rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2025-04-30 09:43 am
rachelmanija) wrote2025-04-30 09:43 am
Entry tags:
Sinners (2025)
I just saw Ryan Coogler's Sinners. I have not felt so exalted by a movie since Baahubali. It's glorious and transcendent and made me glad I was alive to see it. I want to see it again, immediately.
It's got serious themes but it's also incredibly fun. Also very hot. The themes are complex, layered, and interesting, touching on racism and exploitation, finding joy and community even under horrendous oppression, and the power of music. Brilliant acting all round. Fantastic writing and direction.
I went in knowing nothing but that it's set in the 1930s, stars Michael B. Jordan as identical twins, and there's vampires. This is the best way to see it. I have since watched the trailer, and highly recommend not doing that before you see the movie; it gives away several major plot points that occur late in the movie, and is also... not misleading exactly... but focuses on the horror/action elements, which are important but also only half of the movie. It's kind of Big Night meets Near Dark meets Devil in a Blue Dress meets Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but also totally its own thing.
As that suggests, it's a musical, sort of, with a pair of INCREDIBLE diegetic dance scenes. If you have any interest in music, the movie is worth seeing for those alone; the one inside the juke joint is one of the best movie scenes I have ever seen, and the one outside it comes pretty close.
If you're not a horror fan but the other elements appeal: it's got a lot of gory vampire violence, but it's mostly confined to the gory vampire violence scenes, ie, not pervasive throughout the whole movie. You could look away for those parts.
Stay for the whole credits. There's a mid-credits scene which is not an Easter Egg, but the actual ending and it's wonderful. There's also a post-credits scene.
Spoilers!
So many hot moments but Pearline crawling over the stage in her white dress nearly made me spontaneously combust.
The first half reminded me a lot of Big Night, a wonderful movie about brothers Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub preparing their struggling restaurant for a single meal that will decide its fate. I could have watched an entire movie just about Smoke and Stack putting together their juke joint. It's riveting.
That scene where all the spirits of music come and dance made me feel like I was ascending to heaven. It was glorious. I've never seen anything like it in a movie. The only thing I can think of that even comes close is a scene in the play The Kentucky Cycle, an epic about generations of different families living on the same piece of land in Kentucky, where the stage cracks open and all the spirits of the dead come and join the living.
I also loved the paired scene with Remmick leading the vampires on a dance to that banger "The Rocky Road to Dublin." It was horrifying - they're an undead hive mind, black people forced to dance to a white man's beat, unlike the juke joint's dance where everyone is still individual, making their own moves that all contribute to the community and the whole - but the song transports you. You feel Remmick's power, because the song has power over you too, and also his own real loss, because his music is also beautiful. It's a metaphor about cultural imperialism - a double one, as Irish culture was also colonized - but it works on so many levels.
I loved all the doubling: Smoke and Stack, but also Sammie and Remmick, the two musicians with powers, one black, one white, one young, one ancient. Also Annie and Mary, one literally in touch with her roots, one separated from hers. And Sammie and Delta Slim, the young and old blues musicians.
I would have loved a whole movie about the Choctaw vampire hunters who sensibly nope out of the whole movie.
Apart from the obvious smokestack joke, I think Stack is a reference to Stack-o-lee/Stagger Lee; it makes sense that he's the one who survives and will live forever, going on into the future like the criminal icon of the song.
When I hit the final scene I thought, "Oh no, after all that he's seriously going for a cheap "But they're not dead after all and now they're here to kill him" and instead it was about how people can find joy and wonder even surrounded by horror and how those moments matter even though they don't last. It was so lovely.
In the last scene, Stack and Mary were more-or-less themselves again. I guess Remmick's death freed them from the hive mind?
It's got serious themes but it's also incredibly fun. Also very hot. The themes are complex, layered, and interesting, touching on racism and exploitation, finding joy and community even under horrendous oppression, and the power of music. Brilliant acting all round. Fantastic writing and direction.
I went in knowing nothing but that it's set in the 1930s, stars Michael B. Jordan as identical twins, and there's vampires. This is the best way to see it. I have since watched the trailer, and highly recommend not doing that before you see the movie; it gives away several major plot points that occur late in the movie, and is also... not misleading exactly... but focuses on the horror/action elements, which are important but also only half of the movie. It's kind of Big Night meets Near Dark meets Devil in a Blue Dress meets Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but also totally its own thing.
As that suggests, it's a musical, sort of, with a pair of INCREDIBLE diegetic dance scenes. If you have any interest in music, the movie is worth seeing for those alone; the one inside the juke joint is one of the best movie scenes I have ever seen, and the one outside it comes pretty close.
If you're not a horror fan but the other elements appeal: it's got a lot of gory vampire violence, but it's mostly confined to the gory vampire violence scenes, ie, not pervasive throughout the whole movie. You could look away for those parts.
Stay for the whole credits. There's a mid-credits scene which is not an Easter Egg, but the actual ending and it's wonderful. There's also a post-credits scene.
Spoilers!
So many hot moments but Pearline crawling over the stage in her white dress nearly made me spontaneously combust.
The first half reminded me a lot of Big Night, a wonderful movie about brothers Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub preparing their struggling restaurant for a single meal that will decide its fate. I could have watched an entire movie just about Smoke and Stack putting together their juke joint. It's riveting.
That scene where all the spirits of music come and dance made me feel like I was ascending to heaven. It was glorious. I've never seen anything like it in a movie. The only thing I can think of that even comes close is a scene in the play The Kentucky Cycle, an epic about generations of different families living on the same piece of land in Kentucky, where the stage cracks open and all the spirits of the dead come and join the living.
I also loved the paired scene with Remmick leading the vampires on a dance to that banger "The Rocky Road to Dublin." It was horrifying - they're an undead hive mind, black people forced to dance to a white man's beat, unlike the juke joint's dance where everyone is still individual, making their own moves that all contribute to the community and the whole - but the song transports you. You feel Remmick's power, because the song has power over you too, and also his own real loss, because his music is also beautiful. It's a metaphor about cultural imperialism - a double one, as Irish culture was also colonized - but it works on so many levels.
I loved all the doubling: Smoke and Stack, but also Sammie and Remmick, the two musicians with powers, one black, one white, one young, one ancient. Also Annie and Mary, one literally in touch with her roots, one separated from hers. And Sammie and Delta Slim, the young and old blues musicians.
I would have loved a whole movie about the Choctaw vampire hunters who sensibly nope out of the whole movie.
Apart from the obvious smokestack joke, I think Stack is a reference to Stack-o-lee/Stagger Lee; it makes sense that he's the one who survives and will live forever, going on into the future like the criminal icon of the song.
When I hit the final scene I thought, "Oh no, after all that he's seriously going for a cheap "But they're not dead after all and now they're here to kill him" and instead it was about how people can find joy and wonder even surrounded by horror and how those moments matter even though they don't last. It was so lovely.
In the last scene, Stack and Mary were more-or-less themselves again. I guess Remmick's death freed them from the hive mind?