Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025)

[The Curious Sofa]

I made some positive comments about Sinners earlier in the thread, but when posters describe the film as evil and racist, I don't even want to engage with such hyperbole.

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist. Indeed, I don't think that anyone who had any meaningful input in the vision or ultimate final product of this film is consciously racist, and I think they would disagree (as Sinners does) with the assertion of films like Crash that everyone is a little racist. (I don't think that this film is a Crash or American Beauty or indeed an Emilia Perez, where its acclaim will be walked back in a few months as people process a regrettable awards season darling). What I objected to is what I found to be an unintentional bolstering of racist stereotypes and messages that is ultimately a consequence of the film's slapdash construction (as Mr. Sausage accurately highlights), which congealed (in my reading) into a film that accidentally makes an argument for the impossibility of inter-"racial" social equality. If anything, I think the film is an object lesson in how distasteful stereotypes or social messages can be perpetuated in the absence of intention; how racist ideas don't require "a racist" or "racists" to appear or be received. I do not think that people who like the movie are bigoted; rather, I think some of these ideas (most importantly that there is something fundamentally distinct and "other" between "racial" categories) are accepted preassumptions for many people and most others would rather just focus on a fun vampire movie. But any art form can be intellectually analyzed as well as emotionally received, which is why I tried to unpack my objections to the movie at length upthread.

I have the same issues with Black Panther as you do regarding race, I even wrote about that early on in this thread but I don't agree with many of the points you make about Sinners. Stereotypes exist because there is some truth to them, and they aren't inherent to race; rather, they stem from cultural and socio-economic factors. In Sinners while the black characters can conform to stereotype I also found them nuanced enough not to be offensive and some of your claims I find wildly exagerrated. So yes, I also found the idea of an Afro-futurist society that engages in tribal culture, where conflicts are resolved through physical confrontation, to be racist. However, I don't see anything as crass in Sinners, and I don't follow some of your arguments you made in your earlier post.

[diamonds]

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

What was this referring to?

Okay thank god. Good mostly won over evil. Mostly

It wasn't partly referring to One Battle beating out Sinners for Best Picture?

[mfunk9786]

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

I don't want to pile on here, but there's a spoiler-tagged segment of this very thread a page ago where you say "While other movies (Hamnet) in the category were worse than it, honestly, fuck Sinners the most this time around. Racist piece-of-shit actioner..." - how is this you not calling the movie racist? I don't even care if that's your opinion, but it seems disingenuous to imply that you didn't

[thirtyframesasecond]

As I said earlier, I like this movie more than some, less than others. I’d rather have Delroy Lindo make a speech than Michael B Jordan - or Stellan for that matter. Hell, if Penn showed up and made a political speech that would have been fine-but what a bummer neither of those 3 made a speech.

Coogler never comes off as anything less than charming.

Despite my frustration with the awful use of aspect ratio, I’m glad we finally got a female DP to get a win.

Still think Jack O'Connell should've got the Supporting Actor nom over Lindo.

[Mr Sausage]

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

You called it a "Racist piece-of-shit actioner" in your predictions post and then said "Fuck everyone associated with this stupid, bigoted movie and its stupid, bigoted campaign."

[Never Cursed]

Sorry for this post looking like a complete mess.

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

I don't want to pile on here, but there's a spoiler-tagged segment of this very thread a page ago where you say "While other movies (Hamnet) in the category were worse than it, honestly, fuck Sinners the most this time around. Racist piece-of-shit actioner..." - how is this you not calling the movie racist? I don't even care if that's your opinion, but it seems disingenuous to imply that you didn't

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

You called it a "Racist piece-of-shit actioner" in your predictions post and then said "Fuck everyone associated with this stupid, bigoted movie and its stupid, bigoted campaign."

This is fair (glad the two of you pointed this out, honestly) and I wasn't particularly judicious in my wording in that earlier post, and was certainly a little irritated when writing it. To reemphasize, now that I'm of a cooler head: don't think the movie is consciously and intentionally racist or was made by racist people, but I do think it advances some racist ideas without intended to do so. I should have been more clear in the first place, and definitely did some thinking-while-writing when writing out the second, longer post. The movie has obviously struck a nerve with me in a way that it hasn't with most, even others that didn't like the movie at all.

