Critical Darlings: Sinners And The Academy’s Growing Genre Acceptance with Sam Sanders

Welcome to Critical Darlings, a conversation about the awards season conversation, one contender at a time. Please welcome to the stage your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore. well thank you marie as ever for that spirited introduction we are joined uh as ever by producer ben hello ben hello and we have a very special guest today from the sam sanders show on case by kcrw with for i don't know we have the eponymous sam sanders hello it's so good to be here we're thrilled to have i'm a fan honored to be in the number catching you coming through town was so serendipitous. It all just happened to work out. And putting, well, at least me to shame wardrobe-wise. No, definitely. I should have stepped it up today. You stepped it up and I was like, oh. This was a suit that I wore yesterday at the conference and the one that I wore earlier today for another interview. You know how French people, they're like, you only need three outfits in your wardrobe. Oh, yeah. I'm like, I believe in that. I'll wear this for everything professional for the next three years. Exactly. And there'll be holes in it and I'll start over again. That sounds like a great plan. For listeners, Sam is wearing a beautiful brown blazer and a black turtleneck. yeah i forget we're not just a solely video um so we are gathered here today to talk about sinners but before we do that um i thought we would catch up with you sam in terms of like how you're feeling about this crop this year's crop of movie like oscar-nominated movies movies in general um how have you found this season is it a good one for you i have been overall kind of happy that there hasn't felt as if there's been a big Oscar scandal that sucked out all of the air from Oscar season. I remember being annoyed by week two of Amelia Perez's gate. Like, we get it. Back tweets. Can we talk about something else? And I thought that the Marty Supreme mini controversy might get bigger. It didn't. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. It feels like a lot of the time in this season has been spent talking about the actual movies. And I appreciate that. Yeah. We kept waiting for there to be a more solid Oscar villain. Right. Because it does feel like that's almost a requirement every year. Especially a year like this where we've had a really long Oscar season. There's a lot of time for the tides to turn and turn again. But it's been nice to be like there is not one movie where you're like I like this movie but it is the villain this year. And like everyone hates it. And like I wanted to make Hamnet my Oscar season villain. but in every interview i am so impressed by chloe jiao yeah yeah she has a wonderful humanist approach to her work that i love even if i don't love that film yeah one thing i have enjoyed is that i keep seeing on focuses like uh instagram feed like kind of fun chloe jiao like let's go yeah i'm like i appreciate that there comes a point in like the the trudge of events where you're like, even this movie, which is about child death and grief. Yeah. We have to do like a fun one. It's all good. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, with one battle after another, once that dropped on HBO Max, I feel like there was some pushback against that movie. But like you said, it was engaging with the text of the movie. It wasn't about something that an actor did or whatever. So if people don't like every nominated movie, that's fine. But if they're watching it, they're discoursing about it. That's vastly preferable to like someone made a gaffe and now it's the whole story. Exactly. Yeah. What are your sort of favorites of this kind of this crop? It's hard to say because I think I respect the two front runners in very distinct ways. I love how one battle as a movie leaves me asking a lot more questions and sinners as a movie leaves me asking none. It is so beautifully fulfilling as a film. and so I love them both in different ways for that reason. I think I'm most just thinking, if you're the Oscars, strategically, what are the best wins for your survival and for the industry's survival? We know that they're sweating. They're going to go to YouTube soon. They get it. The future is here. They aren't there yet. They got to get there. In terms of picking a best picture winner, what best picture pick best sets up the Academy and the film industry for just continued butts in seats at theaters i personally think that by the numbers the choice that makes the most sense for the longevity of this industry is sinners but i know that this choice is not a business decision it's an artistic decision and so even though definitely there are powers that be behind the scenes who are like can we make it more of a business decision like right you know like i feel like there is a consciousness about that which is why you know they expanded to the 10 best picture nominees after the the it was about the dark knight not getting nominated for best picture right and then that got inception in a couple years later or whatever so there is that motivation and i agree with you that sinners like for a lot of reasons would be that pick yeah but ultimately i think individual voters are not thinking that way i know whenever i read one of the um anonymous oscar ballots and you're like they should stop doing those no but i love this i'm like people keep sitting for them all so chaotic every time you're like people know i know they're oftentimes you're just like i hate this person yes but i can you explain what those are for sure so like uh different usually the trades it's it's the trades will like get uh you know because you're not supposed to go out and be like here's what i'm voting for i'm the producer blah blah so like they'll do it anonymously and they'll be like here's how i'm going to vote and here's my explanation for why and sometimes it's like i thought this was an incredibly important moving film and sometimes or the shrimp was cold yeah exactly or like i got to take a picture you know was that with daven jr after this and i really like that so i'm gonna vote for him you know like it's really just like a wild collection of uh reasoning that you just realize how deeply personal and subjective and like uh and of the moment like you're catching someone um but yeah i don't know i love that i mean we're recording this now i think uh voting just started yesterday our final voting so we are just at the start of this final week of voting uh it is always a good reminder when you read those even if they're so infuriating to be like those are the people that's it it's not like it is not a collective as much as we talk about them like they're this kind of collective mind meld you're like no it's a bunch of people with weird days they're well and also it's like they are a lot of them are just like lifelong angelino industry folks and i know those people they're a little weird yeah they're a little weird they live in their own worlds and they don't think like the rest of us right and there's different kinds of weird depending on what part of town they live in, what branch of the academy they're in. But they're all weird. And bless them, love them, keep making what you make, but they're weird. Sam, we're a little insulated from LA sort of Hollywood stuff here. Do you interact with film people a lot? Many years ago when I was a news producer still, I got to cover the Oscars, I want to say two or three times, and I would always just sneak on the red carpet and look around. Now most of my coverage, a lot of the nominees will come to me to be interviewed so we actually this season got a bunch of folks from sinners we got that costume designer ruth e carter who's a legend we got raphael sadiq who wrote the song that sets up the big musical montage in sinners uh so i've been in conversation a lot with folks around the art of that film but in general there was a phase of my career where i tried to go to the fyc events now i like avoid them i avoid them because i i want to watch the movie in a way that will allow me to watch it as like a citizen and then talk about it like with real people so i would much rather see the nominees in a theater and then like talk to a friend about them when i go to these fycs i'm just like what is up what is down who's who's who's like zooming me right now who's playing me fully yeah i don't even vote and i'm like who's playing and i find that sometimes those fyc you know sort of fancy screenings where they like feed you and there's drinks afterward whatever sometimes it maybe it does sway me toward that movie but just as often i'm like this is disgusting but off by it whereas so if you see it more in a vacuum or your own context you can see it yeah more purely i guess yeah i was at one years ago i forget what amy adams vehicle it was but she had to be i mean take your picture right she's had a lot one of them and i remember her just like standing there at the afterwards like the handshaking time she just looks so sad not sad bored yeah and i went over and like shook her hand and she's like hi and i was just i felt her emoting i don't want to have to be here and i feel like all of them feel that way especially as these seasons get longer and longer like who enjoys the oscar campaign well i think that's the thing is like there becomes this point where what uh carries someone through is your stamina yeah acting glad to glad hand with people yeah months in and the and the and the and the and the performance of gratitude i remember when a lot of the actors who were in everything everywhere all at once were on the circuit they almost by the end of it could cry on cue yeah oh yeah because they have they have all the stories yes and i'm so grateful oh exactly oh my god and you have to be careful about that i mean look it didn't harm everything everywhere they won everything yeah but like i remember maybe it sticks out for me for whatever reason but when kate winslet was going through her like awards year with she had two movies she had revolutionary road and the reader she kind of kept flipping between those two and ultimately won for the reader that by the time she won the oscar people were like oh are you surprised come on like like and it's a different thing you know winning an oscar versus winning a sag or whatever but you have to kind of calibrate that yes surprise and enthusiasm to kind of build to build yeah and i don't think she was doing that yeah well and and i want to say i might have discussed it on on this show or one of the shows that i listen to in this awards industrial complex they were like oh yeah this season chalamet has pulled like a really interesting uh sleight of hand yeah because you know for the earlier part of his press store he was performing online and troll if not uh white kid with the black scent hanging at the cool kids table and then all of a sudden he turned it around and was like the grateful young earnest artist shout out to the code switch yeah but i noticed yeah i was like okay it's like a concert he's doing costume changes yeah