Oh, Sinners…!

 

The Oscar for best movie should have gone to Sinners. 

I know the movie still won three Oscars, one of them for Michael B. Jordan for best male actor, though. ButI think it should have won Best Movie because it is a very good film. On the surface it's a vampire movie.  Oh, yes. there are vampires in the movie. But to say that Sinners is a vampire movie is like saying that French cuisine is about butter. Now, some spoilers.

This is one of those movies that benefits from the big screen. But if you did not see it in cinemas or it is not showing in any of your usual hangouts, just bite the bullet and watch it again streaming. The second viewing will let you appreciate the saga of the the twins after WWII leaving the Midwest to go to the swampy South to try and get a fresh start. It may be clearer now how whiteness impeded BIPOC from actually owning anything or progressing. Pay attention to the way money moves in the movie, who has it and who keeps it. That alone can keep you entertained.

Also, the title Sinners may be applied to the relationships the twins have with married women but it also explores family, community and cultural expressions (that music joint is much, much more than an ex-Klan kill house and a place of refuge from the outside world). Simmers addresses the Jim Crow South, colonialism, immigration (the vampire is Irish and he wants much, much more than blood, babes) and resilience amidst crushing oppression. There's anachronisms, myth, metaphor and deep meaning in this movie. That's why I think it should have won the little bald guy statue. 

So, yeah. Not just a vampire movie.

XOXO

P.S. That ballet dancer in the Oscars number? That's THE Misty Copeland. Three months after hip replacement. How about that, Shallowmet?

P.P.S. The movie (and that Oscar bit) also gives you Buddy Guy, who plays Sammie Moore later in life. I’m sure you did not miss him during the epilogue of the movie when Stack and Mary find Sammie and offer him immortality.