Sometimes stereotypes exist because there is some truth to them, and they aren't inherent to race; rather, they stem from cultural and socio-economic factors.

Putting aside my suspicion of the first part of your sentence (as what is "race" but itself a cultural and socio-economic category, so this is saying that cultural and socio-economic qualia feed into themselves, which sounds unanalyzable), what reflection of cultural and socio-economic factors are present in the stereotypes of black Southerners as depicted in this film? Hailee Steinfeld's character stands out to me as particularly ill-suited to such an analysis. To me, the role seems founded upon racist and colorist notions of light-skinned black women as sexually overactive and more amenable to the wiles of evil white people than their dark-skinned counterparts. I wouldn't even think to highlight these notions if they weren't made explicitly textual in her dialogue and actions - if they weren't centered in her interactions with other characters.

I don't follow some of your arguments you made in your earlier post.

Such as?

I neither called this movie evil nor (consciously and intentionally) racist.

What was this referring to?

Okay thank god. Good mostly won over evil. Mostly

It wasn't partly referring to One Battle beating out Sinners for Best Picture?

Yes, but this was 100% a quick-fired joke. I hope no one else read/is reading my posts, either in this thread or the Awards Season 2025 thread, as a commentary upon a Manichean struggle between evil/goofus Sinners and good/Gallant OBAA. I'll re-reemphasize and say once again that I do not think that Sinners (2025, Ryan Coogler) is an evil movie. I do still think it's dumb and bad, though.

[Mr Sausage]

The Halee Steinfeld character is particularly odd in the movie. On the one hand, she passes, but the community still accepts her as one of their own tho' she's living as a white woman. This is warm hearted and inclusive towards mixed race people. But then at the same time, the narrative uses her as an infecting agent, being the one who brings the vampirism inside the slaughterhouse (technically through no fault of her own, but still). These two things don't fit together. Again, I get the impression of a writer who wasn't thinking through what his plot was actually communicating.

[The Curious Sofa]

I don't see what's so odd about Steinfeld's Mary. In Nella Larsen's 1929 novel (and its 2021 film adaptation by Rebecca Hall), the protagonist Claire is a Black woman passing for white, married to a white racist, who is accepted by the Black community.

Steinfeld becomes the infecting agent because she's the one character who can move between both worlds with ease. That's why she is to one who goes out to socialize with white characters. So, it makes sense that Mary would be the one to bring vampirism inside, but that's a logical plot developent, not a moral one. As the mid-credit sequence reveals,

Spoiler

she has one of the better outcomes in the movie. Once the head vampire is killed, she and Stack, the two surviving vampires, regain their autonomy and live immortal lives on their own terms.

This moralistic and rather didactic argument reminds me of the accusation that horror directors like John Carpenter punish their female characters for being promiscuous. However, Carpenter always insisted that the victimes in Halloween aren't killed for having sex. Laurie survives not because she's a virgin, but because she's more alert to her surroundings than the other characters, who are distracted by dates and boys. In the situation Laurie has a slight advantage, while Mary advantage turns into a disadvantage that tips the scales.

[ford]

The Halee Steinfeld character is particularly odd in the movie. On the one hand, she passes, but the community still accepts her as one of their own tho' she's living as a white woman. This is warm hearted and inclusive towards mixed race people. But then at the same time, the narrative uses her as an infecting agent, being the one who brings the vampirism inside the slaughterhouse (technically through no fault of her own, but still). These two things don't fit together. Again, I get the impression of a writer who wasn't thinking through what his plot was actually communicating.

No, I think he was aware. The racial politics of the film are hard to ignore and frankly extremely reactionary. But then again I think liberals have deluded themselves about the true nature of black nationalist politics in America for some time now: it’s always had much stronger articulation on the Right (Marcus Garvey) than the Left (Huey Newton).