right or just you know when you're doing uh multiple characters in one man show and then you're like that's shallow yeah exactly yeah yeah and in so doing i think has not tired people out as much you know i keep i keep watching yeah it's interesting he also like he has maintained a bit of aloofness which i think is very canny you know even when he is doing these outrageous stunts there's a bit of a move that i think he understands like to be a movie star now it is helpful to still retain whatever the very contemporary version of like having a little bit of aloofness and some mystery around yeah yeah mystery yeah and i would hope in terms of like the long campaign trail that because sinners came out you know i mean like almost a year ago it was like nine months ago um that they had little downtime maybe and then could kind of reunite you know in the fall and be like oh how was your summer you know well it went pretty well i guess yeah um so yeah i mean i i think that that may be a credit to like a couple movies like everything everywhere that come out a bit earlier in the season then you kind of get a reprieve and then have that new energy yeah yeah but like we used to assume that that was impossible yeah like you can't do that you have to do fall you have to start at one of the ideally one of the fall festivals or just have a premiere then and then you just follow the plan you build from there the idea of being like you came out in the spring yeah actually now has been not that yeah it's it's not unusual uh i i feels like we're seeing a new i don't know a new rhythms for how uh you can do that award campaign we've kind of broken the old like plan of like how awards and sinners has broken so many of the old plan yeah so many parts of the old plan like it is a horror film but it's a Serious best picture contender that rarely happens. Although I think one could argue the extent to which Sinners is a horror film. We'll talk more about it later. But watching it back, I said, this might just be an action movie with vampires, which fine. But is it horror? That said, I feel like in spite of the length of the Sinners award season, all of the big moments in the award season for that movie have come externally, not internally. I remember the first moment in which everyone said we need to have an Oscar shot about this movie was in the backlash to the skeptical coverage of the film's first week box office. And then now I've seen another renewed kind of conversation about the way this film, this type of film, a black film made by black people, how it moves in this world after the BAFTA Tourette's incident. And so so much of the ways in which the community is considering sinners, it's like these external things that are happening, which is I kind of like it. Everything about sinners in this award season is making Hollywood as an enterprise ask some hard questions of itself. Namely, are we the vampires? Sure. I'm here for it. Yeah. Can we rewind a little bit to remind everybody what happened when sinners came out? Yeah, so basically, at that time, there was this speculation that the two heads of Warner Brothers, you know, who are working under David Zaslav, were like rumored to about to be fired. Wait, if Sinners gets best picture, does Zaslav get a win too? No, I don't think he has a producer credit on it. Okay, so he's not going to be on a fun stage? They can put the trophy in their lobby or whatever. Okay, okay. It doesn't go on his desk. But basically, like, he was unhappy, you know, they were spending too much on movies, whatever. and then people looked at the slate and they said like i don't know this like vampire movie from the black panther guys that could make much money these days no one's going to theaters and then one after the ones after the other starting with i guess the minecraft movie warner brothers just started having hits after hit but it was a little bit later that the press caught up to that so when the movie was coming out there was all of this doubt about whether or not this movie would do well you know for all these various reasons and when the movie was a massive hit people were like wait why were you counting this out well and there were there were headlines after that first amazing box office yeah and i think it was like 40 something million dollars it made uh and did well internationally too which folks say a black film can't do right right a lot of the headlines ended in question marks is this really enough is this big enough i think i was most offended by an episode of The Town, a show which I love, where Franklin Leonard of The Blacklist had to basically school Matt Bellamy and say, everything about the way you're talking about this movie reveals some problems on your end, not the movie's end. And I think that the reaction to that and the ways in which the trades had to change their tune, I felt like that was when the Oscars race for sinners began in earnest. David! What? This episode... Don't act so surprised because it's a familiar friend. Oh, okay. This episode's brought to you by MUBI. Yawn! Just kidding! Comfortable! Secure! We love them! They are a global film company of champions great cinema, iconic directors, emerging auteurs, always something new to discover with MUBI. Each and every film hand-selected. So you can explore the best of cinema. Nothing more to say, I guess. Wrong! There's a new film coming to theaters. Yep, movie theaters. February 13th, the first Nigerian film ever in official competition again. That's pretty wild. This is a film by Akinola Davis called My Father's Shadow. 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La Grazia, the new Paolo Sorrentino movie, which I missed in theaters. Good moment to catch up with it. The great Shall We Dance. Oh, the classic? The original. Oh, my goodness. That's fun. Like a restoration? Yeah. And look, they got a collection called Heartthrob Nicolas Cage. It's young, dreamy Cage. Wow. Still dreaming to me? Hey. You're very open-hearted. Anyway, to stream the best of cinema, you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com slash blank check. That's M-U-B-I dot com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. And then go see My Father's Shadow in theaters. Please, thank you for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Very kind. Marty Supreme may-ish make his money back, but as soon as that movie did okay over the holiday season, some of the trades called Timothee Chalamet the king of Christmas. Yeah. You remember that? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he did kill Santa Claus. So he is technically the king of Christmas. That's a weird portion of his Wikipedia. I cut you up. I'm sorry. Oh, I was going to say this. We should also touch on like the unusual and like kind of like not at first of its kind, but like very, very rare deal that Ryan Coogler made. Right. Yeah. He gets the rights to it. Yeah. Like negotiating for the rights, like when there was like a bidding war for the rights. Right. It was a final cut. He won a final cut. And then, yes, the ownership reverts to him in 25 years, which is like just not something that you see a lot of filmmakers being able. But also, when I was talking about that. Yeah. With friends of mine from Texas, where I'm from. Yeah. I was like, this is a new thing. Yeah. My friends are like, well, shouldn't it always be that way? Right. Exactly. Shouldn't it always be that way? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, it's shout out to Ryan Coogler to getting the industry to a place that one would have assumed it could have been at decades earlier. Right. I mean, you have to become one of this, like, very small group of, like, very powerful filmmakers to apparently pull off what feels like a deal that should be available to filmmakers all over the place. You know, this is your, especially when you're like, this is your intellectual property, right? A new idea that he wrote with his wife. Like, come on. Yeah. And, you know, the fact that, like, whoever was, you know, giving him that deal was, like, looking at it, like, so, well, you've only directed Black Panther, it's a successful sequel, directed or produced three really box office hit boxing movies. Yeah. Like, it's like, that should have been an easy, yeah. Yeah, totally. He doesn't. All hits, no skills. Yeah. But I do think that part of that kind of, like, the trade that kind of, like, was, like, rooted a bit in being, like, oh, and you want this deal as well. How dare you? You know? Yeah. There was a bit of, like, this is not how things work. Yes. This is not how we do business. And it is very, whether you mean it or not, when you're making that kind of statement of this is not how it works, you have to understand that the way that those opinions are perceived is informed by the race of everybody involved. Sure. It is, you know, and I think a lot of folks at the end of this Oscars campaign season compared to at the start of it, they've had a little bias training 101 dealing with this movie and how we talk about it. And you know what? Good for them. Learn some lessons. Learn something from this. Well, and there was also when when it was when the kind of gaze on the movie was like, OK, we we we admit it. It is a huge hit. Well, OK, is it an awards movie? Part of the reason some people doubted that it might be was that, well, Warner Brothers has this big Paul Thomas Anderson movie coming in a few months. And that's not as big as Sinners. Well, exactly. But I do think that and I don't want to give credit where it's undue, but like someone on that side of things did manage to successfully run both of those campaigns. And they don't seem to be fighting. No, like everyone's their compliment. It's a rising tide lifts all boats. And that behind them, the studio is in this crazy disarray in terms of they're probably guaranteed a best picture. And this is one of them. And it might be their last ever. We don't know. As we're recording this, Paramount has just seemingly won and beat out Netflix in terms of acquiring this like kind of like battle to acquire Warner Brothers. at least they have made what has been declared the better offer and Netflix has declined to counter. AKA the one that Trump doesn't want to kill. Right. And, you know, this whole thing has felt like a real... Susan Rice is involved. Yeah. There's a lot going on. I mean, you have like, yeah, like Trump, like putting his thumb on the scales and you also have Netflix being like, sure, we'll keep putting movies out in theaters. Like, we won't put it on paper, but like we definitely will. Did you say theater or theaters? Right, exactly. Like watching this whole thing you just feel like whatever happens here it is going the consolidation be bad news Yeah And will this new company post be more or less likely to green light a film like Sinners So, as you said, Oscar voting has started. Do events like this affect voting or have they? Do we have any way of knowing that? My hunch would be if there is an effect on Sinners in specific, I think it would only be positive. because I think like you're saying it's a great economic