SINNERS : Tuesday 22nd April 2025

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'SINNERS' earlier this week, and this American period supernatural horror film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Ryan Coogler, whose former feature film output includes his big screen debut with 'Fruitvale Station' in 2013, which he would follow up with 'Creed' in 2015, 'Black Panther' in 2018 and 'Black Panther : Wakanda Forever' in 2022. This film was released last week too in the US, had a production budget of US$90M, has so far recovered US$87M, and has generated universal critical acclaim.

Here then, set in the early 1930's in the Southern United States during the height of the Jim Crow era, the film follows identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their home town in the Mississippi Delta after years in Chicago working for the mob. Using money stolen from gangsters, they purchase a sawmill from racist landowner Hogwood (David Maldonado) to start a juke joint for the local black community (an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African Americans in the southeastern USA). Their cousin Sammie 'Preacher Boy' Moore (Miles Caton), an aspiring guitarist, joins them despite opposition from his pastor father Jedidiah (Saul Williams), who warns his son that blues music is the music of the Devil. 

The twin brothers quickly set about recruiting other staff - pianist Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) as performers, Smoke's estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) as cook, local Chinese shopkeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo Chow (Yao) as suppliers, and cotton field worker Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) as bouncer. Meanwhile, Stack reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who passes for white, and who tells Stack that she is still angry at him for abandoning her when he left for Chicago. Smoke and Annie argue over her belief in things otherworldly, as Annie insists her practices kept the twins safe, but Smoke bitterly reminds her that their infant daughter still died. Elsewhere, Irish-immigrant vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) flees from Choctaw vampire hunters and violently turns a pair of local farmers into vampires.

At the joint's opening night, Sammie's guitar playing accompanied by Delta Slim's skills at the keyboard is remarkable, and unknowingly summons spirits of both past and present to join the already captivated crowd. The performance draws Remmick's attention, and he arrives with his two farmer vampires, offering money and music for entry. Suspicious, the twins hesitate and the vampires leave. Reminding the twins that the bar needs the income, Mary meets Remmick outside but becomes wary of his group. 

As she starts to return to the bar, Remmick glides into the air and bites her, turning her into one of his own. She returns inside, where she seduces Stack and bites him. Smoke intervenes and shoots her unloading several rounds into her at point blank range, but she is unharmed by regular bullets, gets up smiling and escapes. Cornbread is also attacked by other vampires and turned as well.

The juke joint quickly empties, and so the vampires attack and turn the fleeing patrons, including Bo. Stack comes round as a vampire, but Annie repels him with pickled garlic juice. She advises the survivors that only silver or wooden stakes can kill vampires, and that they cannot enter a building unless invited. Now leading a horde of vampires but still unable to enter the bar, Remmick tries his luck at negotiating. He praises Sammie's supernatural talent with the guitar and states that vampirism offers immortality, freedom, and escape from racism, and that he also wants to use Sammie's skills to summon the spirits of his lost community. He also warns that Hogwood, who secretly heads the local KKK, plans to attack the joint at dawn. When the survivors refuse his offer, Remmick and Bo confront Grace, threatening to attack her young daughter Lisa (Helena Hu). A desperate Grace dares the horde to attack the juke joint, inviting them in. In the ensuing battle, Grace and Annie are killed and Delta Slim sacrifices himself by slashing his own wrist with a broken bottle of Irish beer, distracting the horde with the smell of his own fresh blood from the remaining survivors. 

Smoke, Sammie, and Pearline attempt to escape, but Remmick and Stack ambush them. Smoke and Stack clash in an intense head to head and toe to toe fight, while Sammie and Pearline face off with Remmick. Pearline is bitten and begs Sammie to flee before turning. In a final confrontation, Sammie smashes his guitar over Remmick's head, before Smoke arrives just in time to kill him with a stake. As the sun rises, the vampire horde are all incinerated. 

Urging Sammie to flee, Smoke ambushes and kills Hogwood and his fellow Klan members in a hail of bullets, but is himself mortally shot. Before dying, he has a vision of Annie and their baby daughter. Sammie, battered, bruised and grief-stricken, returns to his father's church. His father pleads with him to renounce the Devil's music and seek salvation. Sammie refuses, leaving with the broken off neck of his guitar in hand.

In a mid-credits sequence we fast forward to October 1992, some sixty years later, to a bar in Chicago where Sammie (Buddy Guy) has just come off stage as a celebrated blues musician. Stack and Mary pay a visit to the now elderly Sammie, where Stack reveals that Smoke spared him that night at the juke joint, allowing him to go free under the condition that Sammie would live in peace. The couple offers Sammie the chance at immortality, but he declines. Stack asks Sammie to play a song, and Sammie obliges. Afterwards, as Stack and Mary are leaving, Sammie tells them that though that fateful night still haunts him, until the sun went down, it was the greatest day of his life. Stack agrees, and turning back to face Sammie says it was the last time he saw Smoke, the last time he saw the sun, and the only time he ever truly felt free.

