Sinners (2025)
***/****
starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O’Connell
written and directed by Ryan Coogler
by Walter Chaw Movies used to make me feel all kinds of ways. Usually, it was Adrian Lyne’s fault. Fatal Attraction was unapologetic. Flashdance was unashamed. 9½ Weeks? Brothers and sisters, 9½ Weeks was a sin. Movies were everything to me once: friend, secret sharer, father confessor, mother, and, yes, lover, participating in the formation of my object choice and foundational in the encouragement of my onanism. I still feel a butterfly in the pit of my stomach thinking of the curtained room at the back of the video store–the stolen, lidded glances as I pretended to peruse the “Foreign” section. I think about how VHS brought the forbidden pleasures of grindhouses and peepshows into the middle-class living room of otherwise “traditional” nuclear families, tucked behind rows of hardbound books on respectable bookshelves or in the leather-clad storage ottoman set in the middle of the party, holding drinks and hiding corpses, perversely, in plain sight. “Help yourself to another cocktail wiener off the tray there, Father O’Shaughnessy.” Did you see No Way Out in a theatre when you were 14? How about Angel Heart? No? How about The Big Easy or Sea of Love? Ellen Barkin? No? I’m sorry to hear that.