story for the academy for the industry yeah people genuinely love that movie it got the most nominations like I and I think if they think it's facing unfair headwinds because of corporate stuff happening I mean most of the academy and there are a lot of producers in it but it's a lot of artists you know not the producers aren't artists but like you know you know they are creative producers are anyway but like I think that there's enough sort of narrative in there about yes the film itself and what the film itself is saying but also what it's kind of the economy around that film is saying that people would want to champion it even even more because it yeah it's the future of movies like it seems to be in jeopardy yeah yeah i also i mean it feels like warner brothers is going to walk away with best picture however it goes right uh and i feel like minecraft but minecraft everyone right as the first write-in winner uh but like i i feel like there are however people you know and they make this like connection in their head. They're both stories that feel like they're going against the grain of like this inevitable push towards like, you know, even more and more corporatized IP driven media, like to be like, Oh, these are like two a tourist films. They are movies that are made with like these intensely personal visions that audiences have responded to. And yeah, that's what you think would solve all of Hollywood's problems, right? Like this is what we're asking for. Instead, everything's crumbling in the background, just walking away from the explosion. But at least for now, we have this big last hurrah of celebrating these movies. Those are the structures that make them. Our executive producer Griffin had a great line about it where he was like, it feels like they're planning both a birthday party and a funeral for the same night. Because it's like, this could be the end of this thing or the beginning of a new or ever renewed era of big, robust studio films with something to say that make money winning awards. I'm excited to see Barry Weiss as Wonder Woman. What? Wait, is this? No, no. If Paramount were to buy Warner Brothers, they'll do some synergy and Nellie Bowles will play somebody. Oh, God. But yeah, I think regardless of how Sinners performs in a couple Sundays from now, it is one of the huge success stories of the year i think it will perform well i i were saying there's no way it can't i mean it's also like yeah that's it it's got a record breaking well to ask tell scorsese that because he's walked in with 11 nominations i was i i am on the record as saying like like right before the nominations i was feeling like this like entirely vibes based like uh-oh i'm worried about sinners and then it went on to do so my vibes radar is clearly off but like uh yes you you never know like i feel like again you're dealing with this mysterious yeah although I would put money on Ludwig. Oh, Ludwig. Ludwig. Ludwig. Ludwig. Ludwig. Ludwig. He's getting that Oscar. How do you not give it to that man? I feel like. He's also very handsome. Yeah. Oh. That's important. That is what is important. I feel like I can see a world also where best picture and best director is split. Yeah. You know. And, you know, Ryan Coogler has had to, of course, then answer this question so many times from, like, various. He's got a pretty face. I'm not sure. Not entirely sold. Honestly, it depends. I just remember seeing what he won for something. Yes. And I saw it on the stage and I was like, oh, hello. He's got great hair. Yeah. He wrote This Is America, the Chachi Gambino song. Did he? Yeah, he did. He's multifaceted. But yes, you're right, Allison. There could be a split. I think that Paul Thomas Anderson is going to win Best Director. I think that Cooler probably will win Screenplay. Yeah. And then it's a matter of which one takes Best Picture. But it will walk away with awards for sure. Oh, yeah. So you mentioned that this has been a long campaign. Yes. But I guess this is in two phases, right? Before nominations are announced, you've got people kind of campaigning in a like, please notice us sort of way. And then after the nominations come out, you sort of campaign formally. But are there specific rules or ways that you play that that are different? I mean, phase two, which they call post nominations, you know, in the campaigning biz that you'll see a lot of movies then sort of start to take on a different message. Like the secret agent has like kind of a new tagline. It's in its campaigning. So does sentimental value. I don't have it on the tip of my tongue, but it's something. This movie is kind of confusing. Bless it. It's actually a poster with just like a small font description of what happened. No, but like, you know, the imitation game year after they got the nominations, the campaign became, you know, honor the man, honor the film. So they start to try to. Nora was Dream Bit. No, no, that's Marty's dream. Nora was like choose love or something like that. They try to condense the messaging of the movie into something that's really sellable. I don't think sinners really needs to. Well, sinners is like, don't be the vampire. Right, right. Like it has its own thing. You know what to do. There's also like, don't scare the chickens, you know, like they've all come together around your movie. now you only have a few more weeks don't get them to run away from you you know don't put a foot wrong and i don't think that sinners is in danger of that no well this is also what i've been noticing with everyone that's on the campaign trail for that movie one they've got them all out they're all out and all of them are so incredibly poised yeah yeah they like they're not slipping they're not tripping they know how to do it they look good they sound good like that whole operation feels like to the extent the movies campaign for oscars can be a well-run ship is that fair to say i don't know like oh yeah they've got it together yeah no i i think that there there's a sleekness to it that uh it probably began with like just a well-run production you know on set you know that then kind of carries through um and it's a nice mix of like first-time nominees and people who've been to the party many times before and so it's just yeah i i'm i'm impressed by what they've done And I don't know when my doubt about it being an Oscar movie went away, but it was pretty early on, I think, in the whole story of that. Because it just seemed like it had that juice. Well, it is interesting seeing sinners do it all with all of their top line folks and comparing that to one battle. And I'm just like, where is Sean Penn? Where is Benicio? Looking Catholic and global. But like they're not doing the circuit, which fine. I don't believe in the circuit personally, but like this is what we have to do. they're the big names in that film aren't doing as much which fine right yeah i mean i feel like also well i'm sure they're like they just don't want to put sean out there that much and they're like you have leo i mean leo i don't think was ever a front runner in the in for really i just don't think really yeah i mean like we've been talking a lot about how at this point we feel like you have timmy and then uh wagner mora like really coming up behind and like if there is an upset like he would be my guess but leo is also just like he's not someone who wants to put himself out there a lot. And also everyone is like, he's got it. He's good. He has his award. Yeah. No one feels the need to give this guy an award because he needs this one. Exactly. Yeah. There are too many photos of him on yachts. And Vagra Moore is doing a smart thing where at these FYC parties, if you ask nicely, he'll softly whisper the, explain the plot of the movie in your ear. How long did they take? Well, as long as you want. But yeah, I mean, I think that like if we want to get into the movie a little bit. Well, could we first also like touch briefly on i feel like you brought up the idea of like how much of a horror movie is oh well yeah i think like like it is an interesting question because like part of the you know the one of the challenges that has been put forth towards sinners is that genre movies well like specific genres right like mostly like horror yes sci-fi like they can get nominated but we still tend to see them getting like uh technical awards more like there's an idea that they're not as serious or somehow they're not like they don't quite fit within the rubric of an Oscar movie. So there have been one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven, I think, films nominated that fought like horror films before. So we have The Exorcist, Jaws, if you count Jaws, which I would, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, if you count that, which I think is archivable. Get Out, and The Sixth Sense. One of those is one. Silence of the Lambs? Yes. Which, by the way, came out February of its year, so it won the Best Picture Oscar over a year after it came out. Yeah, yeah. It's a rare story there. Yeah, but like not a genre that's had to really fight for the win. But also because Silence of the Lambs has overlap where it's also a police or FBI procedural, which like the 70s, they were given a Best Picture to French Connection and stuff like that. Right, right. There's no element of the supernatural in it, which is like the task. Unless you count the performance. Otherworldly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My biggest genre question of Sinners is actually like what genre is it? Yeah. I am not sure it's a full throated horror film. I think it's more of an action movie. Yeah. Y'all's colleague and one of my favorite critics, Angelica J. Bastian, in her review, she said that the movie is always a little bit afraid to lean into the full horror of it all. Yeah. There are moments that are gory and disgusting in a way that like vampire body horror should be. but like the pure jump scare horror feeling that you think you get a lot in a horror movie you don't get a lot of it in this one no and so for me it's like is this a horror movie is this an action movie is this a race movie is this a musical i mean is it in some parts when it's really being earnest about race and history is it a little bit after school special i like that i love that school special but yeah this movie the longer i sit with it and the more i re-watch it i'm like it's not a horror movie but that's okay yeah i think that the question of is it a horror movie like when i first saw it i was like well he kind of really rushes like he takes 40 minutes before you even really get to like you see jack o'connell the first time yeah and then you know you have the the music in the barn and all that and then the violent stuff happens incredibly quickly and then it's kind of over just as quickly it's like half an hour i think or less yeah and i i at first i was like is that a failure just does maybe cooler for all of his talents not really have a keen command of horror but then re-watching it i was like oh i don't think that's what he's intending it to yeah you know and he's talked about the impetus