Some stories we inherit. Some are whispered through family trees. Others are passed down through song—riffs on pain, echoes of joy, blue notes of survival. In Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, we get all three. And this month, The Film Board—Pete, Tommy, and Andy—gathers to talk about a film that bends genres, then drips them in blood and gospel and IMAX-saturated twilight.
This is a vampire movie. But not really. It’s a family tragedy. And a juke joint musical. And a war story. And a funeral procession through America’s haunted South. Coogler takes us to 1930s Mississippi, hands us twin bootleggers with hearts full of grief and bravado, and a blues prodigy whose voice can wake the dead—literally. From there, Sinners unfolds like folklore remembered through firelight and whispered across generations.
In this conversation, the gang goes deep:
- The political subtext of assimilation, vampirism, and cultural erasure
- How Coogler’s personal history shaped the film’s emotional center
- Michael B. Jordan’s twinned performance, and the miracle of not once being pulled out by the tech
- Miles Caton’s debut as Sammie, and the spiritual power of music as both plot device and cultural artifact
- Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s historic use of IMAX 70mm, and how it reshapes Southern Gothic atmosphere
- The final act’s controversial tonal shift—does the Klan shootout and 1990s epilogue work, or muddy the final notes?
Join us for a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred love letter to one of the year’s boldest films.
Film Sundries
- Aspect Ratios with Sinners Director Ryan Coogler
- Po’ Monkey’s
- Watch this on Apple or Amazon, or find other places at Letterboxd
- Theatrical trailer