Pretty good albeit very flawed film with one all time set piece. Absurd, right wing racial politics.

[Red Screamer]

The difference from Carpenter, tho, is that Coogler is explicitly working in an allegorical mode here so not to read the story and its developments allegorically would be counterintuitive.

As I tried to argue earlier in the thread, the vampirism is not positioned as the true evil or the worst fate in Coogler’s allegory. It’s instead a better but mixed alternative to segregation, the KKK, and death. Vampirism here is a metaphor for (exploitative) assimilation. In music terms, we could say it’s about selling out to the white mainstream. You live forever and you make money, but mostly you make other people money and at the end of the day you’re soulless and separated from the community you came from.

i.e. if that’s the metaphor, of course a white passing character is the first one taken by the metaphorical assimilation — she was already assimilated on the realist level. I don’t find this allegory particularly incoherent or shocking, though I can see why Never Cursed has a problem politically with the idea of separatism or black capitalism as redemption (how I read the twins / the juke joint before the infection). It doesn’t help that the realist layer of the allegory is full of goofy and outdated stereotypes on multiple levels, with the women getting the short end of the stick. But this is all also more of a problem than it might have been because of the weird place we’re in at the moment with undercooked, cartoony B movies being made as and taken for message movies.

[Never Cursed]

I don't see what's so odd about Steinfeld's Mary. In Nella Larsen's 1929 novel (and its 2021 film adaptation by Rebecca Hall), the protagonist Claire is a Black woman passing for white, married to a white racist, who is accepted by the Black community.

Steinfeld becomes the infecting agent because she's the one character who can move between both worlds with ease. That's why she is to one who goes out to socialize with white characters. So, it makes sense that Mary would be the one to bring vampirism inside, but that's a logical plot developent, not a moral one.

My objection is not to the idea that there might be a black woman passing for white in this film or that she might openly express sexuality. Other fictional works (and I am aware of Passing and others besides it, some good, some bad) touch upon this same subject, as does the autobiographical literature produced by 19th-and-20th-century black Southerners. My objection, rather, is that these traits are just about the only ones expressed by the character, and those do play into stereotypes of light-skinned black women (and black women in general) not borne out in any way by real life: sexually promiscuous, duplicitous, in-league with white collaborators who seek to bring a black community low; in short, as "race traitors." If Steinfeld's character had been more compellingly sketched and assigned more traits than these stereotypical ones, I wouldn't necessarily have an issue with her character. Compare her role to Teyana Taylor's in One Battle After Another. This character could be read as falling into these same stereotypes of black women (though she isn't "mixed-race"), but I don't think that reading works or is fair to that film in question because of how much more fleshed-out Perfidia is and how that film's writer has clearly thought through the implications of depicting a black character who works against her community's interests.

As Red Screamer has said, that Coogler is evidently trying to make a point and tap into a zeitgeist means that one can analyze and criticize his attempts to do so. If I thought this was just a fantastical horror movie with no attempts towards commentary, I wouldn't even try to analyze it on that level (though I separately think that even art that doesn't express political principles can still be read politically, as many critics have done towards film noirs, Westerns, and slashers, among other genres of film).

[The Curious Sofa]

The difference from Carpenter, tho, is that Coogler is explicitly working in an allegorical mode here so not to read the story and its developments allegorically would be counterintuitive.

As I tried to argue earlier in the thread, the vampirism is not positioned as the true evil or the worst fate in Coogler’s allegory. It’s instead a better but mixed alternative to segregation, the KKK, and death. Vampirism here is a metaphor for (exploitative) assimilation. In music terms, we could say it’s about selling out to the white mainstream. You live forever and you make money, but mostly you make other people money and at the end of the day you’re soulless and separated from the community you came from.

i.e. if that’s the metaphor, of course a white passing character is the first one taken by the metaphorical assimilation — she was already assimilated on the realist level. I don’t find this allegory particularly incoherent or shocking, though I can see why Never Cursed has a problem politically with the idea of separatism or black capitalism as redemption (how I read the twins / the juke joint before the infection). It doesn’t help that the realist layer of the allegory is full of goofy and outdated stereotypes on multiple levels, with the women getting the short end of the stick. But this is all also more of a problem than it might have been because of the weird place we’re in at the moment with undercooked, cartoony B movies being made as and taken for message movies.

