Don’t sin here, don’t surf here
April was a bit of a cinematic dry spell for me and that’s due to two reasons.
The first is that HBO’s current Monday programming (that includes The Rehearsal) has not only provided a regular routine but the desire to fall once more into the discomfiting arms of Nathan For You, which has been replacing evenings normally allocated to getting my Letterboxd numbers up.
The second is that the almost total annihilation of big studio media screenings in Perth now means I have to see new releases the way average cinema goers do – by getting a short term loan to cover the ticket price and hoping the film is worth the cost of fuel.
As such, I took a punt on Sinners. And I’m delighted to report that it was money well spent.
Sinners — Ryan Coogler
Double the Michael B. Jordan, double the musical fanfare of From Dusk Till Dawn (although I am partial to some Tito & Tarantula), Sinners is the much hyped new film from writer/director Ryan Coogler that pits Mississipians against vampires and the blues against Irish folk music played by bloodthirsty hillbillies. And it’s a damned good time at the movies.
Mississippi, 1932. Twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Mikey BJ, a name I’ve patented) are World War 1 vets who’ve been working for an Italian American organisation of questionable legality in Chicago. Using their earnings from this gig, they return home and buy an old sawmill off a KKK leader, with plans to set it up as a juke joint for the black community.
Stack’s old flame is Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a mixed race woman who passes for white. Smoke's is occultist Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), estranged since they lost their only child. Their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton in his feature debut) happens to be a blues prodigy, so they’ve got some good talent to add to the setlist. But the blues, as Sammie’s preacher father and the intro animation tell us, can attract evil.
And so evil comes a’ knocking in the form of Remmick (Skins’ Jack O’Connell), a vampire hell bent on entering the juke joint and recruiting new creatures of the night. Having terrorised a farm nearby and recently turned its two Klansmen inhabitants, he hears Sammie’s playing and is unwittingly summoned.
As we all know, vampires must be explicitly invited inside a dwelling (they may be bitey but rude they are not), and Remmick is unlikely to garner such an invitation due to being white but moreso, due to being creepy as fuck. As the night and the festivities go on, the juke joint’s party must be wary of those on the outside, especially as they start to infiltrate those on the inside.
What elevates Sinners above your standard supernatural action flick is the inventiveness of its story and the deftness with which Coogler strings its themes together. On paper, a period vampire horror drama featuring the blues, the KKK and the occult should be an absolute mess, but in this film every element just makes sense.
The scene that best illustrates this (and that everyone is talking about) is on opening night when Sammie plays and conjures spirits from the past, present and future all in the one dancehall, with composer and Coogler alum Ludwig Göransson somehow blending the blues, Hendrix-style rock and early hip hop into a harmonious, jaw dropping sequence for the ages.
Then, with blood smeared all down his front and eyes glowing in the dark, Remmick leads a procession of turned minions to ‘Rocky Road to Dublin’. I think he even does a little Michael Flatley jig in the mud. It slaps so hard that it brings back memories of trying to imitate The Lord of the Dance when I was little and failing, but having a jolly good time regardless.
And there are plenty of other examples throughout Sinners of the music evoking more than just toe tapping. Göransson won Academy Awards for his work on Black Panther and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and if he doesn’t win one for this, I shall be very put out.
As far as performances, Michael B. Jordan is really, really good. In an opening scene where Smoke and Stack pass a cigarette back and forth, it’s established that this isn’t a gimmick but two distinctly different characters that happen to be inhabited by the same actor. There are costuming differences to make the distinction easier on the audience but they’re really not needed; it’s clear who’s who at every moment, particularly when the brothers are interacting with their significant others. Having only seen him in Black Panther and episodes of The Wire I’d been sleeping on his star power a bit. No longer.
The supporting performances are all top notch too, with Wunmi Mosaku as Annie and Delroy Lindo as endearing drunk pianist Delta Slim being particular standouts. Miles Caton’s voice really is entrancing and it’s completely believable that he could summon powers beyond our realm. Sinners gives him the most enviable platform a young musician could ask for and I’ll be surprised if it’s the last we see of him.