for making the film it was about his uncle who was a blues musician i think this movie at its emotional core is a drama about the relationship between black music, the sacred and the secular. This is a music movie, right? And so to make it also function and be okay as a horror vehicle, as a vampire vehicle, as a period piece, it speaks more to his skill than to maybe his lack of focus. Yeah. I think that there somewhere in here is a 90-minute movie that is leaner and has fewer moving parts and is more one thing. But I'm okay with what this is. Yeah. yeah i i love how many ideas it's filled with and like the fact that it is it pulls some different genres yeah i would agree i don't think it is really a horror movie i don't think he seems to have a lot of interest in that aspect of like you know like when the vampires do appear he deliberately cuts away from right like every time when you have um you know like a character like is walking back and then uh you see jack o'connell's character like leap up into the air and then it cuts yeah with hilli steinfeld yeah exactly like you it cuts away from a lot of the things that you would expect of like the scare yeah i also just wanted more of jack o'connell's character yeah a little more backstory he's so good he is very good he's so good he's always been really good here there you remember when there was that moment where you're like oh he's going to be the next big star and then he kind of like didn't quite work out uh well he went the he was like okay character character actor route that's what i'm gonna go he's too pretty to be a character sadly i like him being this kind of unsettling yeah like like i feel like he uses his looks well for that yeah but yeah i i mean i do feel like for me the part of the movie that kind of i like drops me out of it a bit is when it gets into the action i think because it's so much less interesting to me than the kind of incredibly like rich dynamics that it's setting up before it's a result like i mean it's not quite the resolution but it is a kind of like the a resolution that like feels to me less less interesting than what everything that came before Well, and I feel like so much of Ryan Coogler's work, if I had to put like a North Star or a mission statement on it, it is trying to have anyone who views this movie to begin to respect and understand the ways in which you do not have an America or Western culture without black people. his movies are asking americans to look at blackness and understand its importance to the lives that all of us live today and those are the most interesting parts of sinners for me the horror is secondary the vampires are cute but secondary but like when this movie is dealing with race very few filmmakers can make a race movie that's also a blockbuster and that is when ryan's in his bag i think same with the black panther films like he made a race movie two of them like yeah but he's really progressive films on ideas of race also blockbusters i mean that's i i thought creed should have won best picture like i read like yeah it's incredible and i think one of the the best aspects of it beyond just that it's such a good boxing movie like a kind where you want to like cheer and cry yeah you actually yeah like like in the kind of final fight uh are the ways in which it uses like the original like text of rocky to then kind of subvert and critique like also with a lot of obvious affection as well to like critique the kind of racial dynamics of that movie and the ways in which this character is held up basically as like the great white hope without him ever acknowledging it you know like it it really like overturns that and is like incredibly just so thoughtful in how it interrogates the original material i i i think yeah he makes these race films that don't you go in not knowing that you're going to get a lesson and i like that yeah yeah and like you know and it's there's also a class politics to sinners that like with the jack o'connell character being like look we're all fucking under the thumb of like you know the guy you know the the hierarchy and and there's a sort of anti-capitalist thing yeah it's like you know he has this kind of currency but we should honor it because he worked really hard like you know why do we have to subscribe to this one system that's been imposed upon us you know and to get that also in a big studio blockbuster is like wait is this kind of like a socialist right like yeah it is i mean you have these different points of view right like you have uh like smoke really being like the only thing that counts is power and power comes through money And it's really being like, this may not be a fair or at all workable system, like in the way in the position I've been put in it and the way it works for me as a black man in 1932. But but it is still the only route towards power. I've been around the world. I've seen everything else. And that is the only way. And I like. The movie has a lot of ambivalence towards that, but it's also he's not wrong. Like, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think one of the things that is so interesting to me about this movie, but also that I feel still like I'm still working it out, are the ways in which the vampires offer this image, right, of, like, collectivism. Oh, yeah. They end up in this, like, multiracial dance circle. And they're like, could I be on that side? And they're like, kindness and love. Like, that is literally like fellowship, right? We're offering you fellowship. But also they're like, we're going to kill you. We're going to come and kill you first. It almost feels like it feels vaguely similar to the stakes of Pluribus. Yeah, yeah. Fully. We're the bad guys, but we've made Utopia. But it's all good. Right. Yeah. You have to lose yourself in order to sort of become this new thing. Or I guess Jack O'Connell would say it's an ascension, but maybe we wouldn't see it that way. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, he is arguing that there is no perfect, seamless way into this other thing. You know, there's going to be pain involved. Yeah. Well, and just talking through these ideas present in the film, it felt so much easier to pinpoint exactly what those beats were and those points were. I remember leaving one battle after another and saying, did I forget what they were like blowing this stuff up over? Do I remember what it was? Because at the first, was it about is it climate? Is it immigration? That film felt political in a very ambiguous way. sinners felt political in an incredibly direct and pointed way he wants you to know what he's talking about and i didn't feel that kind of certainty with some of the stuff happening in one battle i don't know yeah which again might be kind of the point it's sort of this pinching sort of abstraction it's not supposed to be it's not supposed to represent one activist group but yeah that was one of the big criticism of one battle when that movie started getting backlash was like from an activist perspective like what are we activating yeah this is all over the place It's like, what are they trying to pinpoint? I think that Sinners, it sort of obscures its metaphor in a good way, in part by not making the white supremacists who do figure into the movie significantly. They are the vampires. They're not the vampires. Whereas the sort of very obvious metaphor would be to make them the vampires. They're the record labels. yeah but it also like i mean i think there is like right that like obvious kind of like the yes like the the record labels the industry the idea of kind of like corporate assimilation and the first time and film studios i would assume exactly i mean yeah uh the first time i watched the movie i was very much like oh this is yes like kind of so much about corporate assimilation and also like corporate diversity you know like corporate diversity speak but then re-watching it I was like, I feel like it's made it's meant to be more much more slippery than that. Like to the point where I was almost especially and we can wait till after spoiler warnings to talk about the coda. Like to the point where I was like, oh, I feel like even he feels a little like not quite settled on on where he stands with the vampires. Because, you know, like I like he has cited I think it's called The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank, which is like a Twilight Zone episode. as like one of his major influences and it's this it's like an episode that is about a guy it's in the 1920s uh a guy who dies and then comes back to life and he doesn't seem to have a pulse but he seems otherwise really normal and like the town folk are like unsure about whether they should like he's like yeah like a vampire or someone the undead come back and they're like going to kind of like they're all gathering around to deal with this evil and he gives this speech about how you know they shouldn't be afraid of him and he should be allowed to remarry like marry his like fiance but there's also this sense that like he is different like it like he seems to have supernatural powers um so it's like slippery you're not sure where to stand this character and i do feel like you are kept shifting constantly with regard to the vampires throughout the movie you know like in the beginning they're really frightening and then you're kind of like okay but what are they offering everyone who gets turned is like this is great aside from the fact that i'm out here horribly you know horribly murdered but then you're like have they lost themselves are they really soulless and then for a second the most likable enjoyable viscerally engaging character on the screen is hailey steinfeld yeah like oh give me right she like yeah i know like all of that yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i i think that hailey steinfeld if we want to segue into a different part of the film or uh is that like or a big blockbuster studio movie it's incredibly forward blunt sexuality i think is like really interesting and cool and i was thinking that like that's a there's a pointed statement in that too i think that like google are looking at like a history of like black representation in studio films that maybe win awards or don't or whatever and like being really desexualized or or or it's there's a violent aspect to that or whatever and he's like no the people of all decades all centuries spoke up front about this and enjoyed sex yeah wanted it and women wanted it men want it you know yes and i think that like that all of that is so i mean it's close to the center of the movie yeah you know that's impressive yeah watching the back i kept saying to myself oh this is a guy who wrote this movie with a woman yeah i felt like this movie especially when compared to one battle after another respected the women on screen more and gave them more to do on the screen you know my biggest gripe about one battle is you get Tiana Taylor giving you these wonderful minutes at the top then you do not see her again whereas every time I see a black woman enter the situation in centers and even a not quite black woman like Haley Steinfeld's character they're fully formed and they keep showing up and I even think about the sex scenes in that movie they they seem to have a gender parity in the way that the bodies are moving together and who was in control or not And it felt like particularly in the way it treats and observes and allows black women on a screen to be fully embodied It felt like it hit the mark on that more often than one battle did I know that I'm having this conversation in a room in which there are no black women. But I'm saying, you know, for me and in my conversations with folks. Yeah, I felt that. