Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history. Here, when a Black musician plays the blues at a juke joint, he isn’t just performing for jubilant men and women. He is also singing to the history that flows through them from generations of ancestors to others not yet born. Like Coogler, the musician is a kind of time traveler, blasting off into horizonless possibilities.
Few American filmmakers in recent memory have risen with the dizzying speed of Coogler, who a decade ago vaulted to attention with “Creed,” his franchise rethink that took the “Rocky” series off life support. With his ensuing “Black Panther” superhero movies, Coogler rose higher still, proving that he could retain both a distinct aesthetic sensibility and a sense of human proportion (and stakes) even in the Marvel movie factory. His vision of Wakanda, the otherworldly country that the Black Panther calls home, works in part because of its far-out visions and technological wonders. Yet if it’s persuasive it’s because in Coogler’s Wakanda,
Few American filmmakers in recent memory have risen with the dizzying speed of Coogler, who a decade ago vaulted to attention with “Creed,” his franchise rethink that took the “Rocky” series off life support. With his ensuing “Black Panther” superhero movies, Coogler rose higher still, proving that he could retain both a distinct aesthetic sensibility and a sense of human proportion (and stakes) even in the Marvel movie factory. His vision of Wakanda, the otherworldly country that the Black Panther calls home, works in part because of its far-out visions and technological wonders. Yet if it’s persuasive it’s because in Coogler’s Wakanda,
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00:00Ryan Coogler's Sinners is a big-screen exultation, a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies.
00:09Set in Jim Crow, Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires, and a lot of ideas about love and history.
00:21Here, when a black musician plays the blues at a juke joint, he isn't just performing for jubilant men and women.
00:28He is also singing to the history that flows through them from generations of ancestors to others not yet born.
00:35Like Coogler, the musician is a kind of time traveler, blasting off into horizonless possibilities.
00:42Few American filmmakers in recent memory have risen with the dizzying speed of Coogler, who a decade ago vaulted to attention with Creed, his franchise rethink that took the Rocky series off life support.
00:54With his ensuing Black Panther superhero movies, Coogler rose higher still, proving that he could retain both a distinct aesthetic sensibility and a sense of human proportion and stakes, even in the Marvel movie factory.
01:08His vision of Wakanda, the otherworldly country that the Black Panther calls home, works in part because of its far-out visions and technological wonders.
01:16Yet, if it's persuasive, it's because in Coogler's Wakanda,