With 'Sinners' Director Ryan Coogler has delivered us a genre bending film that is all at once part vampire horror film, part historical drama, part social thriller, and part all singing all dancing musical offering all wrapped up in a neat entertaining package that is exciting and will keep you engaged from start to finish. The performances of the principle cast are all top notch, and while the first half drags a little, Ryan Coogler uses this time wisely to establish the characters and their respective back stories so that we are invested in their joy and commitment to Smoke, Stack and the juke joint and then their pain and anguish as the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan. This film needs to be experienced in a movie theatre, and you won't be disappointed. It is worthy of the financial, critical and awards success that surely will follow for this original story.

'Sinners' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

What's new in Odeon's this week : Thursday 5th January 2017.

The coming of age genre has been around for many decades and still endures to this day, as evidenced by the release this week of 'The Edge of Seventeen' as Previewed below. Often seen as a launchpad for young aspiring often teenage acting talent (think James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Matthew Broderick, Jonah Hill, John Cusack, James Spader, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, Molly Ringwood, Winona Ryder et al), the coming of age film fuelled by love, sex, heartbreak, insecurity, anxiety, violence and all the rites of passage associated with the lurch into adulthood, has found a lasting place in our hearts and minds, and still draws a crowd at the Box Office. I've listed a handful of some of my personal favourites from over the years, that you might like to revisit, and of course there are a whole lot more besides :-
* 'Rebel Without a Cause' (1955) - James Dean
* 'The Graduate' (1967) - Dustin Hoffman
* 'American Graffiti' (1973) - Harrison Ford
* 'Carrie' (1976) - Sissy Spacek
* 'Sixteen Candles' (1984) - Molly Ringwald
* 'The Breakfast Club' (1985) - Emilio Estevez
* 'The Goonies' (1985) - Josh Brolin
* 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' (1986) - Matthew Broderick
* 'Pretty In Pink' (1986) - James Spader
* 'Stand By Me' (1986) - Keifer Sutherland
* 'Dead Poet's Society' (1989) - Ethan Hawke
* 'Dazed and Confused' (1993) - Matthew McConaughey
* 'American Pie' (1999) - Jason Biggs
* 'Donnie Darko' (2001) - Jake Gyllenhaal
* 'Superbad' (2007) - Jonah Hill
* 'Boyhood' (2014) - Ellar Coltrane
* 'The Hunt for the Wilderpeople' (2016) - Julian Dennison

This week, there are three new release movies to catch at your local independent cinema or multiplex.  Kicking off with a Directorial debut with a coming of age story of a girl ill at ease with her image, her  life, her friends and all the teenage angst we have seen before but dealt with in a more mature, respectful and meaningful way than many similar genre films of this type. We next go to a documentary offering about the power of music and the force this can have in bringing people together across cultural divides, geographical borders and provide hope and inspiration for our future. We then wrap up with a Chinese action comedy featuring a very well known action star in this war time romp about a rag tag band of freedom fighters going up against the might of the Japanese army.

As always when you have sat through any of these, or those others still out on general release and doing the rounds as Reviewed and Previewed previously between these Blog pages, you are hereby cordially invited to share your constructive, relevant and pertinent thoughts and observations by leaving  a Comment below this or any other Post. We'd love to hear from you, and meanwhile, enjoy your movie.

'THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN' (Rated M) - Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, this coming of age dramedy story Premiered at the TIFF in mid-September and was released in the US in mid-November. Costing US$9M to make, it has so far taken US$15M at the Box Office and has garnered much critical applause for its sharp script and the performance of its lead Actress, Hailee Steinfeld. It has also picked up four award wins and another thirteen nominations, including a 2017 Golden Globe nod for Hailee Steinfeld.

Life's tough and often unfair, and even tougher if you're a teenage girl and nobody understands you, and you have just one parent because your loving Dad died a few years back and your only true friend in the world has started dating your brother and now you feel all alone in the world with no one to talk to and you think you're socially inept. Oh woe! The teenager in question is just seventeen Nadine Franklin (played by twenty year old Hailee Steinfeld), who lives with mother Mona (Kyra Sedgwick), and older brother Darian (Blake Jenner), who gets it on with Nadine's only friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), angering Nadine. These events and more, lead Nadine to tell her history teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson) that she is going to kill herself, and through flashback we see the events unfold that bring us to this conversation in the classroom. Despite her feelings of being hard done by, unloved, disliked, awkward and all the usual touchstones of being a teenager, this film deals with them in a mature respectful adult way without relying on all the usual genre cliches, and for this reason this a film and a Director to watch.

