Mar 19, 2026
Spiritually Speaking at the Movies, “Sinners” (Review 3/16/26), wins Best Actor award at the 2026 Oscars There are enough profound teachable moments in "Sinners" to give a Baptist preacher sermons for a year.
The question in life has always been — and the question “Sinners” will provoke — “How far will you go, until you realize you’ve gone too far?” This is what the story of redemption has always been as well; there is a way back from the roads best not travelled, the paths that led astray, desires leading to nothing but a whirlwind of dust.
And redemption from what, one may ask? The movie “Sinners” bluntly puts the answer right in the title. The film is full of them, these sinners. The characters say they are, and what they are, without fear. More like resignation. It used to be in movies you had to figure out that sin was the root, but in case you didn’t get that, they now tell you up front in the title.
We see them in their lives, these people. We hear them talking, interacting with others just like them. They live and move and have their being in this murky matrix of what they themselves call “sin.” In one way that is quite refreshing. At least you know what you’re dealing with before entering this world of characters, clashing over it all.
The story feels eerie the way an eclipse dims the light of the world making everything hazy and a bit surreal. I usually wonder during an eclipse, “What would it be like to live in this low light all the time?”
The same question occurs to me in the shacks and outbacks, the little towns of “Sinners”: This is what it would be like during the eclipse of the Son. We look right into that culture. It’s close up and personal. Do you want to live there? We experience a gratuitous invasion of privacy, rude and crude. It’s enough to send warnings tingling up the spine to the brain: “Go here to your peril. Run away.”
There is no way to advise you to “Go see Sinners” or “It’s a bad thing to put in your brain.” Seeing it will convince you one way or the other: “I don’t want to live in a world like this,” or, “looks good to me.” I chose the former.
There is some saying, somewhere, dimly recalled about the separating of the sheep and the goats. That’s “Sinners.” See it to your peril — or satisfaction — and wonder how you got there.
Rated R, 2h17m, Horror/Mystery and Thriller/Drama. Directed by Ryan Coogler.