I overheard a lot of fuss about Sinners when it came out, and I have finally just gotten around to watching it. And yeah, I get it.
Tbh, I don't really have a ton to say. From my perspective, it's just doing a small set of core things really really well.
It's a vampire monster movie, but it spends like, the first 60% of the movie with fully no monsters on the screen. It's just some dudes getting stuff together for the juke joint's grand opening. It rules, it's always super interesting. It builds every character up, and you learn the ways they all interplay and it's just wonderful. Another big chunk is them figuring out what the problem is, convincing everyone of that, preparing the defenses, picking the fight they think they might win. A small portion of this monster movie has monster but it's still so good. Because yeah, there's that buildup to it but also all that character writing works so well.
You get the musical scene and I can't describe that. Just go watch it, it's good. The whole movie is shot in a super wide aspect ratio, and in this scene (and some others) the top and bottom expand into iMax 4:3. When it does it here, I did not notice until reflection and later repeat viewings of the scene. The first time it happened, I was just so into the moment I couldn't tell. Moment to moment is just paced perfectly.
The effects between Smoke and Stack are just wild. They are both played by Michael B Jordan, and I didn't think about that until I saw it in the credits. I just thought they where actual twins or something. Their first shot together, they pass a cigarette back and forth between the two of them, they touch each other all the time, they have a really physical and close-quarters fight scene. The craft of it is so incredible. I didn't think about it in the slightest, it just feels perfect. As a viewer, there is nothing to get caught on, it's flawless. Magic.
The score is kinda funny to me. When the vampire is doing his thing, there's this organ motif that plays and it kinda sounds like stock spooky halloween music but the production on it is just right and the timing and everything so it feels fun and goofy and also genuinely intimidating. The whole movie is just so gleeful to me as a monster movie.
This movie rules, and it deserves every bit of hype it got. Other people will have more to say about it than I, and you should listen to them because while I enjoyed it, it did not hit me in a profound way.