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it does make me think of The Secret Agent in that way, where it is very much about how this kind of there is like joy and sexuality, like even within a situation that is like fundamentally oppressive. Yeah. It is like constantly like that does not go away. That is always there. And like it should not be erased in like also depicting the seriousness of the situation. And the sex in Sinners felt like it was delivered with a certain kindness. And I felt, not to keep comparing it to One Battle, but there were some of the sex scenes in One Battle that were just meant to be sensational. And they worked. It's sensational. And yeah, there were moments when the sex is happening in Sinners where I'm like, oh, this feels kind. I don't know. and i think a lot again a lesser movie i apparently like to do this to set up straw man movies that don't exist but i think that that wumi misaku's character would be so much more like rigidly and and and faintly drawn and that she would kind of be like no you left like and he would have to like work to get her back and now you know by the end of the movie or whatever and in this it's like there is this complicated understanding between them where they have issues yeah she's angry at him he's hurt they're both hurt but they still have this intense like loving bond that you know is shown that way yeah uh i was gonna say two things uh i do appreciate a movie that is uh states what has always been obvious which is like when we musaku is like such a babe you know and you're like this is a movie that's finally like yeah like obviously she's such a babe yeah but also that i was thinking like actually this this crop of best picture nominees has like it has a fair amount of sex you know for like yeah we keep thinking about hollywood yeah i know yeah like that like like this here is actually like pretty good by that regard and like k-pop demon hunters right um but i mean like i like yeah or as i call it f you right like uh sinners is definitely the most overtly sex positive yeah just in like not just the depictions of sex but also cultivating the idea of like it as something people do together and you know like having a whole monologue on how to uh give oral sex to a woman and having that be like like this is the thing you do and like you do it together and this is like great you know like yeah that said the first cunnilingus joke okay girl like the third or fourth wrap it up it starts to feel a little bit that was the one that was the one point where i was like you didn't need to do all this man i was almost wondering if he was like you know the raptors in jurassic park like testing the fences to see how many he could get away with you know i think that one of the things i appreciate about ryan kugler even at times where it doesn't work for me is that he is willing to go do a big swing he's willing to put himself out there he's willing to do something that might come across as corny yeah and i feel like you know like the big showcase scene in this where uh musical montage it could have been corny it could have been like so easily it's yes and i feel like the fact that it rides that edge yes but it's so earnest about what it wants to depict which is like everyone's like ancestors in the room and like and like future like right in the room and it's so like this is this is we like i mean he has talked about this in interviews being like i wanted to do this it was not something i initially had in the script i wanted to use the language of film to depict this thing and you're like yes it is like oh yeah well because there's one moment in there where i'm like oh you really got away with that because like in the montage it's like they're it's a dancer in the jet it's all these black performers but then they bring in i want to say a chinese performer i get in chinese opera makeup and you hear the gong and the cymbals and you're like girl yeah yeah but okay yeah you're like let him get away with it yeah yeah it's because it's so technically brilliant like this is the thing about it whenever ryan kugler movies are about to go into like after school specials like territory which he he likes to be there yeah whenever he's about to go there and it's about to be corny or about to be cheesy you just look at it and hear and it's so technically and beautifully well done, you'll allow it. If that sequence was not so warmly lit and the camera's moving in such seductive, interesting ways. Because on paper, if I were to say, oh, Ryan Coogler, this great director, made a movie that's set in the 1930s. But there is one scene where there's a breakdancer in a bucket hat. You'd be like, that sounds horrible. But somehow it's beautiful. And when the guy in the purple jumpsuit with the guitar, I kind of got teary. Right. Because like you said, it's such a bold swing that connects. It actually works where, you know, 99 other times it wouldn't. Yeah. Well, and watching it back the second time, I noticed two things. The sky is beautiful and vivid throughout. And two, you're never not hearing music. Yeah. This thing is scored to a T. Yeah. And it helps set you up for the ride to the big musical montage. The music is constantly getting you ready for more music. i think had this not been handled by someone who's so good at like scoring film it wouldn't have worked but you're primed for that musical moment because you're actually always hearing music in that film in a really nice way yeah um i yeah the sky thing i mean like i noticed a lot of the second viewing in particular i mean there uh there's a shot when like sammy gets in the back of the car with the twins and like you see and it's shot in this way that i felt like is meant to evoke not just an old photograph but almost like a polarized photograph yeah like you see the cotton fields in the back behind him yes and it's focused on his face as they're driving and i felt like that that spoke to what cooler was trying to do so well of be like this is the past and he was like obviously went through a lot of pains to recreate the detail but also it is a bit mythic right like it is this place that feels like rich and alive with magic and that i think stands in stark contrast to what often happens in black period pieces in this set in this time period They're usually just suffering. Slavery is bad. Jim Crow is bad. They're getting beaten. They're getting killed. Everything about this movie respects and appreciates the magic of black life in the South in that time period, regardless of the oppression that was also there. This is a guy who loves black people, loves the South and thinks that those two things were also lovable in that time period. You know, and I think that felt that made me all warm and fuzzy. Like this is a guy who is not coming to us and saying what we usually get, which is if we have a period piece in this period of time with black people, it's like suffering first. He doesn't do that. I mean, the vampires make them suffer, but that's a different kind of thing. Yeah. Suffer until, you know, near the end of the movie. Yeah. And you kind of almost wonder if that there's something that he's saying in that where he's like, you know, the more that the kind of other culture kind of like imposes upon us, like our narratives do kind of tend toward violence because that's been asked of us. Because black movies. A lot of black movies are actually white movies. Well, right. Right. Like a lot of black movies are actually about the pain of putting on them by white people. this is not quite that yeah you know i think a great example of that is like um the the minister father who you know again in this lesser movie would be the sort of tyrant and his son is fleeing to go like practice his art and all that but the father is depicted as like understanding he lets his son go he's like okay well but you know come back for church you know yeah and then you know his cousins ask him like does he hit you and he's like no i mean you know nothing more than the standard you know and and i think that like again that that's a nuance there that it's like yes there is a graciousness and a love that is passing in this community that you don't often see but this movie also like directly links the vampires in the church like that yeah true like when you get that like you know before it flashes back like he goes to see his father in the church and it intercuts like the images of the vampires attacking like like the major kind of like song set pieces in this you know there are there are like a few and like there are the ones at the juke and then there's ones of the vampires and then there's like this little light of mine at the church you know and i feel like it is not a movie that is uh sparing with the church like it is very critical of of the church yes yeah well and that is a conversation as someone who grew up the son of a pentecostal church organist and played in a church band my whole life the conversation about the sacred and the secular and how black music plays into it that is a conversation that black people are having amongst themselves that is really tempered by white voices and white opinions and so to see kugler spend so much time on that as an idea in the film it almost like helps it pass this like racial bechdel test like can we have black people talking about a thing with emotional stakes that isn't purely tied to suffering at the hands of white people yeah and you rarely get that period pieces with black people and he does it and i think it's because of the musical aspect of it and i find that as i was saying earlier much more interesting than like the vampires killing them or not killing them yeah can you tell me a little bit more about that tension between sacred and secular music i mean is is it indeed a tension or is it just more of a question of like music history like what informed what and and what is that relationship like as you see it it is a central dichotomy of black american music so i interviewed the guy who wrote the song that leads to the big montez raphael sadiq uh he has written hits and produced hits for the likes of d'angelo beyonce solange and more for decades he grew up playing in church um and a lot of the way that he plays now and makes music now is informed by the church but he like me when you were growing up in a black church playing black gospel music, you weren't technically allowed to even listen to the other stuff. Right. You shouldn't listen to it. You should not play it. I still, if I drive by a church and I'm playing secular music, I turn the volume down. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just like in us. But then when you think about every American musical art form that we enjoy in the Western world, it has a direct tie to black church music. Right. Like country doesn't exist without the banjo. The banjo was brought to America from Africa. And the first people making music with the banjo were making songs about God. Right. Everything like rock and roll came from the blues. Blues came from people who were playing the same music in a church setting. So like for me, the story of like American popular music is actually the story of black sacred music and how it has just infused everything else. I don't know where I was going with this and I forgot the question. And yet there is still kind of that opposition, like even today. Even today, yeah. Like even today, there are still, you know, I remember when I was a kid, the big tension was like trying to create artists who could cross over. and so white christian music did this first but black gospel artists have done it as well there'll be some christian artists that like mary make a song yeah mary mary like they're big hit they don't say jesus right right switchfoot who i love they're like this christian group their biggest hit dare you to move they don't say god or jesus and i remember in church they would tell us how this was bad because these evil record labels would make these christians sign away their right to say God. These are the stories I was hearing in the 90s. So it's still there. It's very interesting to watch how this conversation becomes different in what I feel has been the last year or two in the rise of Hillsong culture, which is like a white Christian rock culture. It is a similar but different conversation that is another episode of some other show. We have to talk a lot about emo, unfortunately. Also, I love that we got in a Switchfoot reference in this sentence discussion. Yep, yep, yep. That's our version of the Buckethead breakdancer in Centered. Should we move into spoiler territory? All right. Okay, so let's talk about, I don't, like, where would we say, when the Grace maybe screams come on in? Like, that's like the... That's probably where the spoiler is really scary. I don't think this movie is spoilerable. I think that for many movies but people do not agree with it very upset I think I might have said this on the podcast before I don't remember but when Joel Cohen made that Macbeth movie I reviewed it from the New York Film Festival and I'm not making this up someone on Twitter said I spoiled Macbeth I was like please be trolling me and I don't think they were this film has been out for a year it surely has widely available but yes yes we are now in spoilers okay all right um yeah i feel like i don't know i do feel like the action part is the least compelling for me because yes i'm also just like i maybe because you know i don't know what resolution would feel like it had been worthy of like that incredible and the post-credit scene undoes any resolution you thought you felt yeah okay so how do we feel i guess how do you how do you leave this movie thinking about the vampire experience let's say I was thinking, oh, they're going to do a sequel. Sure. That was my first thought. And honestly, like early 90s with that fashion. I know. Would you sweat it? I would watch it. Oh, and the hoops. Yes. The hoops are incredible. I know. It's such a good visual. Sinners 2, 90s boogaloo. Exactly. It's such a good visual. And to have it be able to do it. Like a New Jack Swing soundtrack. Incredible. Oh. Have Eddie Murphy be a vampire. Yeah. He's done it before. He's done it before. Yeah. In Brooklyn. Yeah. Wait, have we written the sequel? Right. Call it. all right you know we'll take a story credit you know yeah yeah um but i feel like it is it feel like i it is unclear throughout like how much you lose your sense of self like right the mythology which we're never sure like how much is true because like these are people who are figuring out how vampires work as they go they know some they have some ideas about it but like uh they have not gotten to watch as many vampire movies it's 1932 as we have to like come up with lore uh that uh you know we we learn a bit about the idea that their souls are stuck in them that they can't kind of like go on but also they share consciousness maybe consciousness like uh unlike a haint they won't die if their creator dies they they can you have to share but they share his pain yeah remick and then also like remick is able to speak a dialect of chinese like after he you know like bites uh well no he says he studied abroad and he's like i did that semester i put on english he was only friends with other americans well and it's like like some of the like normal beat not normal they're vampires some of the beats that you always expect with this like they can't come in a door unless they're invited in like that tracks i get that and the garlic i get steak in the heart i get but there were other things where i'm like what is a vampire rule that you've established here is there a rule or not like i kept wondering how much free will the vampires had yeah were they slaves to the vampiric mission of just getting everyone you could or can or do they have choice because in that final post-credit scene we find out that one of the vampires made a choice to not do a bad thing you know yeah yeah and and held that promise for decades yeah yeah yeah and and then they all kind of they sit and listen to him play you know and then they kind of have this fond goodbye uh is that like oh i want to suck your blood right And so it does kind of it it it does suggest that there is like a lot more complication to this thing that is not meant to be an exact allegory anyway. Right. Like it's meant to be a very kind of like malleable allegory. But it did. I feel like that I continue to wrestle with that coda because I think it is a lovely image and it's also a funny image when I walk in. But I do feel like it leaves me feeling unsettled about kind of like what is being preferred in terms of this this metaphor. It makes me question how much of these norms for the vampires were rules or not. You know, why do you think that it's in the post credits area? Like, is that just runoff from MCU experience or or is that like that? But it's just it's a really interesting formal choice, like not to just stick it at the end of the movie. Well, every Oscar nominee was required to do it this year. So there's a hamnet one. Right. No, that's a good question. I think that. What would the Hamnet one be? He's alive. Hamnet will return. It's the musical number. The Hamnet shows up in a coochie sweater. I've been on dead this whole time. Chilling. It's really sad, actually. The same Max Rector music is playing. I don't know. My hunch about it is that he wants to give you a sense of time passing, and so you get the end credits and the music, and so you're kind of like, okay we're the story's over but something i i think it kind of it it almost feels like it's transporting you across six decades and then plopping you back down in but because the credits do run six decades long well right these movies these days very last like end scene two of miles katon and like uh playing this little light of mine right like uh so like there is an actual end credit yeah it's like the thing that plays through the credits and then the end credits yeah i don't know i do feel like it gives i mean it feels like that marks it as a coda so strongly to the point where it almost feels like the film right the actual part of the main part of the film is over and this is something that feels not like you could take or leave it but like it feels almost like it is deliberately being held yeah i will say watching it in the theater and seeing it come up post-credits i think it made me be a little more locked in than i would have been had it just been at the end of the film because this film is over two hours yeah and as much as i enjoyed it by At the end, I was like, thank you. And something about staying for the credits and having it pop back up. I got to like reset and like refocus. I think I took it in and ingested it more because of where it was. Yeah, I think that's that's right. Yeah. And I mean, my sort of question about the sort of plotting of it is like I get this. I mean, I love the lines about like it was the best day of my life until things happen. it's really it's moving and and you know and and they both kind of share that and so i get why the affection would be there in terms of like um god i haven't seen your face and you still look like you did like all those years ago and like like i'm i think that he's kind of glad that they're still alive you know because he did love them in one form or know them at least in one form yeah and but i also i'm kind of like right but you did fucking kill all these people like you did terrible things yeah yeah also your brother has this kind of like beautiful but like kind of like like kind of reconnection with his family in the afterlife which presumably is not available to to all of these people who have been turned into the undead against their will yeah uh so yeah i feel not that i need vampire lore to be extremely coherent but i do feel like it there are parts of like i feel like the emotional train of the movie and like the metaphorical train of the movie that I feel unclear on because of the code, mostly. Well, and this is where I think it's like, Ryan Coogler is a visionary of a filmmaker, but he also understands what makes a box office smash and a hit movie. And he knows that, like, sometimes the least important thing is logic. Does this movie feel good? And it does. And you don't want to turn into, like, CinemaSins and be like, well, actually, that sweater was not manufactured until 1993. But yeah, I also think that there could be something about like if the vampirism in the movie is presented as a different way to exist in America, either kind of underground or outside of the norm. And Miles Caton kind of doesn't I mean, it's sort of chosen for him that he's going to go a slightly more mainstream route. It's these two differing ways of being alive in America intersecting 60 years later. But it's the question, is it the other way around? like or maybe it is i mean in terms of uh becoming a vampire is a form of assimilation right and they do come in wearing like the latest fashion they have adapted at times they are he's more the purist he's yeah the stars are still on his face and he's playing the music is like led carved out this path for himself that you know presumably like has sustained him doing this kind of music but is not about kind of chasing whatever also like kind of like capitalist forces right he has gone electric he has gone electric yes this is true his recording quality gets better a thing that everyone thinks people care about but people don't care about going electric yes every time there's a film where like the big plot like a pop one is like he went electric okay girl