A movie rarely ignites the public the way Sinners has. Usually, if a movie does well, it will consume TikTok, and Sinners most definitely has done that. It has dive-bombed into the discourse in a variety of ways and from many different angles. I’ve heard lots of different takes on the movie. Some people have gone really deep, like this person:
@alexis.kawasaki Sinners, movie of the year. Ryan Coogler’s intelligence must be studied🗣️ #sinners #ryancoogler #michaelbjordan #movietok
But this is how we watch movies now, whether in the movie theater or on streaming. We watch them, and they become part of the content churn. We use them to boost our own platforms or to make points for us. To go deeper into them, we’ll eventually start seeing people reenacting parts of the movie, acting them out, and creating additional stories for the characters. It is a whole new world, my friends.
There is no version of this story where Sinners is not considered one of the year’s ten best films. Not because it is an “Oscar movie” but because it isn’t. It is an organic hit. And will be one of the films people remember from this year for the next twenty years. I found it to be engaging from minute one, drawing us into this strange, terrifying and magical world. Ryan Coogler has made a movie in the old style, where he takes his time letting us get to know all of the characters before we get to the vampires.
There are a lot of ways to talk about the film. Most people want to view it through the prism of race. Whiteness as an evil inside that can’t be eradicated because it’s like a vampire. Or proximity to whiteness makes you evil. Or some such. No one can deny the crimes of the past after the Civil War, when mass hysteria over the freeing of the slaves led to Jim Crow laws and crimes against humanity. Sinners is partly about that. But it is also in the realm of magic realism, borrowing from many different genres and telling a story about the importance of music in the spirit of all people, but Black Americans especially.
But I don’t really want to write about it from the perspective of race, but rather from the perspective of cinema. I first met Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan in France in 2013 at the Cannes Film Festival for Fruitvale Station. I snapped a photo of Jordan way before he became a huge star.
That was a long time ago. I pushed hard for Fruitvale Station to make it into the race, but it didn’t. 12 Years a Slave ended up winning that year. I could already see Coogler had talent for filmmaking and storytelling, so I wasn’t surprised how his career has taken off. My dad was such a big fan of Creed, we watched it almost every day the year he died. Between that and Black Panther, Coogler has become an A-list director without the Oscars, though Black Panther was nominated. The question of how far Sinners will go is whether or not the Academy can get over itself. If they can, it should do well. Coogler has made it clear he doesn’t really care either way and doesn’t plan on chasing the Oscar. I doubt he’d be up for the dog and pony show required. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. It’s hard to know. But if the voters are doing their jobs and finding “high achievement in film” they won’t be able to overlook Sinners.
This Tik Tok user puts it exactly right:
@l10raw A masterpiece. 🎬
I would agree that Sinners is a masterpiece, which simply means a filmmaker’s best work. Not to boost expectations too high or anything, but it is the kind of movie that doesn’t feel like a chore to watch, one I’d happily pay to see again. I’ll be listening to the soundtrack ASAP. I loved it so much I wanted to get right back in line and watch it again. I think it might be the frontrunner for the first Casting award too because now that it’s a category, I was thinking about how well this movie was cast and how great the ensemble is.
Maybe I would have been hesitant to see it as an Oscars thing if it had not been for the genre-busting nominees of late, like Black Panther and The Substance. Sinners is alive with creative energy. The acting is brilliant across the board. The mood, atmosphere, score, and cinematography are all at a level 10. But I most admired Coogler’s light touch as a storyteller, easing into it, not adhering to any traditional structure but letting it take him wherever it wanted. That meant that it was, at times, not a linear story. It ended like three times. Two people I saw it with went to the bathroom after they thought it ended, but one missed a crucial scene, the other missed a crucial one. If you see it, watch all the way to the end.
There will be a great many people who do not want people like me — white women — to love Sinners. That’s just the fact of it. I am supposed to be someone the movie locks out unless I talk about it in the gobbledegook of the modern-day Left. But I will stubbornly refuse to do that and to, instead, see it not as a social statement so much as a work of art.
