with vampires. Albeit the execution is the real sticking point of where the two films differ. Rodriguez had his film be an action flick that is paying tribute to the past grindhouse exploitation films of the past. Coogler’s is a tribute to the blaxploitation films of the past by having the authenticity of the real world give it that boost. Now, I’m not saying one is better than the other, objectively speaking this one is. I mean, how can you not love when one of the twins engages in a shootout against the Klan. 

        What I’m getting at is this is Coogler’s second R-Rating where he amps up the action and violence with blood squibs. When the action is about to go down, I love how the aspect ratio lifts and down to give us the violence in full screen. Part of it feels fun to imagine just how much the cast and crew go loco with the staged violence and how the special effects were used when the vampires met their end. Like, the final fight is great when we see the characters hold their own against the onslaught. 

3. Overall

        Even though I talked about what I liked about it, there’s so much that I didn’t want to repeat from others. Sinners is the best film of the year and one of Ryan Coogler’s best in his career.