cares about it though the vampires i will say it's very interesting to think about what ryan kugler is saying in that final post scene because in that bar scene the coolest sexiest best dressed ones there are the vampires The cool hot black guy is a vampire And being a vampire has allowed him to be cool. So I'm like, oh, is there do I do I need Angelica to write about that? What's going on there? Yeah. You know, it's what is what is that scene saying about what it means to be black, what it means to stay black and cool, what it means to survive as a black person? And presumably there's a financial element to that. How did they make their money? They're clearly doing well. Or they seem to be he has the great ring. The name, the fingering. Yeah. And yeah, and there's that kind of economic thing comes back up subtly. Well, and it's like Ryan Coogler does this really great thing of by the end of more than one of his movies, you like the villain and you're like, oh, you're right. Yeah, I know. Like you watch Black Panther. Oh, Killmonger gets it. Yeah. Those are my politics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like there isn't I mean, aside from I think like the code it does serve to kind of mitigate this a bit. But do you feel like this film is ultimately kind of pessimistic, guided by a feeling of pessimism with regard to the ability to exist being black in America? No. The best way to understand, at least for me, the North Star of what he's doing in this movie is the way in which every black person looks on that screen. they look humane they look fully realized their skin is glowing they're always well lit the costumes are impeccable regardless of their class status in this movie and it is a movie that appreciates blackness whether it is in the form of a human or a vampire and i think the overriding message of this movie or the one that i hope lingers is to say it's possible to make art that loves black people that can be loved by everybody. So for me, it's less of a, what do we think about vampires? What do we think about good and evil? It's like, what does it feel like to watch art in which black people are respected? How does it feel? And does it work? Is it a viable model for this industry that has been plagued by whiteness since its start? That is what this movie is really saying to me. And that is what I came away with it even more after watching it again. It's about Ryan Coogler fucking loves black people. And he makes these movies that make you love black people, too. So that. Yeah. And that he does. He did that with Black Panther, you know, and like, yes, that's one of the white kids dressing up as fucking Black Panther. And it's that's what it's about. It shouldn't be. I wish it wasn't. But it's startling to see in some big, expensive studio movie where you're like, this is not the lens through which these are normal. You know, this is normally done. Yeah. And that he's managed to do it not once, but like several times. Yeah. Still at the same level of, you know, I mean, he didn't they didn't spend as much on sinners as they did Black Panther. But like it was still a lot of money was spent and earned. And yeah. And I just you know, I hope for the future of the industry and and for his future. I just kind of wonder where he's going to go next. Is he going to keep operating or will he want to go back down to Fruitvale station level just to take a break? You know, I don't know. Well, yeah, I mean, I think something part of the reason I think that this movie has such a kind of is engaged in such a fraught interrogation with the idea of commercial success is that he is he seems like someone who wants to work within like a large scale. Right. Like like Nolan kind of. Yeah. And I think that that is Nolan films, it could be argued are about a certain kind of whiteness. Sure. Sure. That's a different conversation. know i mean i feel like mostly i see dead white white absentee father uh but uh and not giving florence view enough screen time yeah but um yeah like i i think like he seems to want to be in that group of like you know less than a handful of like directors who can get what they want to get made an original thing made yes and uh and i like that he likes making blockbusters yeah for me you know it's the American film industry, even as it's seen fewer people go to movies, it's leaned more into honoring movies that most people will never watch. I don't get it. God bless Enora. I liked that film, but I remember last Oscar season when the brutalists and Enora were like in contention. It was hard for most of America to find somewhere to watch those films. Yeah. And what Ryan Coogler has done is said, you can make a film that is critically admired works for all kinds of people gets folks it gets butts in seats and centers something other than whiteness right it's it's it's i just find it remarkable and i i like that he is not afraid to make blockbusters that work for all kinds of people uh back in november he said his next movie would be black panther three oh okay i do kind of i mean kind of on the Nolan comparison. Also, Nolan, I know you had, was it Tenet had John David Washington? Sure. Yeah, whether that was, you know, good to all parties, I don't know. But like, you know, Christopher Nolan was like, all right, I'm going to do three Batmans. I'm going to do these really cool sci-fi movies, whatever. And I'm basically, I'm just warming you guys all up for my three-hour movie about a scientist. And I kind of do wonder if there is in the future a Ryan Coogler movie where, and look, if he wants to keep working with superheroes and vampires and whatever, great, he's wonderful at it, but is there one where he doesn't feel like he has to give that one concession to box office appeal? I think he definitely can. I'd just be curious what it would be. I don't know. I feel like Sinners... Is there a music movie where it's just purely that music movie? I will say, I don't feel like Sinners is him making a concession. I don't feel like he added the vampires. He did all that he wanted to do. But I think the vampires helped get it funded. Oh, sure. No, I'm sure. But I feel like, I don't know, it is hard not to arrive at our parent podcast, but like the idea of getting the blank check, right? Like that, as much as that exists anymore, it doesn't, like it almost doesn't, right? For Ryan it does. Yeah, yeah. And like for Christopher Nolan maybe being like, you know what I'm going to do next? The Odyssey. You know what people love is like the Odyssey. And yeah, there are just a few people who can have that. but that is yeah didn't he say somewhere ryan kugler that he wants to do a rom-com did i see that somewhere am i being crazy yeah oh yeah we're getting an odd yes i would which is thrilling yeah right yeah who would be passing a ryan kugler rom-com i honestly like michael b jordan haley steinfeld oh yes yes yes in the 90s yeah yeah yeah i know it's sinners too actually sinners too is a rom-com yeah yeah it's i mean i would love that an immortal you know like when you're like how do you sustain a relationship over uh centuries and centuries you've got to break up and get back together over and over again yeah i feel like that then there's two break up well and michael b jordan is i mean he's it's he's doing thomas crown affair which yes is a kind of heist thriller but it's also a romance and like that's pretty exciting yeah no i want like the the theoretical uh nick nick or is it nick cave's uh gladiator 2 script where he was just like fighting wars throughout the centuries i want that with like a rom-com you know they're just like meat cuting through the decades. Oh, in the 50s and 60s? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that'd be good. And today. We haven't talked about the twins, the performance of the twins. How'd you guys find that? I think it's really well done. You know, I am, I talk about movies, write about movies for a living. I've done that for many years. I've been watching movies since I was four years old. We have wonderments of visual effects from Parent Trap, the original on, I'm like, how do they do the twin thing? There's two of them standing next to each other. Now imagine two Michael B. Jordan's in the pair. Especially every time you're like, wait, he handed a cigarette to himself. How did it work? And I think that it is one of the older sort of film tricks that still works beautifully. And look, obviously that is performance dependent. And I think he does just enough to shape them differently, that they're legible as different characters. and I don't know. I think it's well done. Especially because he clearly is meant to play them as these two distinct characters, but also people who can't exist, they're kind of like one force. They've cultivated a bit of this mythology around themselves. When people in the town are like this much. Well, their names are two halves or halves of one thing. They are supposed to feel a bit like this combined force as well. And I think, yeah, Michael B. Jordan does a very good job of navigating that. does and it surprised me because i think god bless michael b jordan um i've never thought of him as the most dynamic of actors you know i think he gave the most alive performance he's done yet in this movie and that's a testament to the writing and direction um but yeah i feel like the twin of it all the more that i look at it the more i appreciate what he was doing there was a clip i one of his co-stars was talking about how he wore different size shoes when he was each of those two twins he wore tighter shoes one of them and like looser bigger shoes for another and then one version of him had dimples and the other never did oh wow wow that's cool yeah of course this is one of his co-stars talking him up on their oscar campaign run so they said it but it worked we're talking about it here it seems like kugloos just having fun yeah because there's yeah the movie doesn't necessarily call for that no yeah no no they say literally be cousins and it could be two actors and you know maybe have the same sort of yeah but no i i think it's an it's an added sort of like can i pull this off sort of daring to i mean having to shoot all of those scenes yes twice yeah like fully like is yeah you know and then however many takes it took I think also their different fates really kind of speaks to, I think, the kind of conflicted natures of the allegory, where you have one who kind of goes out like slaughtering the clan and then reuniting with his beloved and their lost child. and like it's this like yeah like the gladiator goes out like the gladiator style and then the other one yeah like goes on to he becomes a vampire and he lives this life and i feel like yes that kind of conflicted nature around the idea of vampirism and all of the many things it represents in the movie is channeled because he goes both ways right yeah i like to think that he's a vampire with a sort of dexter code because that's the bad like bad guys and he they drink that guy's blood and there's not murdering innocence but yeah maybe i'm being naive also So when are we going to, you know, there's all this conversation and debate around whether or not movie stars exist anymore. And at this point, I'm like, Michael B. Jordan is right there. Yeah, yeah. I think he's a really bankable movie star. And maybe he doesn't get that credit because he's been so tethered to Ryan Coogler. But I think also your point about him as an actor, I feel like Coogler brings out the best in him like so much. Like he has not always sparked to life in that same way with other filmmakers. And I feel like when he is in a Coogler movie, you're like, oh, yeah, he's like electric. Yeah. Maybe something about making this kind of prodded him enough that he's now kind of woken up to. And that'll be that. Yeah. I mean, so the Sinners came out in the spring. So if Chalamet is the king of Christmas, is he king of Easter? Jesus Christ is the king of Easter. King of Memorial Day. King of Memorial Day. Well, I think Jesus Christ is the king of kings. Right. That's right. That's right. The bunny is the king of Easter. