Sinners

This is not the kind of movie I ordinarily like. I hadn’t even heard of it until I started hearing whispers on bluesky. Even so, it looked like the kind of scary that would keep me up at night. Then, 4 days before my bioinformatics final, a friend in the class asked if I wanted to drive to Indianapolis to see the movie in IMAX 70mm. For context, Indianapolis is 4 hours from where I live in Ann Arbor. Now I am not one to pass up an adventure, even when it will leave me staring at the ceiling at 2 in the morning, so I decided to go, and HOLY SHIT was it worth it!

There are so many things to praise about this movie: the cinematography, the score, the acting, the directing. It is hard to think of a place to start so I’ll just go with the first thing that comes to mind: the score. Ludwig Göransson did the score for this movie. He recently scored Oppenheimer so it is no surprise that he knocks it out of the park with this one as well. He starts the movie with a full-bodied and soulful blues sound that swiftly transitions to a gothic, operatic omen that reminds you what kind of movie you’re actually watching. As the the third act progresses, these sounds clash and meld in such a seamless yet distinct way that you can almost feel the story being told through music while never detracting from the what’s being shown on screen. This movie, at it’s core, is about music, and it so beautifully captures the spiritual experience of listening to, creating, and dancing to music in a way that I have not seen before.

Now to talk about the directing. Ryan Coogler made the choice to shoot this movie on both Ultra Panavision 70 and IMAX, which allows him to use changes in aspect ratio to pull you further and further to the edge of your seat. Coogler clearly has a love of the craft that is made clear in the the thoughtful, deliberate, and creative decisions he makes through out this film. One of the things that I haven’t really seen called out yet is the sound design. There are moments of exposition throughout the first act that are punctuated with beautiful and story rich sound design that makes it almost feel like a stage play. Coogler’s direction and love of film really shine throughout this film and I am so glad I drove 4 hours to seen it as he intended.

I haven’t even gotten to the amazing performances by Micheal B. Jordan, Miles Caton, and Wunmi Mosaku but I want to keep this review as vague as possible. I think this is the kind of movie best seen blind. I will say, although I called out specific performances, there wasn’t a weak link in the bunch. With that, I’m gonna listen to some good blues and look forward to seeing this movie again very soon.