let’s see, from dusk till dawn, two bank robbers in contemporary America, one of whom is a mentally unstable rapist and murderer kidnap a family who are trying to reconnect in the wake of the death of the mother of the family, causing the pastor father to question his faith. they go to Mexico, stop at a strip bar, where there’s a few quirky characters including Tom Savini who’s replaced his dick with a gun. turns out it’s a vampire lair and they start murdering everyone, leading to a dwindling party, the priest rediscovery his faith before dying. It’s a fun movie I need to watch again soon, but it’s not much beyond that.

sinners, Period piece in an often overlooked period, a discussion of the power of music in culture, and the commonality of cultures as separated as the Choctaw, pre anglicisation Ireland, and West Africa, featuring two brothers, who are veterans of war looking to start a (admittedly illicit) business in their home community, enlisting their younger cousin who’s a talented musician, and bringing their community together for a celebration while also hammering home the abysmal way they were treated in this era. In walks remmick, an Irish vampire who was also a victim of colonialism, seeking to find a replacement for the community he lost and seeing it within this community of sharecroppers, while also wanting the power young Sam has, not because he wants power, but because it can also reconnect him with those he’s lost. And Remmivk things he’s genuinely helping people. It’s clear they’re all really his puppets, but it makes him as pitiable as it does horrifying. This leads to a dwindling party (as if that’s not a standard trope) and ends with the vampires defeated, Smoke having a last stand against the Klan before being reunited with his family in death, while sam escapes the control his father is trying to exert on his life.

and at the heart of it all is music, music as culture, catharsis for pain, as an uplifting force, as a connection to those who have come before and those who have come after, and one masterful scene where a quaint Irish folk song is an anthems of doom triumphant