April 25-May 1, 2025

Hello, friends! 

This week, the heartwarming singer-songwriter comedy-drama The Ballad of Wallis Island continues as does Ryan Coogler’s stunning new film, Sinners. And while my practice has been to write about a film in my newsletter only in its opening week with us–not its subsequent weeks–I find I must say a few more words about Sinners here in week two. I’ve seen it twice now, and it only grows in my estimation:

Sinners is a truly unique work, where Coogler’s immense talent and his sensibilities in both the arthouse realm and the commercial realm are brought to bear: it’s a film that has all the sensitivity, nuance, and depth of his arthouse feature film debut, Fruitvale Station, and it’s a film that has all the expansive bigness of a Marvel Universe commercial hit, like his film Black Panther. Because it is a film, then, that should be equally at home in a place like Cannes as it is on a big IMAX screen, it’s really no surprise that the marketing for the film simply does not capture what the film itself is, in all its beautiful complexity. Understandably, Warner Bros., the distributing studio, chose to market the film to a big, commercial audience: the trailer, the poster, the widely available stills from the film all indicate that Sinners is a violent, action, horror film, a film that perhaps would most appeal to a younger demographic who loves a scary movie–heavy on the thrills, light on the thematic depth. 

And if you have not seen the film yourself and are not planning to, you’ve perhaps said to yourself, “Vampires? Horror? Bloody violence? Not for me!” And, indeed, the marketing alone will have certainly led most to believe that that’s all the film is. 

If so, allow me to make a case, then, that this is, in fact, a film for you. And it is so much more than what the marketing for it has so narrowly captured. As Linda Holmes for NPR noted last Friday on Bluesky, “I will join the chorus of people telling you that SINNERS is an extraordinary film. I’m not a big horror person or a big vampire person, and I will be absolutely shocked if it’s not among my very favorite movies of the year. See it in a theater, with a crowd, on the biggest screen you can find.”  

Indeed, Sinners, as my Pickford colleague Lesley aptly put it, “is not a ‘vampire movie’; it is a movie withvampires.”  Likewise, it is not really a horror movie; it is a movie that uses some elements of horror to expand upon something else, something very rich and very deep and touching on multifaceted aspects of American society and history, particularly racial history and the place of music–especially blues music–in that history. And while you may have seen Michael B. Jordan on the poster and you may know he (brilliantly) plays a dual role of twin brothers in the film, you may not know that a character named Sammie–played by a jaw-dropping Miles Caton (a young prodigy, a musician-singer who turned actor for this film)–is a co-lead with Jordan. And it is Sammie’s story that places blues music as the beating heart of the film, an exploration of the meaning and power of music within the Black community in segregated Jim Crow Mississippi, where notions of “freedom” and “equality” seem to be just that, notional, not actual. 

And you might well ask how vampires come into all of this. Indeed, the first hour of the film, settles us so beautifully into the 1930’s period setting, you might forget it’s a film with vampires at all. But when the vampires do come – drawn by the power of Sammie’s music and the celebration, freedom, and joy it invokes – those vampires bring all the richness and complexity of the metaphor Coogler is exploring to bear on the film, and it is, truly, breathtaking. 

To say too much more would be to spoil the film, but I will note a few more things. There have been any number of masterful films detailing what it means to be Black in America – I know many of you as Pickford patrons have appreciated and loved films like Selma, Harriet, Origins, Get Out, Do the Right Thing, BlacKKKlansman, and Coogler’s own Fruitvale Station, to name just a handful – but there has never yet been a film like this, a film that is so deeply personal for the director (Coogler details some of that in his Fresh Air interview here) and a film that is so expansive and yet specific in its exploration of racial history and racialized trauma and the joy of Black music. 

Warner Bros. wasn’t wrong, exactly, in their marketing – Sinners is a rip-roaring blockbuster that certainly contains some bloody action, a blockbuster in fact, that so many people flocked to in commercial cinemas over the weekend that Coogler wrote a moving thank you letter to audiences (you can read it here). 

