The critics gave a tongue bath to One Battle After Another for months. That’s probably still your frontrunner, but one thing I know about the Oscars is that you never want to be the frontrunner heading into the season, and that clock starts ticking right now.
Landing in every category, as Sinners has done here, is remarkable. I often go to Filmsite.org to look at the numbers. And if Sinners doesn’t win and we’re looking at this list with 16 nominations for that movie and all they give Ryan Coogler is Screenplay, well, what is there left to say?
Do I think Sinners and Ryan Coogler can pull this thing out? Can Ryan Coogler become, at long last, the first Black director to win in the category in, wait for it, 98 years? Hope springs eternal. I want this not just because it’s time to put up or shut up, Academy voters. But also because he deserves it. Not only did Sinners cost less and make more than One Battle, but it was also one of the few films that, like Oppenheimer, penetrated the culture in a real way, bringing people to the movies.
By contrast, One Battle reflects the Oscars as decided by film critics. It is about who they are at this specific moment in time. Sinners tells the story of the history of the blues – specifically, Robert Johnson, who was said to have made a deal with the devil at the crossroads to become a great guitar player. Most people don’t know that about Sinners, but once you dive into that story, you can see the footprints of Robert Johnson all through it.
Blues was said to be the Devil’s music by many people back then, by both the white and the Black Americans. This movie says no, that is not what the music was about. It comes from somewhere else, something else. Yes, you can talk about Sinners in terms of politics and the “woke” ideology that has swallowed up Hollywood and given all of those bored white people a sense of purpose. You can say it’s about how white Europeans are vampires — but really, you’d be missing it because the movie isn’t so black and white (so to speak).
People on the Right will naturally see Sinners as “woke,” but I don’t see it that way. I see it as a deep, entertaining, wildly original film of the kind we used to see every weekend in movie theaters. It’s a full meal. He gives us everything from suspense to beauty to sex to horror and redemption. I’ve seen it three times and saw almost a different movie every time.
Not including it on Variety or Rolling Stone’s list of the year’s best is, to me, on par with Bosley Crowther’s bad review of Hitchcock’s Psycho. History will not be kind.
While it’s true that Hamnet missing Editing and Supporting Actor might mean its Best Picture chances are over, but then again:
We’ll be podcasting shortly and will discuss this more.