As one of my film tutors always said, "meaning imposes itself," and most horror is allegorical. The slasher movies of the late '70s and early '80s were debated as passionately in regard to their sexual politics as Sinners is here in terms of race. In fact, the debate was even more heated because I don't see people picketing outside of theaters regarding Sinners the way feminists did Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. Sinners has been interpreted in contradictory ways along the political spectrum. Some posters here see it as right-wing, while Armond White called it social justice kitsch. However, he and the gang here seem to agree that it is racist in some way. I just find it to be an effective musical and vampire movie with several striking set pieces, while its politics are secondary. One criticism with which I agree is that the Oscar for cinematography is undeserved; the film is poorly lit.

[The Curious Sofa]

I don't see what's so odd about Steinfeld's Mary. In Nella Larsen's 1929 novel (and its 2021 film adaptation by Rebecca Hall), the protagonist Claire is a Black woman passing for white, married to a white racist, who is accepted by the Black community.

Steinfeld becomes the infecting agent because she's the one character who can move between both worlds with ease. That's why she is to one who goes out to socialize with white characters. So, it makes sense that Mary would be the one to bring vampirism inside, but that's a logical plot developent, not a moral one.

My objection is not to the idea that there might be a black woman passing for white in this film or that she might openly express sexuality. Other fictional works (and I am aware of Passing and others besides it, some good, some bad) touch upon this same subject, as does the autobiographical literature produced by 19th-and-20th-century black Southerners. My objection, rather, is that these traits are just about the only ones expressed by the character, and those do play into stereotypes of light-skinned black women (and black women in general) not borne out in any way by real life: sexually promiscuous, duplicitous, in-league with white collaborators who seek to bring a black community low; in short, as "race traitors." If Steinfeld's character had been more compellingly sketched and assigned more traits than these stereotypical ones, I wouldn't necessarily have an issue with her character. Compare her role to Teyana Taylor's in One Battle After Another. This character could be read as falling into these same stereotypes of black women (though she isn't "mixed-race"), but I don't think that reading works or is fair to that film in question because of how much more fleshed-out Perfidia is and how that film's writer has clearly thought through the implications of depicting a black character who works against her community's interests.

As Red Screamer has said, that Coogler is evidently trying to make a point and tap into a zeitgeist means that one can analyze and criticize his attempts to do so. If I thought this was just a fantastical horror movie with no attempts towards commentary, I wouldn't even try to analyze it on that level (though I separately think that even art that doesn't express political principles can still be read politically, as many critics have done towards film noirs, Westerns, and slashers, among other genres of film).

The film is an ensemble piece in which the characters have to be economically sketched in as they serve particular functions in the plot. I think you give the characters and their actors less credit than they deserve. Mary has a character arc, and Steinfeld gives a great performance. She moves from an unhappy wife whose decision to pass for white has been made for her, to a feral vampire as part of a hive mind with the KKK and before gaining some sort of autonomy by the end. And Wunmi Mosaku too is a multi faceted character, transcending any "magical negro" stereotypes. Being the one who figures out what is going on, she comes to closest to being the Van Helsing here. I'm not against political interpretations of the film, I just don't see its poltics as clear cut as you do.

[Mr Sausage]

Red Screamer said it above but it's worth emphasizing: because the film is using allegory, you cannot explain away its choices by appealing to the logic of plot. Whatever the movie means, it means it symbolically. The movie's failure to control its allegorizing is one of its chief problems (tho' Red Screamer provides an interesting reading of the allegory that's more coherent than what I got from it).

I don't see what's so odd about Steinfeld's Mary. In Nella Larsen's 1929 novel (and its 2021 film adaptation by Rebecca Hall), the protagonist Claire is a Black woman passing for white, married to a white racist, who is accepted by the Black community.

