'Sinners' vs. Spinners: Thoughts on the Film, Its Box Office, the Media Around It, and Why It's a Win for WB... and Variety

Happy Tuesday, folks! I know I’m posting late, but it is still Tuesday, right?

I’ll be back to weigh in on the last two days of news tomorrow morning, but tonight, I wanted to write about Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which I saw on Saturday night.

To be honest, I’ve been struggling with how to approach this newsletter, which is broken up into two parts below. I had writer’s block, and even a little bit of anxiety about publishing it, but I felt that Sinners demanded more than some tossed-off thoughts on Twitter, where one friendly user called me “a real-life Remmick” for daring not to worship at the altar of this movie.

Frankly, I’m just sick and tired of the hyperbole I see out my social media window every day. There’s simply no nuance online, where everything is either “amazing” or “it sucks.” Nothing is “just okay” anymore, because the internet demands that people take a side.

And which side do you think most people take?

Just this week, I’ve heard Sinners called “a masterpiece,” Season 2 of Andor called “phenomenal,” Marvel’s Thunderbolts* called “incredible,” and last Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us called “one of the greatest episodes of television ever.”

Who knew we were living in such a golden age of Hollywood?

And that’s what I take issue with. It’s not Sinners, so much as all the critics trying to make Coogler out to be the patron saint of cinema. He deserves credit, and I’m about to give him a lot of it below, but Sinners was not the second coming despite its Easter weekend release date.

I hate to be a hater, but every week, I watch the same people declaring one movie or TV show after another “the best” or “the greatest,” and while some of these raves may be genuine, they’re also nauseating.

What happened to discerning critics? Why do people on social media simply seek out those who validate their terrible taste? Why doesn’t anyone challenge themselves with opposing viewpoints anymore?

These are rhetorical questions, as I already know the answer. The answer to all of these questions is “fear.” The fear of being labeled a hater. The fear of thinking the wrong thing, or god forbid, saying it.

Well, I’m going to say it all below. If you follow me on Twitter, you already know how I felt about Sinners, but you don’t know why I felt that way. You’ll have a better understanding once you read my review, which precedes my box office analysis and what the performance of Sinners means for Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy at Warner Bros.

Brace yourselves, as I attempt to explain the impossible — how two opposing things can be true at once. How Sinners can, indeed, be framed as a “box office failure,” and simultaneously, a huge win for Coogler and Warner Bros., though Variety may have been the real winner this weekend, even though millions of people thought the trade was the biggest loser.

Regardless of how you may feel about Variety’s viral tweet, if you think it was the work of a racist, you may want to look at yourself in the mirror — unless you’re a vampire, of course. Then you’d be as invisible as the criticism surrounding this movie.

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