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I would be really curious to hear or to see rather where Sinners goes in a couple of weeks at the Oscars. Again, I think it'll do well. But another nominated movie, which only has one nomination, but a big one. Yes. That, Sam, I think you're a fan of is Song Song Blue, which Kate Hudson is nominated for Best Actress, which I think is a good nomination. She's wonderful. Oh, yeah. So can you just kind of extol that movie for us? Well, one, I'm going to personally say that I willed Kate Hudson's Oscar not into existence. Well done. I have been mentioning this performance on my show forever. I had a newsletter a few weeks ago where the subject line was, my New Year's resolution is for Kate Hudson to get an Oscar. I think this performance in this film stopped me in my tracks. By no means do I think that Songs on Blue is a perfect film. but i think in terms of oscar-worthy performances oscar-worthy performances kate did that um my introduction to this movie was not knowing what the fuck it was i saw billboards for it all around la and so you see hugh jackman in that get up with the wig and you see kate hudson look how she looking how she looks a wig and my first thought was like oh a lovely christopher guest style film well maybe i'll check it out yeah yeah and then i watched the trailer and i'm like they can't be for real what do you mean and then like you see a car accident in the trailer i'm just like this ain't this is a lifetime movie it's not for me then my partner who was a costume designer he gets a bunch of screeners for all the stuff and he begins to watch it himself he stops the film halfway and he says sam i can't finish this movie until i watch it with you wow you have to watch this movie it's your kind of movie lo and behold i watch it you You were lightning to his thunder. At every moment when you're supposed to laugh, I laugh. When you're supposed to cry, you cry. When you're supposed to put your fist in the air and pump it in the air, you do that. A dear friend of my new loves movies, he said, Tongsong glue feels like a movie is supposed to feel. Right. And this is one of the few movies that I then made my friends watch. So I ended up like at a cabin in the woods for New Year's, New Year's Eve night. Guess what we did? There you go. Tongsong. Did you time it so that like it was like a romantic ending? a few hours before but lo and behold i look over and at the beats they're supposed to laugh cry and punch the air they do yeah like this movie hits its beats that said i think that like kate hudson her performance is good anyway she sings very well she gets the accent perfect she is very um there's no condescension in the way that she portrays middle class working classness but i also love that her in this movie has made everyone rewrite their script of what they think kate hudson is a lot of the headlines around her being so good in this film had an air of surprise she can do that she could she did this and it's like yeah i got to interview her we published the interview today and i asked her i was like girl you see these headlines they're like good for you but also they're surprised how do you feel and she said this thing i was just like oh you're so grounded she said i know what they're saying i did all those rom-coms i did all those rom-coms for so long and they don't think that you can do that and do this and she said i'll never regret the rom-coms because for all the films she's done she still hears today from women from like 13 to 70 who say that was helpful to me i appreciate that thank you for that so for me i love her performance i think that film hits the beats even though it's not perfect but i like the way it The way that it fits into Kate Hudson's narrative arc as a performer and the way that it reminds us that like a good actor can be a good actor in all kinds of things. And in actuality, some of those rom-coms were great. Sure. Yeah. And she's I mean, I I have probably mentioned this a billion times on podcast. I have long held. Have you ever seen Something Borrowed? Which one is that? That's Jennifer Goodwin and this random guy from soap operas and Kate Hudson, where she plays the bitchy friend and Jennifer Goodwin starts sleeping with Kate Hudson's fiance. It's based on a book. The movie itself is not great. Yeah. Kate Hudson is so fantastic. That's what I'm saying. I have been saying for years she should have gotten an Oscar nomination for supporting actors. And people are like, from that rom-com? And I'm like, yes, because she's incredible. The scene where she finds out what's happening between her friend and her boyfriend is she's incredible. Yes. So, yes, you're right. And how much of our condescension towards rom-coms is a condescension to things that women and girls like? Well, yeah. Yeah, I'm not a big rom-com. No, I am agnostic on rom-com. Yeah. But, like, I do feel like she has always been good. Yeah. I mean, like, I think, like, what she does as Penny Lane in Almost Famous, like, in that role, I think it's easy for people to dismiss it because she is playing a character. who is like this muse to, you know, like, and so people see it in that context of like, as if there's no agency there and there's no, you know, like the movie is like, right. But I think she's incredible in it. She's, you understand why everyone falls in love with her. And also you understand that she is putting on this kind of performance. I had never really seen a debut performance like that. Yeah. When I saw that movie, I was what, 16, 17 years old. And I was like, gee, who is this like ethereal, magical creature? She's incredible. And also, I was one of, I think, many, many young women who were like, I'm going to spend years trying to get a coat like the one. Did you get one? I tried on many. My sister dashed herself on this wrap. They did not magically transform me to look like Kate Hudson in that movie. So, you know, you've got to work with what you've got. And I had to make peace with the fact that the coat was not for me. Just a few years later, I tried to dress like Jim and 28 Days Later, and it did not transform me into Killian Murphy. I will say, and I should be clear here, Song Song Glue is not the greatest movie of all time. It is earnest and heartwarming, and I like it. But for me, it's just about Kate. It's about Kate. And I like her presence in the Oscars this year, because I can't exactly define what I mean, but I just kind of feel it. It's kind of an old-fashioned Oscar nomination. The performance is really good, but I could see that performance in 1972, in 1986. in a good way. Whereas some of the other stuff that's nominated is a bit more modern. So it just kind of rounds out that five in a really nice way. I will say also, our friend Esther Zuckerman, her fiancé Bob, who grew up in Wisconsin, said that this is one of the few performances he's ever seen to nail a Milwaukee accident. Well, you know why? Her nanny growing up. There you go. And the nanny was her assistant for a while when she was an adult. In the Oprah episode about Song Song Blue, of course, Oprah's like, and your nanny is here! Yeah, of course. Well, Sam, thank you. I'm glad we got some Song Song Blue content on this podcast because we were close to not talking about it. We were blanking it unfairly. For that and all other things, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. And people should go listen to that interview with Kate and all your Sinners interviews. Yeah, so we have in my feed a bunch of episodes, but for Oscar folks, I have a chat with Kate Hudson about songs on glue and life. And then I've interviewed both the costume designer, Ruth E. Carter from Sinners, and Raphael Sadiq, who wrote the song that begins to summon spirits in Sinners. So if you need more Sinners content, they're there. That's the Sam Sanders show. You can find it pretty much anywhere, right? Anywhere. Anywhere where podcasts and things are served. Podcasts, YouTubes. Yeah. There's chants. They were playing on the subway on my way here. Yeah, I know. So congrats on that. Some of you hear it on a public radio station in your neck of the woods, but I forget which one. So anywho. But yeah, check it out. Well, thanks again, Sam. This was delightful. I was, you know, y'all are so good at what you do, and you have this encyclopedic knowledge of film. I was like, let me not show my ass up here. No, you know what you're talking about. You know exactly what you're talking about. It was so great to have you on. You brought such a great thing. And that was our ninth Best Picture nominee that we've talked about. What's the last one? One Battle After Another. Bring in Leo. Oh, yeah. He's so easy to get. Can you imagine him having to like indulge in a long conversation i feel like he hates doing press so much yeah that's why he hates 24 year old models from checkers out here where after exactly like he's like yeah we have nothing in common yeah yeah is he the one he i feel like there are a few he's like famous for the headphones the headphones during sex yeah that is the rumor leo that's the rumor that was the rumor he has what is he plans the date get the gun on the bed to get whatever this is always like the joke but i i choose to believe it whale sounds oh i i heard it is mine's podcast like oh my god I don't know. What is the best answer for what he's listening to doing sex? It's this little light of mine. Any possibility is a funny one. Yeah, next week is one battle after another. We're also going to combine that with some predictions. And Daddy David Sims is going to be joining us for that, which is exciting. It sure is odd. I'm really bad at predictions, too. That's kind of fun. What if I just go really wild? You're so wrong, you're right. I go so wild, yeah. That's what's going to happen. So stay tuned for that. Critical Darlings is a Blank Check production in association with Vulture. Hosted by Allison Wilmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman and Neil Janowitz. Video production and distribution by Anne Victoria Clark, Wolfgang Ruth, and Jennifer Jean.