"Sinners"

  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

There's an exhilarating rush that comes from watching Sinners and recognizing, in real time, that you're experiencing a movie that people will probably still be watching, talking about, analyzing and, most importantly, enjoying many decades from now. It's akin to the experience of watching Alien, The Exorcist or — and, yes, I think it's a fair comparison — Star Wars back in the 1970s. When you watch Sinners, it's clear you're watching something special.

Ryan Coogler's movie is deeply influenced by other films, which is hardly a criticism. Just as Alien was influenced by 1950s B movies and Star Wars was influenced by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, it's clear that Coogler has a lot of admiration for some wildly disparate films. Most notably, Steven Spielberg's 1985 The Color Purple and Robert Rodriguez's 1996 From Dusk Till Dawn come to mind, though Sinners is a movie steeped in film history, in American history, in African history, and in global myths and legends. It's easy to draw parallels, but in the end all the individual parts add up to something refreshingly, thrillingly new.

Constructed with remarkable care, Sinners takes its time introducing its big, sprawling cast of characters, and establishing the histories of its two leads: brothers Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan so convincingly and matter-of-factly it's easy to forget this is the same actor appearing with the aid of sophisticated visual effects.

The less you know about the story going in, the better, though it's both almost impossible not to be aware that this is a vampire movie. Sinners tells its story in such an absorbing way that it's easy to forget the quiet, rambling drama will turn into something else.

Along the way, it becomes something else yet again, in a stunning and impeccably realized scene that involves music, dance, history and grander themes of cultural assimilation that might feel indulgent and even out of place in a film made with less skill.

At every turn, Sinners surprises by becoming something it didn't seem at first to be. With the help of a remarkable cast that shines with every role — though none quite as brightly as Wunmi Mosaku, whose Annie is the magnificent (and unexpected) emotional core of the film — Sinners is a bold, unique and, fair warning, bloody and violent film with astonishing depth. Then, in its final moments, it becomes something else yet again, with a sequence that is presented as a "post-credit scene," but brings an entirely new kind of gravity and meaning to everything that's come before it.

We live in an age of exhausted filmmaking ennui, when everything has begun to look and feel depressingly the same. Now along comes Sinners to shock the system — which is does brilliantly. Let's hope the system responds.

Viewed April 25, 2025 — AMC Burbank 6

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"Drop"

 ☆☆☆½ 

Has there been a worse start to a year of movies than 2025? It's been a depressing year for anyone who likes movies but dislikes "content," which means I guess it's been a pretty good year if you want to spend your money going to see reheated remakes, retreads and CG-laden brand extensions. Searching for something with more substance? This has been an awful few months to do it.

Given that lousy state of affairs, it's easy to believe Drop feels as good and as exciting as it is because there are too few movies like it. Three decades ago, movies like Drop were a dime a dozen, now they're worth their weight in gold if only because of their scarcity.

But Drop isn't just good relatively — it's an uncommonly satisfying thriller, the kind of movie that makes you glad movies exist, not because of its artistic merits or its literary ambitions or its virtuosity, but because it really has none of those things. Drop just wants to entertain you, and it does that unusually well.

After seeing Drop, my head filled with questions, ranging from the general, non-spoiler kind (do people really play the "game" at the core of this movie?) to the incredibly specific, spoiler-filled kind, which I wouldn't dream of repeating here. But there are a lot of questions, some of which, it turns out, tear huge holes right through the story's plot.

And I don't care.

Drop does exactly what it sets out to do: Get us gripping the arm of our seat, or the arm next to us, and watching scenes through gritted teeth and half-closed eyes that can't quite take the suspense. And there's a lot of suspense. Despite what the movie's marketing wants you to believe, Drop isn't up there with Hitchcock, but it's at least up there with Stanley Donen, who made Charade.

The director here is Christopher Landon, whose other movies I haven't seen. In Drop, he and screenwriters Jillian Jacob and Chris Roach have created a crackling thriller that takes place almost entirely in one location — a swanky Chicago restaurant atop a high rise where single mom Violet (Meghann Fahy) has a first date with photographer Henry (Brendan Sklenar) that goes very, very wrong. Violet is targeted by what appears to be a prank — her phone is pummeled with messages urging her to play a game that seems suspiciously contrived. No matter. In short order, it's clear she's been targeted by someone very, very bad with even worse intentions.

It's a cat-and-mouse game caught inside a single-set location, all wound so tightly that there is barely time to breathe, much less question what's happening on screen. Even the preposterously overblown finale can't undo what's come before, in part because Fahy and Sklenar perform cinematic magic by getting us to believe in these characters. They're more than just pretty faces.

Whether the ultimate reveal of Drop is worth the wait is probably a bit suspect, but even there the movie doesn't pause long enough to let us overthink it. It's all wound tight, runs flawlessly, and entertains grandly. And after a movie year that has been this bad, any film that can do all those things is worth the price of admission. Drop most certainly is.

April 13, 2025 — AMC Topanga

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