‘Sinners’ & ‘Riff Raff’ Explore Family, Fatherhood & Violence: At The Movies With Kasey
Sinners made a big splash at the theaters before coming to Max for streaming. The mid-summer timing of this debut fits the atmosphere of the film perfectly. As the events unfold over one day, the film beautifully captures both the beauty of a summer afternoon and the sticky, claustrophobic feeling of a hot night.
Set in 1932 in Mississippi, Sinners focuses on identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan), who return home from Chicago to start a juke joint in an abandoned sawmill they bought from a member of the KKK with money they stole from gangsters. Even after all that, the real problem on their hands is going to be vampires. Anyway, to help with the grand opening, they enlist a talented guitarist, Sammie (Miles Caton), grocers Grace and Bo Chow (Li Jun Li and Yao), Smoke’s love, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), and a bouncer named Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller). As the party gets started, Stack’s ex-girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), arrives and, unfortunately, so does Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish-immigrant vampire.
Sinners is gorgeously filmed, capturing a real sense of time and place. With sweeping shots of cotton fields and canopies of trees, the landscape feels wide open, with the menacing presence of racial violence also implied. Interesting visuals also depict how music transcends the moment, a theme that I wish had been more clearly emphasized.
In general, the writing draws on several themes around family, racism, and music that it tries to tie together through the plot of vampires. Vampires come with a lot of their own baggage, representing transgression and the threat of outsiders. I think Sinners uses the monster intriguingly to depict tensions between white immigrants and Black sharecroppers, undercut by the fact that the KKK is also a monster, but these themes do not quite come together as tightly as they should. It’s like the sauce needed to reduce just a bit more.
Nevertheless, the beautiful visuals, thrilling plot, and cheeky sense of humor are elevated by wonderful performances. Twice the Michael B. Jordan can’t be a bad thing, but it was perhaps too difficult to tell the twin brothers apart. Maybe one of them should have had a scar. Wunmi Mosaku gives a powerful performance as a woman who is tough and capable while also grieving. And Hailee Steinfeld plays a complicated part in the unfolding story with nuance and humor.
You can still see Sinners in theaters, and the art direction warrants it, but this film is also plenty of fun for a summer movie night at home.
Sinners was written and directed by Ryan Coogler. It runs 137 minutes and is rated R.
In Riff Raff, former criminal Vincent (Ed Harris) has cleaned up his life with his new wife, Sandy (Gabrielle Union), and her son, DJ (Miles J Harvey). Then, his son, Rocco (Lewis Pullman), shows up in the middle of the night with his very pregnant girlfriend, Marina (Emanuela Postacchini), and his heavily sedated mother, Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge), Vincent’s first wife. The reunion is unwelcome, and Vincent is sure that Rocco is in trouble. Sure enough, an old feud, Lefty (Bill Murray) and his associate, Lonnie (Pete Davidson), are on Rocco’s tail, ready to avenge the death of his son, Johnnie (Michael Angelo Covino).
Allegedly, Riff Raff is a comedy. If you look at the cast, you would expect it to be funny. It’s not. In terms of drama, the storyline has all the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy–old feuds revived, tension between fathers and sons, deaths avenged, and wives cast away. But the uneven writing fails to capitalize on all that juicy material.
This weak writing wastes an incredible cast. Jennifer Coolidge is criminally underused, with her character too drugged or drunk to leave space for her comedic talents. Similarly, the wonderful Gabrielle Union is little more than set dressing in her underdeveloped role. Bill Murray does not appear to be trying, and in contrast, Ed Harris seems like he is acting his heart out in a different film than whatever this was supposed to be. For some reason, the screenplay gives narrator duties to DJ, one of the characters with the least perspective.
Although Miles J Harvey is cute in the role, there is so much about the story that DJ is not privy to; it does not make any sense for him to narrate. Lewis Pullman and Emanuela Postacchini create the emotional heart of the film as lovers on the run, but everything around them is so dull that I suspect they merely shine by comparison.
This movie has a lot of problems. The first half provides such a meandering setup that I was surprised when, about an hour in, I was drawn into the family drama. The conclusion was sort of exciting, and I did want to know how it all came together, but that is a pretty meager reason to watch a movie with such star power behind it.
Riff Raff was written by John Pollono and directed by Dito Montiel. It runs 103 minutes and is rated R. It is streaming on Hulu.
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