This is not odd in and of itself. What it is, at least in Sinners, is good natured and inclusive. It's common for mixed race people to experience rejection from both sides, and skin tone can be fraught and problematic within ethnic communities. Sinners pointedly stands against this and promotes cultural and ethnic inclusivity. And that's fine. But then...

Steinfeld becomes the infecting agent because she's the one character who can move between both worlds with ease. That's why she is to one who goes out to socialize with white characters. So, it makes sense that Mary would be the one to bring vampirism inside, but that's a logical plot developent, not a moral one.

Makes good plot logic, sure, but what's its thematic logic given what I just wrote above? It's a movie seemingly pitching a concept of inclusivity that has one of its largest examples, a mixed race girl whose passing does not alienate her from the black community, become an infecting element that destroys her inclusive black community. Besides being kinda offensive, it's incoherent! It reeks of sloppy conceptualizing, of a screenwriter thinking how to pull things off plot-wise without spending time thinking about what the choices mean. Ryan Coogler is perhaps a terrific entertainer, but he's no thinker. He should leave the Jordan Peele shit alone.

[Never Cursed]

Sinners has been interpreted in contradictory ways along the political spectrum. Some posters here see it as right-wing, while Armond White called it social justice kitsch. However, he and the gang here seem to agree that it is racist in some way.

Uh, not to agree with Armond White or anything, but those are not mutually exclusive readings. Indeed, I do think the film is a kitschy imitation of progressive interpretations of American history, just not from the reactionary perspective from which White is writing. If anything, as much as I am equally repulsed by his politics and bored by his contrarian posturing, his review is somewhat interesting, having read it now, because he's not coming to the film from the anodyne liberal perspective in which it was conceived and with which it was largely received by critics and tastemakers. He's not wrong when he calls the movie "mildly obscene fakelore (that) turns the blues into horror-movie trash," even though he's criticizing the movie for very different reasons than I am.

The film is an ensemble piece in which the characters have to be economically sketched in as they serve particular functions in the plot. I think you give the characters and their actors less credit than they deserve. Mary has a character arc, and Steinfeld gives a great performance. She moves from an unhappy wife whose decision to pass for white has been made for her, to a feral vampire as part of a hive mind with the KKK and then gets reclaims her autonomy by the end. And Wunmi Mosaku too is a multi faceted character, transcending any "magical negro" stereotypes. Being the one who figures out what is going on, she comes to closest to being the Van Helsing here. I'm not against political interpretations of the film, I just don't see its poltics as clear cut as you do.

I think we might just have to agree to disagree here, because I don't see the movie as functioning at any level close to the one you are describing. Just because these characters have arcs (boring and uncompelling ones for me, but arcs nonetheless) doesn't mean that the characters don't fall into stereotypes or work as characters. This is true of Mary and also of Annie, (who, as a side note, I think fully falls into "magical black person" stereotypes, indeed, is only one of several expressions of those stereotypes across the film). And again, One Battle After Another seems a good comparison to me, as that film is an ensemble piece in which its black female characters have less screentime than those in Sinners, but much more is done with them in that screentime. Hailee Steinfeld is actually in Sinners for longer than Teyana Taylor is in One Battle After Another (per someone who counts this on Twitter, 21 minutes v. 19 minutes respectively), but Perfidia Beverly Hills is a more complete and tragic figure than Mary. For my tastes, there is nothing in Sinners remotely as affecting as Taylor's abrupt disappearance from PTA's movie, which by design leaves a hole and plunges the film's characters into pain and misery.

[The Curious Sofa]

Red Screamer said it above but it's worth emphasizing: because the film is using allegory, you cannot explain away its choices by appealing to the logic of plot. Whatever the movie means, it means it symbolically. The movie's failure to control its allegorizing is one of its chief problems (tho' Red Screamer provides an interesting reading of the allegory that's more coherent than what I got from it).