Sinners is an original IP that’s become a phenomenon everywhere but here. It’s playing in IMAX in the eastern states but in Perth, Western Australia we could only find it on a standard screen at 9:15pm last Saturday night in a Hoyts near us. Whether all the Xtreme and VMax screens were taken up by Minecraft that weekend, I can’t say. But I do think it’s a travesty and I do hope WA gets the memo soon that this is the kind of blockbuster people should see on the big screen.
Verdict
☆☆☆☆½
Speaking of WA, did you know that Nicolas Cage woz ere?
The Surfer — Lorcan Finnegan
In a WA rite of passage, Nic 1800 Reverses his mum after all his shit is stolen from the beach.
It took two Irishmen to get him here but everyone’s favourite former Coppola did indeed come to Yallingup to film The Surfer, the new psychological thriller from director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Thomas Martin.
Brilliantly described by The Backlot’s Caleb as “Cage in Fright”, The Surfer is about a former Australian and current American surfer (known only as The Surfer) who returns to his hometown with ambitions of buying his beachside family home, only to face strong antagonism from the town’s locals.
He’s copping it from all angles here; no one likes Americans at the best of times but the locals of this unnamed Australian town especially don’t like Americans who drive fancy cars and try to buy property when it could instead be snapped up by a local family. His real estate agent dodges his calls, the barista at the beach coffee stand won’t let him charge his phone and the local cop seems to be supportive of all the general antisocial behaviour.
But the group that likes him the least are the local surf gang who are headed by a guru of sorts named Scally, ironically played by former Australian and current American Julian McMahon (from Nip/Tuck, remember?). They’re a tight knit crew who enjoy strange blokey rituals on the beach and bullying a homeless man who lives out of his broken down Subaru in the beach carpark.
It’s surreal, entertaining and oftentimes quite funny, especially considering the containment of the story in this one poorly outfitted carpark atop the dunes. A weird harp scores the events as The Surfer increasingly finds himself in a state outside of time and helpful technology. Throughout the film we see Nicolas Cage do what Nicolas Cage does best: descend into a paranoid state of delusion and dehydration while flinging rodents around and wondering out loud why the fuck all this is happening.
But this is not the Cage of The Wicker Man or Vampire’s Kiss; his performance here actually does make sense contextually and it never distracts from the other elements of the film. Perhaps it’s the contrast of his classic American sensibilities against caricatured Australians but his actions, rather than seeming over the top, are actually quite rational in response to the predicaments in which he finds himself.
I enjoyed Julian McMahon as the enigmatic antagonist in his vibrant towel hoodie but I did find his performance slightly distracting; his jaw remains so clenched (probably to stop the Australian accent from slipping past his teeth) that all I could focus on was watching for any slip ups. There are a few, and it stings a bit to witness the loss of an Australian accent, especially to make way for an American hybrid dialect.
The Surfer has the obligatory associations with Wake in Fright and Point Break (due mostly to its commonalities of outsiders in Australia and outsiders infiltrating surfing) but for me, the paranoia it evokes is most similar to Finnegan’s 2019 suburban nightmare Vivarium. Here, he’s swapped the claustrophobic confines of a UK housing estate for the desert-like mania of sand, sun and xenophobia in an isolated country known for great beaches and supposed mateship.
When the credits rolled on The Surfer I initially felt a little ‘meh’ about it. I was a little too focused on the ‘Australia as viewed by a non-Australian’ angle and, ironically, I think it influenced my take on the film.
That’s not what we’re like, I thought.
In the days following, I’ve been revisiting its scenes in my head and remembering comments I’ve seen from foreigners in Facebook groups about Perth unfriendliness and South West locals’ anti-tourist sentiment. I think it kinda is what we’re like, sometimes. And maybe I just needed to see my beloved Nicolas Cage go through some shit to realise.
Verdict
☆☆☆½
The Surfer opens in select cinemas nationally on May 15 and streams on STAN from June 15.
In some good news, the cinematic dry spell is ending; this week, we’ve got screenings for The Salt Path and the encouragingly named Clown in a Cornfield, so I shall return with a few words on those next Sunday. Until then, I’ll continue perplexing everyone at my gym by turning my phone sideways and watching Nathan For You on the treadmill. They’re just jealous, I’m sure.
