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This week we are reviewing Sinners, the 2025 supernatural horror drama written and directed by Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack — former Chicago gangsters who return to 1930s Mississippi to open a juke joint and build something of their own.
What starts as a story about hustle, music and community turns into something far darker when uninvited guests arrive after dark.
Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo and Miles Caton round out a cast that swept the Oscars, the BAFTAs and just about everything else in 2025.
Before the film, the Aussie's 25th wedding anniversary story. Both he and his wife independently booked Book of Mormon on the same night, same theatre. He spent the interval chasing the producers for a refund. He got it.
The Scotsman spent his own Book of Mormon trip plotting revenge after being told to slink down in his seat by a man who turned out to be six foot six. He did not slink.
On the film — and this is the split you came for. The Scotsman loved it. The Aussie did not.
Not slightly didn't love it. Actively hated it. Watched it on a plane with bad wi-fi, spent twenty minutes telling the flight attendant it was not a vampire film, and was still arguing the point when the red eyes appeared on screen. "Thank God that's over" were his final notes. He gives it one out of five.
The Scotsman watched the ending after the credits — which the Aussie missed entirely — then went back and watched half of it again the next day, and came out the other side giving it 4.4 out of five. "We are watching something rare," he says. "Something that good that we don't realise how good it is."
The Aussie's response: "You've lost credibility."
The Scotsman makes the case for the transcendent scene, the IMAX cinematography, the dual-format shooting, the blues record that started the whole thing.
The Aussie makes the case that vampires are stupid, the Lost Boys was also stupid, and that Michael B. Jordan flying through the air in a white singlet was the moment he checked out completely. "It's like Rocky 12 and they roll him out in a wheelchair."
To be fair to the Aussie, he did find things to like. The twin scenes are brilliant. The romantic scene between Smoke and his former lover — "Why don't you just say you don't want me?" — he calls the best scene in the film. The hustle of building the juke joint, the negotiation, the music. All of it lands. Right up until the vampires show up and he loses the will to continue.
The Scotsman's counter — that the vampires are simply a mechanism, a way of asking what would happen if something came for a community that was finally thriving — falls on completely deaf ears. "They shouldn't have used any of it. Just write a story." "That IS the story." Neither man moves an inch.
Rohan Reminisces covers the 2025 Oscars — Anora winning Best Picture, Adrien Brody taking Best Actor, Mikey Madison winning Best Actress. There is also a full rundown of every vampire film made since 1970. The Aussie has not enjoyed a single one of them.
Trivia: $90 to $100 million budget, $370 million gross and rising. Coogler negotiated ownership of the film outright in 2050 — a film about the theft of Black art, owned by its Black creator.
The cinematographer became the first woman in Oscar history to win Best Cinematography.
And finally — Coogler didn't start with a script. He started with a 1961 Howlin' Wolf recording of Wang Dang Diddle, a song about a community throwing a party for one night. He asked: what if those people were real? What if something came for them? Sixteen nominations. There is your answer.
Ratings: 1 out of 5 from the Aussie. 4.4 out of 5 from the Scotsman. Possibly the widest gap in the podcast's history.
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