There is no denying what white people in Mississippi in the 1930s were like so it is truthful to the time. There are references to Native Americans, Irish/Italian immigrants, Asian immigrants, and, of course, Black Americans. But I never got the sense that Coogler was sending a mess of hate or division with this film, rather a celebration of musical fusion by different groups of people that has built so much of our culture. Make of it what you will. The movie leaves much open to interpretation. But it is also possible just to go and enjoy it as a “Pirates of the Caribbean” kind of experience.
In other words, yes, I think if you are a normie white person, you can go see this movie and enjoy it. You won’t feel hated and alienated, like you don’t belong sitting in there, even if you aren’t one of these self-flagellating types who wake up every day awash in white guilt. You can still see the movie as a brilliant, entertaining, sexy, deep, magical, and moving experience. I hope lots of people see it. It’s a work of art.
At the moment, this is what my top 20 looks like:
- Wicked for Good
- Sinners
- Hamnet
- After the Hunt
- Avatar: Fire and Ash
- The Life of Chuck
- F1
- One Battle After Another
- The Lost Bus
- The Ballad of a Small Player
- Frankenstein
- Bugonia
- Jay Kelly
- The Roses
- Highest 2 Lowest
- Marty Supreme
- Deliver Me from Nowhere
- Caught Stealing
- Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Project
- A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
Best Director
- Jon M. Chu, Wicked for Good
- Ryan Coogler, Sinners
- Luca Guadagnino, After the Hunt
- Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
- Chloe Zhao, Hamnet
- Edward Berger, The Ballad of a Small Player
- Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
- Joseph Kosinski, F1
- Kathryn Bigelow, Untitled
- Darren Aronofsky, Caught Stealing
Best Actress
- Cynthia Erivo, Wicked for Good
- Julia Roberts, After the Hunt
- Amanda Seyfried, Ann Lee
- Emma Stone, Bugonia
- Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
- Olivia Colman, The Roses
- Rebecca Ferguson, Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Project
- June Squibb, Eleanor the Great
- Jessica Lange, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- Jennifer Lawrence, Die My Love
Best Actor
- Timothee Chalamet, Marty Supreme
- Jeremy Allen White, Deliver Me From Nowhere
- Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus
- Colin Farrell, Ballad of a Small Player
- Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
- Paul Mescal, Hamnet
- Benedict Cumberbatch, The Roses
- Austin Butler, Caught Stealing
- Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
- Jesse Plemons, Bugonia
Supporting Actress
- Ayo Edebiri, After the Hunt
- Ariana Grande, Wicked
- Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
- Hailee Steinfeld, Sinners
- Jennifer Lopez, Kiss of the Spider Woman
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Marty Supreme
- Regina Hall, One Battle After Another
- America Ferrera, The Lost Bus
- Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
- Emily Blunt, The Smashing Machine
Supporting Actor
- Delroy Lindo, Sinners
- Shia LaBeouf, Henry Johnson
- Paul Mescal, Hamnet
- Andrew Garfield, After the Hunt
- Miles Caton, Sinners
- Jeremy Strong, Deliver Me From Nowhere
- Jonathan Bailey, Wicked for Good
- Josh O’Connor, The History of Sound
- Jeffrey Wright, Highest 2 Lowest
- 10. Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
The thing about this list is that it’s very likely to be not how the Oscars will go. I’m featuring Sinners so high because now, we’ve seen it. We know it’s one of the year’s most successful films already. Almost none of the other movies have even been seen at all. You can’t go wrong when you over-value movies that have already been seen. You’re almost always burned when you over-value movies that haven’t been seen.
In my opinion, Ryan Coogler is way overdue for Academy attention, whether he wants it or not. I think Sinners could get nominations for:
Picture
Director
Screenplay
Actor
Supporting Actress
Cinematography
Hair/Makeup
Editing
Costumes
Casting
Score
Go out and see Sinners and let me know what you think.
