Sinners has awakened the movie going public like no movie since Barbenheimer. With a solid A Cinemascore and strong box office, Sinners looks to be one of the strongest contenders to Best Picture so far this year, provided the Academy can abandon its genre bias. They probably can in this case because Ryan Coogler is such a prominent filmmaker, and it is “important” in its own way. I will be seeing it on Tuesday, so my perceptions are based solely on the reaction to the movie, which is strong, with very few dissenters.
The Academy has changed, just as the world has changed. We don’t yet know what its limits are. We know it likes international movies and has no problem with subtitles. We know it’s much younger than the Old Academy. I’m guessing Sinners will be pushed along with enthusiasm by the bloggerati, and that will help make it a strong contender. It will depend on the other movies, whether it’s too early in the year, and forgotten months from now.
Either way, the Cannes Film Festival is now the beginning of the Oscar race, where it used to be too early. But before that happens, before film festival season unfolds at the end of Summer, we have a selection of standout movies now. Sinners is at the top of that list.
Alex Garland’s Warfare likewise seems to be landing with strong word of mouth. It’s a gritty, visceral, real-time war movie that is impressive from a filmmaking perspective. Garland’s Civil War also hit early last year, but it went nowhere, Oscar-wise. Still, this could resonate, especially depending on how things turn out this year.
Finally, Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag should be the kind of movie that did well with a certain kind of audience. But obviously, whatever the critics saw in the movie, the audiences didn’t:
Soderbergh’s quote:
You can read the full interview here.
The audience that would have turned out for this movie disappeared during COVID and never came back. Black Bag is the kind of movie they know they can see on streaming. COVID conditioned them to watch movies that way, in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them still wear masks outside.
But I also think that if Black Bag had hit with audiences (the audience score tells me that something about it was off-putting to them) maybe word of mouth might have driven it farther. But I still think it’s worth pointing it out as one of the stronger contenders in the first half of the year.
And listen, $20 million for Black Bag is good considering what similar movies make now. That is not bad at all. Some of them can’t even crack $10 million. Overall, the audience is gone. I still think they will come back when Hollywood makes movies and tells stories they can’t miss. If they already know going in that nothing will be offensive, they won’t break any rules, etc., that makes it less of an exciting night at the movies.
There are so many stories that could be told right now but Hollywood is too afraid to tell those stories.
Of the three movies, Sinners probably has the best shot of going all the way.