I don't see what's so odd about Steinfeld's Mary. In Nella Larsen's 1929 novel (and its 2021 film adaptation by Rebecca Hall), the protagonist Claire is a Black woman passing for white, married to a white racist, who is accepted by the Black community.

This is not odd in and of itself. What it is, at least in Sinners, is good natured and inclusive. It's common for mixed race people to experience rejection from both sides, and skin tone can be fraught and problematic within ethnic communities. Sinners pointedly stands against this and promotes cultural and ethnic inclusivity. And that's fine. But then...

Steinfeld becomes the infecting agent because she's the one character who can move between both worlds with ease. That's why she is to one who goes out to socialize with white characters. So, it makes sense that Mary would be the one to bring vampirism inside, but that's a logical plot developent, not a moral one.

Makes good plot logic, sure, but what's its thematic logic given what I just wrote above? It's a movie seemingly pitching a concept of inclusivity that has one of its largest examples, a mixed race girl whose passing does not alienate her from the black community, become an infecting element that destroys her inclusive black community. Besides being kinda offensive, it's incoherent! It reeks of sloppy conceptualizing, of a screenwriter thinking how to pull things off plot-wise without spending time thinking about what the choices mean. Ryan Coogler is perhaps a terrific entertainer, but he's no thinker. He should leave the Jordan Peele shit alone.

I wouldn't call Coogler a great thinker, either. It's just that this doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother you and some of the other posters here. It doesn't detract from what I enjoy about the film, which has little to do with its politics. You can get hung up on the allegorical qualities of Mary within the wider cultural context, but I choose not to because I ultimately don't see the character defined by that alone. Similarly, I don't see Angie Dickinson getting slashed to ribbons in an elevator as justified for cheating on her boring husband. She is defined by more, thanks to Dickinson's layered performance. But many people at the time saw it that way.

[The Curious Sofa]

Sinners has been interpreted in contradictory ways along the political spectrum. Some posters here see it as right-wing, while Armond White called it social justice kitsch. However, he and the gang here seem to agree that it is racist in some way.

Uh, not to agree with Armond White or anything, but those are not mutually exclusive readings. Indeed, I do think the film is a kitschy imitation of progressive interpretations of American history, just not from the reactionary perspective from which White is writing. If anything, as much as I am equally repulsed by his politics and bored by his contrarian posturing, his review is somewhat interesting, having read it now, because he's not coming to the film from the anodyne liberal perspective in which it was conceived and with which it was largely received by critics and tastemakers. He's not wrong when he calls the movie "mildly obscene fakelore (that) turns the blues into horror-movie trash," even though he's criticizing the movie for very different reasons than I am.

The film is an ensemble piece in which the characters have to be economically sketched in as they serve particular functions in the plot. I think you give the characters and their actors less credit than they deserve. Mary has a character arc, and Steinfeld gives a great performance. She moves from an unhappy wife whose decision to pass for white has been made for her, to a feral vampire as part of a hive mind with the KKK and then gets reclaims her autonomy by the end. And Wunmi Mosaku too is a multi faceted character, transcending any "magical negro" stereotypes. Being the one who figures out what is going on, she comes to closest to being the Van Helsing here. I'm not against political interpretations of the film, I just don't see its poltics as clear cut as you do.

I think we might just have to agree to disagree here, because I don't see the movie as functioning at any level close to the one you are describing. Just because these characters have arcs (boring and uncompelling ones for me, but arcs nonetheless) doesn't mean that the characters don't fall into stereotypes or work as characters. This is true of Mary and also of Annie, (who, as a side note, I think fully falls into "magical black person" stereotypes, indeed, is only one of several expressions of those stereotypes across the film). And again, One Battle After Another seems a good comparison to me, as that film is an ensemble piece in which its black female characters have less screentime than those in Sinners, but much more is done with them in that screentime. Hailee Steinfeld is actually in Sinners for longer than Teyana Taylor is in One Battle After Another (per someone who counts this on Twitter, 21 minutes v. 19 minutes respectively), but Perfidia Beverly Hills is a more complete and tragic figure than Mary. For my tastes, there is nothing in Sinners remotely as affecting as Taylor's abrupt disappearance from PTA's movie, which by design leaves a hole and plunges the film's characters into pain and misery.