'THE MUSIC OF STRANGERS' (Rated M) - The website that accompanies the release of the documentary film states that over the past 16 years, an extraordinary group of musicians has come together to celebrate the universal power of music. Named from the ancient trade route linking Asia, Africa and Europe, The Silk Road Ensemble, an international collective created by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, exemplifies music’s ability to blur geographical boundaries, blend disparate cultures and inspire hope for both artists and audiences. The film follows an ever-changing lineup of performers drawn from the ensemble’s more than fifty instrumentalists, vocalists, composers, arrangers, visual artists and storytellers as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways that art has the power to preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution. Blending performance footage, personal interviews and archival film, Director Morgan Neville and Producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the journeys of a small group of Silk Road Ensemble mainstays from across the globe to create an intensely personal chronicle of passion, talent and sacrifice. Through these moving individual stories, the filmmakers paint a vivid portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind. This enlightening film about the force of music across cultural divides has been generally well received and has picked up three award wins and three nominations so far, having been released in the US in mid-2016.

'RAILROAD TIGERS' (Rated M) - this Chinese action comedy film stars Jackie Chan in the lead role, is Directed by Ding Sheng, cost US$50M to make and has since made US$76M following its release just before Christmas in its native China and in other territories subsequently. Set in 1941 and Japan is expanding its occupation into neighbouring Southeast Asia using a growing network of railway tracks as important military transportation routes. This is where Ma Yuan (Jackie Chan) comes in as the leader of a rag tag bunch of freedom fighters struggling against the oppressive military regime. Using his extensive knowledge and experience of the railway network Yuan and his crew ambush a train of Japanese soldiers and important food supplies to feed the hungry and starving Chinese. The unlikely heroes come to be known by the locals as The Railroad Tigers, but when the military send in reinforcements to thwart the saboteurs, Yuan must wage his most daring mission yet, by blowing up a strategic bridge that might just cripple the war effort, but it makes the military more determined to dispense with The Railroad Tigers once and for all. Cue all manner of creative stuntwork and improvised weaponry courtesy of Mr. Chan.

Three films to tempt you out to your local multiplex to catch these latest release films, or any of those others still out on general release. Share your thoughts when you have done so, and in the meantime, I'll see you sometime in the week ahead at the Odeon.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

'TRUE GRIT' - archive from 6th February 2011.

I saw the remake of  'TRUE GRIT' in the week - the reworking of the 1969 classic that nabbed John Wayne his only Oscar for his depiction of U.S. Marshall, Rooster Cogburn. That film also starred Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper and was based on the book of the same name released the year before by Charles Portis. That film back in 1969 brought in a global Box Office haul of US$31M and now in 2011 the production budget for this one was US$38M - that's inflation for you!!



Here we have Joel & Ethan Coen Directing Jeff Bridges, taking on the lead role and is convincing as Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn the grizzled, boozing, trigger happy and allegedly meanest, U.S. Marshall. Looking to hire a man with 'true grit' he is engaged by young teenager Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) whose father has been murdered and she is seeking justice for the killer to be hanged back in Arkansas. That killer is Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). Meanwhile Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) has ridden into town on the hunt for the same killer who is also wanted for the murder of a Texas State Senator.

After some reluctance the three hook up together on the trail of the Pepper Gang led by 'Lucky' Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) whom Chaney is travelling with. There are disputes along the way that sees LaBoeuf leave but he remains on the trail wanting his Reward naturally. As the three split and then their paths cross again several times intertwined with Chaney and Ned Pepper incurring various casualties along the way as they navigate through Choctaw country where their quarry is in hiding, and where the story mostly plays out.

Chaney gets his comeuppance at the hands of young Mattie, after which she is bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake. Coming to the rescue Cogburn rides through the day & night to get Mattie to a doctor, but not before her horse carrying them both, collapses from exhaustion. On foot Cogburn then carries Mattie to safety and a doctor.

We then fast track twenty five years to the turn of the 20th Century, and we learn through Mattie's narrative that her arm was amputated years earlier as a result of that snake bite. She had not seen Cogburn since he left her safe to be treated by a doctor all those years ago. She tracks him down to a Wild West Show that Cogburn stars in, and arrives but learns that he passed away only days earlier. She never saw LaBoeuf either, but would have liked to.

'True Grit' was nominated for ten Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards winning Best Cinematography for Roger Deakins and all up 49 wins and another 142 nominations. The Coens have done it again, with a Box Office take of US$252M - rent it now on DVD or BluRay or download it and watch this gem of a Western in the comfort of your own home.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-