12.

Sinners

director and writer: Ryan Coogler

Here is my full review from December.

11.

Nickel Boys

director: RaMell Ross | writers: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes (adapting the novel by Colson Whitehead)

What I posted here after I saw this film for the first time:

• Atticus Finch would love the cinematography in Nickel Boys. Why? The whole film plants us firmly in the shoes of strangers whose stories are essential for anyone seeking wisdom and truth about American history and that as-yet-unfulfilled promise of “liberty and justice for all.”
  
  It’s an audacious move by director RaMell Ross (whose absence from the Best Director list on this year’s Oscar Nominations list is going to become one of the Academy’s lasting embarrassments). He directs his cinematographer Jomo Fray to bring a grace reminiscent of video artist Khalil Joseph to this adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel. Focusing primarily on first-person POV, Ross and Fray draw us into a remarkable intimacy with the film’s two central characters, Elwood and Turner, both African American boys sent into suffering at an abusive and ultimately murderous Florida boarding school in the 1960s.
  
  And what we see is harrowing because it rings true. Elwood, horrified by the flagrant racism happening right out in the open at the boarding school, rants at his friend Turner: “If everybody looks the other way, then everybody’s in on it. If I look the other way, I’m as implicated as the rest.” When Turner doesn’t respond, Elwood adds, “It’s not how it's supposed to be.” Turner’s sharp reply gets to the heart of their hurt: “Don't nobody care about s’posed to be. The fix’s always been in — game is rigged.”
• Nickel Boys becomes one of the most beautiful depictions of friendship between young men I’ve seen at the movies, and it’s also an occasion of mandatory truth-telling about white Americans’ ongoing sins against their brown and black family members in the kingdom of God. But what sets this film apart from so many other films about the horrors of racism is how it inspires us to love these characters, framing them in ways that show us their joys and their gifts. This film shows me what I feel was largely missing from Moonlight: Rather than focusing primarily on the misery of injustice, Nickel Boys allows Elwood and Turner to be fully human characters: nuanced and smart and funny and good.
  
  I particularly enjoyed this Letterboxd post from Gideon Patrick and the (spoiler-ish) comments that follow it, and also this one from Caleb Villa (who commented on Patrick’s). (Also: Brandon Streussnig has posted twice with strong observations.)

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