Yes, in the end our disagreemend is down to personal taste and individual politics.
We can agree on that Teyana Taylor was great in One Battle After Another and I actually lost interest in the film once she was out. For me shifting the time period of Vineland into the 21st century never really worked and I kept wondering what these very 60s characters are doing in the present. But that's another discussion.

[Mr Sausage]

I wouldn't call Coogler a great thinker, either. It's just that this doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother you and some of the other posters here. It doesn't detract from what I enjoy about the film, which has little to do with its politics. You can get hung up on the allegorical qualities of Mary within the wider cultural context, but I choose not to because I ultimately don't see the character defined by that alone. Similarly, I don't see Angie Dickinson getting slashed to ribbons in an elevator as justified for cheating on her boring husband. She is defined by more, thanks to Dickinson's layered performance. But many people at the time saw it that way.

That's fair. There are plenty of thematically incoherent or even troubling movies I like because they provide ample surface-level pleasures. The incoherence is not my major roadblock with Sinners--it's how bland and earnest it is. I liked the performances (am I the only one who thought the two brothers were easy to tell apart based on performance? There's the dour practical one, and then the fiesty, jocular one), including Halee Steinfeld, who's always good. I liked everyone's chemistry. But the cheery garrulousness and lack of economy started to wear on me, the film became so self-serious about its messaging and forced in its attempts at bravura, and then we have an action climax where Coogler shows again he's a weak hand at action. It added up to a movie that just sat there for me.

I find it hard to get worked up about the movie positively or negatively. So while I don't share your enthusiasm, I also can't share Never Cursed's vitriol. The accusations of racism are as overstated as the claims (not made by you) that the movie has something coherent to say about race in America. There are some troubling elements in Sinners, absolutely, but I think they're better accounted for as thematic incoherence. They can't build to a racist message because the film can't build to any message--its parts don't hang together. So while you've accused me of being "hung up" on the failed allegorizing, it's actually that failed allegorizing that stops me from joining the board's most passionate nay sayers. In fact I'm closer to your feeling on the movie's use of types than I am its critics!

So it's really not me you have the biggest disagreement with here.

[The Curious Sofa]

Basically, I thought the glowy eyed vampires were really cool.

[ford]

Basically, I thought the glowy eyed vampires were really cool.

Best argument for the film. Trying for more than that simply doesn't work.

[domino harvey]

Caught up to this and found it thoroughly mediocre. It doesn’t even have the temerity to be bad, it’s just there. I thought the nominated/winning performances were bad (Jordan) or inconsistent (Lindo, who sometimes seems like he walked out of Louie Bluie and sometimes like he just showed up on set and started riffing) or nothing at all (Mosaku). I’ve seen lot of fans describe this as a film about music, but, uh, the score here is terrible? It sounds like mid 90s made for cable thriller fodder. I didn’t think any of the new songs here were memorable, though the much lauded presentation of “I Lied” at least has an idea. Unfortunately, Joseph Kahn already did this kind of bold technical trick in a much more interesting film and in a much better way. Once again, after he did the same thing in Black Panther, I’m struck at how Coogler comes right up to a potentially compelling idea (here music being so powerful and important to black culture that it conjures up both past and future when performed is so much more intriguing than, well, everything surrounding it in this film) and then does nothing with it beyond it being introduced. Coogler has no curiosity about the components he utilizes in his films (those I’ve seen, at any rate), and it means merely introducing conflict or commentary or elegy or whatever has to carry more weight than evidence bears out.

Also, I’m surprised how little commentary I’ve seen for this film’s extremely limited opinion of women. How many times do we hear about “cooze,” like half a dozen at least? Pleasuring a woman in this film is presented as a reflection on the men doing it, not the women receiving the pleasure. I’m not even sure why one cheating character is even presented as married, as this plot point doesn’t come into play. Are there any black women in the world of this film that don’t want to get fucked by the male characters?

