Film Review: Sinners
Apr. 26th, 2025 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enujaSinners, 2025 Directed by Ryan Coogler
I absolutely adored this film. Sinners is absolutely excellent. You should go see it, and you should avoid as many spoilers as possible before you go see it. This is a spoiler-free review.
Is it perfect? No, it is not. At one point, Smoke, one of two characters played by Michael B. Jordan, pulls the pin of a grenade with his teeth. That sort of small error, questionable directorial choice, or distracting issue happened quite a few times: this is the third quibble I've written, trying to find one that I know is wrong, not just wrong for me, and isn't too spoilery.
But I want to talk not about my quibbles, but about what I loved about this film, which was a lot of things. It is a stuffed, maybe even overstuffed, film, but in a rich, sumptuous, beautiful way.
After a voiceover introduction with beautiful textile illustrations, in the opening scene Sammie, aka Preacher Boy, staggers into his father's church on Sunday morning, the absolute picture of deeply traumatized horror film survivor. And that church! It is a small white painted wooden building with a large door as the main entrance, and a small door on the opposite side open to perfectly frame the preacher against the beautiful day. The choir of children up front and the worshipers are wearing white, in striking contrast with their deep black skin. There are black crosses hanging up on the white walls of the church. Only the preacher wears black, silhouetted against the bright sky behind him. Think stereotypical black sharecopper church. This film is not subtle. It starts with the most stereotypical, symbolic, emblematic, iconic images and ideas, and works from there.
Then the we go back one day in time. Sammie is picking cotton with other sharecroppers, early in the morning, but he skips out quickly, because he's finished his quota and he's got things to do. He greets his mama, gets lectured by his father in the church, and then gets picked up, in a car, by the Smoke Stack twins, both played by Michael B. Jordon.
There are probably 20 minutes of shots of cotton fields in this film. There are dirt roads, a chain gang, a segregated Main Street in town, extreme poverty among sharecroppers, beautiful live oaks, a train station, every icon of the Delta.
Personally, I adore beautiful films, and this is a beautiful film. Go see it on the best screen you can. I regret not having chosen the IMAX option, and I'm seriously considering going to see it again, this time in IMAX. I am a new fan girl of the cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw. But, essentially, this is a film about music. It's a film about everything, but especially about Delta blues music. So the sound matters. The score, by Ludwig Göransson, is breathtaking, and this movie may made me want to listen to a lot of blues.
Generally speaking, I am neither a huge music fan, nor a huge horror film fan. But I am into music: it's just that I'm not as much into music as my late ex-spouse was, nor many other people around me. I do like listening to the same albums and songs over and over again, and this movie is obsessed with music. So it felt strange to be taking a group of four people to see horror film about music, but it felt very good .
As I wrote in my last post, Wobbegong was the one who told me to see films for most of my adult life, including films that I saw with other people. I've been the one dragging people to see films, because Woobegong told me to. I don't have Wobbegong to tell me to see films anymore. But I do still have the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and my other friends, and I am so glad I dragged three other people to a theater last night.
I also don't think of myself as a fan of horror, but I realized last night that three of my favorite films (not my three very favorite films, but definitely three of my top 15 films of all time) are The Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and now, Sinners. All horror films. I was somewhat distressed by the abundance of horror film trailers at the beginning of Sinners: they were trailers showing too much, both too much of the plots of the movies they were advertising, and too much gore for me. I can handle quite a lot of gore, but it is not my favorite thing in films. Horror can be a fantastic way of saying important and interesting things, and Sinners uses horror to say important and interesting things.
So go see it, friends, and let's talk about it afterwards!
I absolutely adored this film. Sinners is absolutely excellent. You should go see it, and you should avoid as many spoilers as possible before you go see it. This is a spoiler-free review.
Is it perfect? No, it is not. At one point, Smoke, one of two characters played by Michael B. Jordan, pulls the pin of a grenade with his teeth. That sort of small error, questionable directorial choice, or distracting issue happened quite a few times: this is the third quibble I've written, trying to find one that I know is wrong, not just wrong for me, and isn't too spoilery.
But I want to talk not about my quibbles, but about what I loved about this film, which was a lot of things. It is a stuffed, maybe even overstuffed, film, but in a rich, sumptuous, beautiful way.
After a voiceover introduction with beautiful textile illustrations, in the opening scene Sammie, aka Preacher Boy, staggers into his father's church on Sunday morning, the absolute picture of deeply traumatized horror film survivor. And that church! It is a small white painted wooden building with a large door as the main entrance, and a small door on the opposite side open to perfectly frame the preacher against the beautiful day. The choir of children up front and the worshipers are wearing white, in striking contrast with their deep black skin. There are black crosses hanging up on the white walls of the church. Only the preacher wears black, silhouetted against the bright sky behind him. Think stereotypical black sharecopper church. This film is not subtle. It starts with the most stereotypical, symbolic, emblematic, iconic images and ideas, and works from there.
Then the we go back one day in time. Sammie is picking cotton with other sharecroppers, early in the morning, but he skips out quickly, because he's finished his quota and he's got things to do. He greets his mama, gets lectured by his father in the church, and then gets picked up, in a car, by the Smoke Stack twins, both played by Michael B. Jordon.
There are probably 20 minutes of shots of cotton fields in this film. There are dirt roads, a chain gang, a segregated Main Street in town, extreme poverty among sharecroppers, beautiful live oaks, a train station, every icon of the Delta.
Personally, I adore beautiful films, and this is a beautiful film. Go see it on the best screen you can. I regret not having chosen the IMAX option, and I'm seriously considering going to see it again, this time in IMAX. I am a new fan girl of the cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw. But, essentially, this is a film about music. It's a film about everything, but especially about Delta blues music. So the sound matters. The score, by Ludwig Göransson, is breathtaking, and this movie may made me want to listen to a lot of blues.
Generally speaking, I am neither a huge music fan, nor a huge horror film fan. But I am into music: it's just that I'm not as much into music as my late ex-spouse was, nor many other people around me. I do like listening to the same albums and songs over and over again, and this movie is obsessed with music. So it felt strange to be taking a group of four people to see horror film about music, but it felt very good .
As I wrote in my last post, Wobbegong was the one who told me to see films for most of my adult life, including films that I saw with other people. I've been the one dragging people to see films, because Woobegong told me to. I don't have Wobbegong to tell me to see films anymore. But I do still have the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, and my other friends, and I am so glad I dragged three other people to a theater last night.
I also don't think of myself as a fan of horror, but I realized last night that three of my favorite films (not my three very favorite films, but definitely three of my top 15 films of all time) are The Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and now, Sinners. All horror films. I was somewhat distressed by the abundance of horror film trailers at the beginning of Sinners: they were trailers showing too much, both too much of the plots of the movies they were advertising, and too much gore for me. I can handle quite a lot of gore, but it is not my favorite thing in films. Horror can be a fantastic way of saying important and interesting things, and Sinners uses horror to say important and interesting things.
So go see it, friends, and let's talk about it afterwards!