But it is also a film for those at independent cinemas like ours: for it is a film that not only offers us the heights of cinematic virtuosity – a visual feast for the eyes and a sonic and musical delight for the ears (you’ll come out of the film vibrating with the music)  – but a film that understands audiences deserve movies that have something to say, too, movies that leave us with a richer understanding of our world and of ourselves. Sinners is exactly that. 

I can understand why there might be some hesitation in seeing a film like this, but I’d urge you to consider taking a chance. I suspect, come Oscar season, if there is any justice in the world, this film will garner some nominations, and you’ll want to have seen it now,  especially while Sinners is still in theaters, the setting in which it was meant to be experienced.

In addition to Sinners, The Encampments, which will be playing for a limited run this week, is also with us here at the Pickford. It's an extraordinary documentary I was able to see for its world premiere at the CPH: DOX festival in Copenhagen last month, and it was a particularly moving experience partly because the (young and incredibly talented) filmmakers were present and because many university students from Denmark were in the audience and were able to share their personal experiences about protests on their own campuses. 

Embedded with the students at Columbia University in the spring of 2024, the filmmakers tell the story in The Encampments of those who formed the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and who eventually sparked national and international campus protests. And notably, it chronicles the ways in which the universities responded, with arrests and suppression, rather than dialogue. 

The Encampments, a film that is in large part about the American right to free speech and protest, has become an even more urgent and important documentary, particularly in the wake of the arrest last month of Mahmoud Khalil, who is one of the key participants chronicled in the film. And indeed, because of the arrest of Khalil, the filmmakers scrapped their plans to do a slow roll out of The Encampments in U.S. festivals and instead opted to release it immediately for a theatrical run this month. Though Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and has not been charged with any crime, the current administration insists Khalil should be deported, and he is currently imprisoned, barred even from being with his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, while she gave birth to their first child. The film, as it intimately follows the measured and soft-spoken Khalil and his fellow students, allows audiences to see for themselves whether such actions against Khalil and the encampment organizers -- and the media narratives that spread about them – are just and truthful. 

It's a film that is a must-watch, an essential and rare document of our time, telling a story that was not fully or comprehensively told by the major news outlets. 

Finally, a couple of quick notes about our two key event films this week: First, Zeppelin fans, rejoice! We’ve got Becoming Led Zeppelin, a terrific documentary and a rare look at the band’s beginnings. Manohla Dargis wrote in her NYT review, "A hagiographic look at the group’s beginnings, the movie is as straightforward as it is headbangingly diverting. A smooth assemblage of new and archival material, it introduces Led Zep’s own fab four — Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboard) and John Bonham (drums) — and sketches in their background, revisiting how they got into music and joined forces."  

You’ve got two chances to see Becoming Led Zeppelin: Saturday evening at 8:20 pm and Monday at 5:45 pm.  We’ll see you there! 

Second and finally, I’m thrilled to say our new Takahata series begins this month, a unique opportunity within our ongoing Cinema East series, to watch five feature films from Takahata Isao every Thursday in May.  

We’ll begin with the unutterably moving and beautiful Grave of the Fireflies. Watch out for Cinema East curator Jeff Purdue’s newsletter this Sunday, introducing Grave of the Fireflies, but briefly for now: the film is based on a semi-autobiographical short story and set during WWII, and it follows young Seita and his little sister Setsuko, “two children born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and now cast adrift in a world that lacks not the care to shelter them, but simply the resources. Forced to fend for themselves in the aftermath of fires that swept entire cities from the face of the earth, their doomed struggle is both a tribute to the human spirit and the stuff of nightmares.” 

It is a profound film, and my first experience of watching it is one I’ll never forget: there are few films like it, in its beauty and sorrow, and I am deeply grateful for the chance to host it on the big screen.  Join us, Thursday, May 1 at either 11:00 am or 7:45 pm. 

See you at the movies, friends!

Melissa