[therewillbeblus]

Also, I’m surprised how little commentary I’ve seen for this film’s extremely limited opinion of women. How many times do we hear about “cooze,” like half a dozen at least? Pleasuring a woman in this film is presented as a reflection on the men doing it, not the women receiving the pleasure. I’m not even sure why one cheating character is even presented as married, as this plot point doesn’t come into play. Are there any black women in the world of this film that don’t want to get fucked by the male characters?

Good point. I didn't even read into that aspect too much, as I was too busy focused on how lackadaisically they're disposed of

[Never Cursed]

Also, I’m surprised how little commentary I’ve seen for this film’s extremely limited opinion of women. How many times do we hear about “cooze,” like half a dozen at least? Pleasuring a woman in this film is presented as a reflection on the men doing it, not the women receiving the pleasure. I’m not even sure why one cheating character is even presented as married, as this plot point doesn’t come into play. Are there any black women in the world of this film that don’t want to get fucked by the male characters?

Absolutely agreed, I tried to touch on this earlier. Jayme Lawson's character is a prop that exists for the above purpose, and most of the details of Hailee Steinfeld's character mix the color of her skin and her sexual forwardness in a creepy way

[hearthesilence]

FWIW, Greil Marcus actually walked out when he tried to watch it:

Q: “Thoughts on Sinners? I think one would have to go back to the days of Cecil B. DeMille to find an American movie so forthrightly against the dangers of miscegenation.”

A: I’m not really in a position to answer because I walked out right at the point where a woman said they had to get the garlic and I thought, “I’ve seen this movie too many times already.” Already, I had admired the thought and research and perspicacity of using “Pick Poor Robin Clean” both as a musical number on its own terms and as a metaphor for the cosmology of the movie itself, and at the same time I felt myself unmoved by the execution of the idea, as if Ryan Coogler didn’t trust the song to speak for itself, to make its own point.

I felt, as far as I got, that the film didn’t trust its own premises enough to play with them, to have full and complex oppositional characters, to generate actual suspense, which has to do with moral questions, not just what happens. Thus the racial essentialism you’re talking about fills the gap. I have the feeling, again based on my incomplete knowledge of what I’m presuming to talk about, that this movie is not going to wear well—and may be superseded by a different director working off different source material.

It’s not as if the theme and the idea of vampire movies is sterile. There is Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 Near Dark, which can be both funny and appalling, often at the same time, and by the end had me more interested in and rooting for the clan of vampires than the good people who survive them (and the vampire death scenes are fascinatingly original). There is Night of the Living Dead [admittedly about zombies but applicable here]—which has its own disturbing and shocking racial politics. There is, perhaps in best contrast to Sinners, Elias Merhige’s 2000 Shadow of the Vampire, about the making of the original Nosferatu, and the problem that Max Schreck, who played the vampire, actually is one.

[wattsup32]

I’m struck at how Coogler comes right up to a potentially compelling idea . . . and then does nothing with it beyond it being introduced. Coogler has no curiosity about the components he utilizes in his films (those I’ve seen, at any rate), and it means merely introducing conflict or commentary or elegy or whatever has to carry more weight than evidence bears out.

I see Coogler exactly the same way save for, maybe, Fruitvale Station. I do like Black Panther as a riff on a Bond film, but not as anything beyond that.

In Sinners, a prime example of Coogler doing nothing beyond introducing an idea is the Indians in the film. They are there only to play to the audience I suspect Coogler believes he draws. And, that is the most generous reading I can imagine. A more likely case is that, as Dom notes, Coogler believes the introduction is, in itself, a profound statement about . . . something? Is it the connection between America's Indigenous Peoples and its African Peoples? Indians in general? America's, and the Whites standing as the proxy for it in this film, villainy? To Coogler, it doesn't matter because why Indians are in the film. It only matters that they are.

I think it was Wilder who said a good director tells you 2+2=4. A great director gives the audience 2+2 and let's them figure out that it equals 4. Whether you agree or disagree, surely the mark of bad director is telling the audience 2+2=2+2.