somewhere i have never travelled

Sinners (2025). Twin brothers return from organized crime in Chicago to open an all-Black juke joint in their hometown in Mississipi with their cousin Sammie playing the blues as entertainment, and then vampires.

I held off reviewing this after I saw it the first time because I wanted to process and see it again, and honestly after seeing a second time I don't know what I can possibly add to what's already been said. This is an absolutely gorgeous movie, amazing music, all the acting is great, all the relationships are compelling. Director Ryan Coogler has packed so many interesting historical angles and so many themes that it's a challenge to unpack them all, but a fun challenge. I am especially compelled by all the depictions of religion, Christan and otherwise, and how that intersects with the spiritual power of music as depicted in the film.

Some bits I particularly liked:
- The Chinese immigrants running stores in the Mississippi delta
- The difficult and heart-breaking situation of Hailee Steinfeld's character, who is one-eight Black
- How much Ryan Coogler loves cunnilingus
- Stack's hand tremors, presumably from WWI nerve gas
- How incredibly shippy the MBJ twins are. "You're the best part of me" and "I'm nothing without you." !!!
- The fact that it's set in 1932 and the Depression isn't mentioned even once, presumably because these people's lives were already scraped to the bone. (This movie has got to be Coogler's response to O Brother Where Art Thou, right? Also set in Mississippi during the depression, also full of diagetic music, also featuring the Klan, there's even a scene here driving along the road passing a chain gang. The Black blues player in that movie could BE Sammie Moore from Sinners; even the timeline would line up okay.)

Anyway, this movie is incredible. You absolutely should see it.

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Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021). German psychedelic horror(?) film. The official one-line blurb is something like "A couple visit the rundown castle they've inherited and become trapped in the reality that only exists within its walls," which sounds very cosmic horror, and I guess maybe it's not NOT that? But boy is it a lot of other things too. There might be reincarnating gods? At one point ( spoiler ) and then there's another hour of movie.

It's very low-budget and definitely not what I came for, but it's a trip. Comps might be Triangle if it gave up on trying to make sense or, from a different angle, A Bucket of Blood (1959). If this sounds like your jam, it's worth giving a try.

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Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025). A young woman visiting the grand opening of Not The Space Needle in the 60s has a premonition of disaster and saves the lives of everyone there; decades later, her granddaughter starts have recurring nightmares of that night and realizes that death is coming for her and all her family members who should never have been born.

This is my first FD movie, which I saw solely on the logic that it was free (or "free," because I have a Regal subscription) and I needed something fun and cheesy. And this was indeed that! All the characters were reasonably likeable, and some of the deaths were quite inventive. This movie makes a LOT of hay out of body piercings, and the entire sequence with the MRI machine was inspired. I also really enjoyed everything with the long opening sequence in the 60s and found the young woman very charming. That was probably my favorite part of the movie, actually.

I would not say this was a good movie. For one thing, I have become That Horror Fan, because I found a lot of the CGI pretty annoying and kept wishing for some practical effects for the deaths. I also was entirely unpersuaded by the poor man's version of Laurie Strode and family from Halloween 2018. The generational trauma was all tell, no show, and even the plot logistics with the grandma didn't make a lot of sense given other information we have.

Still, yeah, a cheesy fun time.