The Cannes Film Festival is readying for liftoff. Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest looks like the most interesting to me, but no one ever knows what movies are like until people start actually seeing them. You can read a decent rundown of 20 most anticipated at The Film Stage.
As far as the Oscars go, Sinners has set the bar really high for any other movie to topple it. It’s beginning to feel like an Oppenheimer type of frontrunner, or the Silence of the Lambs. It opens early, it captures the zeitgeist, it makes a lot of money and everyone wants to reward it, which is how the Oscars ideally function — to award high achievement in film.
I remember how frustrated I was in 2013 that Fruitvale Station was not recognized by the Academy. Coogler was but a youth, just 26 years-old, one year younger than blues great Robert Johnson who is said to be the source that inspired Sinners (or one of them). Coogler has also cited his uncle who loved the Blues, which instilled fond memories for the director.
All of these years later, Coogler is not a 26 year-old newbie out of film school but rather a formidable force to be reckoned with. Look at his box office successes so far:
Fruitvale Station $16 mil
Creed $109 mil (should have made more, time to re-release that bad boy)
Black Panther $700 mil
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever $453 mil
Sinners: $200 mil and counting
With that level of success, and having made an original film as a writer and director that ignited a zeitgeist moment, the sky’s the limit.
On top of that, Coogler is a film geek — I mean FILM, not digital.
He’s like Christopher Nolan and Sean Baker, not to mention Quentin Tarantino — a preservationist and someone who wants to bring people back to the movie theaters. All of that counts, trust me, when it comes to the Academy.
And then, there’s the music — the movie has already won an Oscar walking in the door for Best Original Score for Ludwig Goransson. Here is Miles Caton who plays Sammy (his film debut, btw).
Here they are talking about why Coogler was interested in making Sinners:
And how they became friends:
Dude’s already won two Oscars. One for Black Panther and one for Oppenheimer. But he’s about to win his third.
Sinners is a formidable contender for the Oscars because of the subject matter. No, not vampires. But the origins of the Delta Blues and Ryan Coogler’s painstakingly crafted epic to celebrate that history and redeem the legend of the blues and Robert Johnson. That makes Sinners more important than merely a profitable popcorn horror flick.
It’s not the true story of Robert Johnson, but his story is woven throughout. I could be one of those people reading into it, but the more I learned about Robert Johnson and the Mississippi Delta, the more I could see in Sinners.
There might still be the documentary on Robert Johnson on Netflix:
The story goes something like this: Robert Johnson was a mediocre guitar player in 1930. He disappeared one night and no one knew why. When he came back, two years later, he was an insanely good guitar player. He was so good, everyone assumed he must have struck a deal with the Devil to be able to play that well.
In Sinners, the Johnson myth is — I think — divided into three characters — Sammy, and Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan). Each of them meet a different fate, yet all of these fates could have been Robert Johnson’s. He died at the age of 27 after flirting with a married woman. When her husband found out, it is said, he poisoned Johnson’s drink. So in Sinners, we can see Sammy flirting with Pearline (Jayme Lawson). Though he isn’t caught and he doesn’t get poisoned. Instead, he is gifted with a long life, something Robert Johnson did not have.
Early on in Robert Johnson’s life, at just 16, he married a 14 year-old who died in chilbirth, along with their baby. Her parents accused Johnson of having spent too much time on the “devil’s music.” Johnson was pulled in two different directions — at a crossroads — music or settling down as a family man. We can see these two contrasting narratives in Smoke and Stack and how each of their stories turn out.
Finally, the main theme of Sinners, so beautifully rendered, is how it was never the Devil at all, nor was it the Devil’s music. The music is what saved Robert Johnson, saved Sammy, and saved so many Black Americans in that era — making it one of their most powerful forces for good. The scene where a thread connects African music all the way through the various genres of music — through to the modern era.
There are many different ways to interpret the movie and trust me, I’ve heard them all. By the time that scene appears, it’s clear we’re not in Kansas anymore and most of us have never seen a movie like Sinners. So yes, you can go there with race — white people as cultural vampires. You can use it to talk about life in America today — but it is also just a brilliant, resonant, thrilling American film. So yeah, I think they’ll throw statues at it. But it’s early yet, we’ll have to see how it goes.
That’s why I think it’s Sinners and everything else. At least for now. All of the other films have a hell of a mountain to climb to top it. Maybe Wicked can, maybe, because it’s two movies. But how does it compete with an original film when it is not an original film? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.
Something might come along that sweeps people up in it, but a cultural moment like the one Sinners had unearthed is unique in any year, but especially this year, the first year of the Trump presidency with voters likely to be engaged politically once again.
The Rivals of Amziah King
The critics at SXSW went nuts for this film, and it does feel a little like it would live in the same town as Sinners, what with the music and all. Says Brian Tallerico:
“Amziah King” is not what you expect: a film that floats in and out of music and storytelling like a great country album. Star Matthew McConaughey, doing his first non-animated film work in six years, introduced the film by saying it was “for film lovers and farmers,” and it’s not just a line. This is something that could really break out for the right studio. They’ll play it before every Longhorns game. The music here reflects the culture and the vibe, with original tunes by The Avett Brothers and Ben Hardesty (who is also in the film as one of King clan). The music absolutely rules in a way that most original musicals have not in recent years.
It’s currently sitting with a 97% on RT. The blurb:
Deep within the backwoods of rural Oklahoma, charismatic and musically gifted Amziah King herds a bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, Amziah leaps at the possibility to renew connection and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless, and Amziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.
But according to Jordan Ruimy, the film still has no distribution.
So I don’t know what is going on with that movie.
I haven’t changed much on my predictions, though I did push Julia Roberts into the number one spot. But none of this means anything, friends, because we haven’t seen the movies. So take it all with a huge grain of salt.
From the Oscars Expert App:
It’s a short piece this time, I know. But have a great weekend anyway.
