Sinners star Michael B. Jordan is the second actor in film history to be Oscar-nominated for playing twin brothers. He plays the Smokestack twins, the older Elijah “Smoke” Moore and the younger Elias “Stack” Moore, both of them skillful at cunnilingus.
The first dual-character performance to be Oscar-nominated (and, so far, the only one to win an actual statuette) was, of course, Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou (’65). He played the comically alcoholic gunslinger Kid Shelleen as well as Shellen’s tin-nosed brother Tim Strawn, who was also played for chuckles.
My God…a bolt-of-lightning perception just hit me! Sinners could have not only hit the jackpot but also become an artistically bulletproof film if — I’m getting the chills just typing this — director-screenwriter Ryan Coogler had decided to treat the material with a comedic attitude…if he’d shot it like a black comedy.
The moral current about rural old-South racism and KKK yokels wouldn’t have been diluted in the slightest if he had. Ditto the musical portions and the ties to the legend of Robert Johnson and the Delta blues. Ditto the cunnilingus sex scenes. But the over-the-top vampire stuff would have played much better if Coogler had gone for laughs. Cat Ballou meets From Dusk to Dawn, something in that vein.