A supernatural thriller, a fake marriage, a drama set in Palestine and a French comedy — all are in cinemas this weekend, exploring ideas about politics and power in very different ways. Here are four of the weekend's buzziest movies.
Sinners
In theaters Friday
This trailer includes one instance of vulgar language.
Filmmaker Ryan Coogler and his frequent leading man, Michael B. Jordan, have made some remarkably successful films — Fruitvale Station, a Creed boxing movie, Marvel's Black Panther. But you'd have to say they've doubled down on their collaboration in this blues-inflected supernatural thriller. Jordan plays both Smoke and Stack, twin brothers who have seen Al Capone's Chicago and the trenches of World War I — and in 1932, have returned to their dirt-poor Mississippi hometown to open a juke joint. They aim to harness the power of the blues — a power that Smoke's ex, Annie, a spiritual healer, says they should be careful with. There are legends, she tells them, of people who make music so true it conjures spirits from the past and the future, and pierces the veil between life and death. Smoke's not overly concerned, not having seen any demons in his travels so far.
That will change, but before it does, Coogler unleashes a blues spectacle for the ages. The preacher's son Sammie, played by newcomer Miles Caton, begins what will turn into a stomping, soaring, shiver-inducing set in which he summons all those spirits. In one glorious sequence — one sweeping shot, in fact — he and the jitterbugging sharecroppers are joined by West African ceremonial dancers, hip-hoppers, funk guitarists. It's as if he's conjured all of this music's ancestors and descendants and summoned them to this juke joint, on this night. It's mesmerizing, a literal "barn burner" of a number. And as Annie predicted, it also pierces that veil and attracts some folks who shouldn't be here — folks with eyes that glow red and skin that's unnaturally pale. And when they're turned away, they lie in wait, fangs bared, for anyone who wanders outside.
We've shifted genres here, and Coogler proves just as adept with horror tropes as he's been with music ones. At times in Sinners, he seems to be simultaneously channeling Jordan Peele and Quentin Tarantino to come up with something uniquely his own. Something blood-drenched and music-besotted, that's about performance, sure, but also about power and prejudice.
Sinners is concerned with saving not just a man's soul, but a community's, and — with a cast this diverse and spellbinding in IMAX — maybe about saving Hollywood's, too.
The Wedding Banquet
In theaters Friday
Andrew Ahn's update of Ang Lee's groundbreaking 1993 gay rom-com relocates the story from Manhattan to Seattle. One of the original film's screenwriters, James Schamus, is on hand to help shepherd not one, but two LGBTQ+ couples through a reimagining of the original's premise — a faked marriage for the benefit of clueless parents — that feels fresh in an age of relaxed queer sexuality, gay marriage and understanding relatives while honoring the underlying family dynamics that made it work the first time.
A sharp cast helps put the new material across — Saturday Night Live's Bowen Yang and Korean heartthrob Han Gi-chan play Chris and Min, a gay couple living in the well-appointed garage of their lesbian pals Lee and Angela (Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran). Lee and Angela are undergoing IVF treatments to have a child, so far without success. The older generation is represented by Joan Chen as Angela's over-invested mom, and Minari Oscar-winner Youn Yuh Jung as Min's stern Korean grandmother, who takes about two minutes to see through the scheme, before insisting that they play it through for reasons of her own.
The Teacher
In theaters now
Palestinian teens Yacoub, who's just back from prison, and little brother Adam (Muhammad Abed El Rahman) return home from high school classes one day to confront Israeli soldiers who are guarding a crew that's tearing down their home. Then Israeli settlers burn their olive grove, and kill Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakr) when he tries to stop them. The family hires a lawyer. "Have some hope," teacher Basem (Saleh Bakri) tells Adam, "and hold onto it." But as Basem well knows, that's hard.
Adam later sees Basem hiding an Israeli hostage who's being traded for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, and their fates become intertwined. Lisa (Imogen Poots) is another teacher trying to save Adam from his grief, and Basem from himself. Writer-director Farah Nabulsi ratchets up the tension, as well as the pain as she tells a story that was filmed before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks, and Israel's military response. She's given events a neatness and symmetry that seems unlikely in real life, but there's truth in the emotional trauma.
The President's Wife
In theaters Friday
In this inconsequential but comic French biopic, the title character's hair and wardrobe are styled a bit like those of former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and she's forever enduring fallout from a philandering husband's affairs. But Catherine Deneuve is playing the spouse of an entirely different president — Jacques Chirac, who led France from 1995 to 2007. Outspoken and a good deal sharper politically than her husband and his advisors, Deneuve's Bernadette is accustomed to being sidelined and ignored both by her husband and the press. But when Princess Diana is killed in a car crash in Paris, and the president (a grumpy Michel Vuillermoz) is embarrassingly absent — until he's located pre-dawn in the company of an Italian actress — Bernadette decides she's had enough.
Assigned a PR man who's supposed to soften her image, she instead teams up with him to step out of the president's shadow politically, socially, and emotionally. She begins hitting nightclubs with boy-band members, dissing her husband's nemesis Nicolas Sarkozy (Laurent Stocker) and generally coming into her own. It's all treated lightly and without a shred of angst, and Deneuve — serene and bemused by the various idiocies she has to confront — is just the icon to pull it off.
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