Just watched this and outside of some good performances and a couple standout scenes, I thought it was kind of a mess tbh
Sinners (2025, Ryan Coogler) Damn seeing them brothers in the suits makes me want to revisit the worst Outkast album. HYB vibes carry the film up to the musical climax, which stands far and away as the best part of the movie. A mesmerising depiction of how culture connects us throughout change and evolution and is worth watching for that alone. Afterwards it falls into some genre problems. Vampire rules are inherently goofy; you gotta create interesting ways to handle or change them. It starts well but to get through the action we run into some unfortunate chiches and plot contrivances. Theres an unnecessary amount of cgi. It's not that hard to put a rattlesnake on a truck bed, not sure why but the landscape/car scenes looked fake. Generally not a fan of the same actor playing 2 characters, it's mostly done well here but it's always more enjoyable to just cast 2 actors and let them have scenes together with real chemistry. In Adaptation Cage plays twins but they are spiritually disconnected so instead of fighting against the shots it adds to the theme, Sinners has shots that feel like watching a work around. Loved the ending, a very cool move to switch back from the fantasy and hit an Inglorious homage. I'm glad they pulled out from the cigarette finish because cigarettes are gross.
the only cgi that bothered me was when they were driving in the car through the cotton fields. It was blatantly obvious they were using the volume or equivalent
I had a girlfriend about 15 years ago who hated Nicolas Cage. You could tell most of her knowledge came from stuff like YouTube compilations of the paycheck movies he has done. She made me watch all the Twilight movies so I was very excited when I could say "you know how you don't like Cage? Here he is twice!"
I had a girlfriend a similar amount of time ago rent the cage version of The Wicker Man because she thought it was supposed to be really scary and I was like didn’t you see the YouTube clips?
If you people keep complaining about CGI they are going to give us AI. The grass isn't always greener.
The multi-dimensional / multi-cultural music montage scene of this sent me to another orbit. Months later, I still can’t stop talking about it. So glad I saw that in a theatre.