With just five movies, Ryan Coogler has already established himself as one of the most talented and influential filmmakers of his generation. The fact that he is so young – he has yet to turn 40 – and has so many movies ahead of him, makes his promise even more exciting.
Coogler’s latest – a period-western-slash-gangster-movie-slash-vampire-chiller called “Sinners” cements himself in this rarified stratum. It’s his first original movie since his debut in 2013 and applies everything he has mastered in the years since, on several big-time studio movies, into something stranger, more personal and more profound. And while this would have been a cornerstone of another filmmaker, it feels like an artist who is just getting started.
We are running through his filmography, ranking his features from least-great to greatest, while also keeping an eye on the future. Coogler’s potential seems limitless. We can’t wait to see what’s next.
5. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2022)
In many ways making a “Black Panther” sequel was going to be an exercise in pushing your luck. The first movie was such a phenomenon, such a Zeitgeist-capturing, lightning-in-a-bottle scenario that following it up convincingly was going to be a chore. But when star Chadwick Boseman, who played the titular superhero, sadly passed away in 2020 from colon cancer (he was only 43), it turned an insurmountable challenge into a downright impossible one. Still, Coogler and his ultra-talented team soldiered on. The resulting film is something unique, especially in terms of blockbuster filmmaking, as we are watching characters mourn a dead character and actors mourning the death of their good friend at the same time.
It’s not that “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is bad, exactly. There are some extremely admirable things about the movie, especially in its first half, which feels clearly indebted to James Cameron and as such has some rip-roaring action sequences, but it also feels wobbly and unfinished, an odd mixture of extreme emotion and unnecessarily complicated mythology. (The climax, too, is a hard-to-follow mess that lacks the geographic clarity and danger of his very best set pieces.) This feeling of disappointment was perhaps enhanced by the film’s masterful teaser trailer, which has been viewed 21.4 million times on YouTube and feels like a little work of art. Still, Coogler is the only director of a Marvel Studios to earn one of its stars (Angela Bassett) an Oscar nomination.
4. “Fruitvale Station” (2013)
Coogler’s debut feature “Fruitvale Station” is earthy and fully realized – a wrenching, based-on-a-true story drama that established him as one of the most exciting young filmmakers working today and cemented his creative partnership with Michael B. Jordan. What also makes the movie so striking is it is about something that happened so recently – the 2009 death of Oscar Grant (Jordan), a young man who was killed by a pair of overzealous Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officers (played by Chad Michael Murray and Kevin Durand). (“Fruitvale Station” is named after the stop along the line where Grant was killed.) The movie debuted at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Prize and was promptly picked up by the Weinstein Company. It later played at Cannes and was released that summer, where it became a sleeper hit, making $17 million on a budget of $900,000.
Vividly shot on 16mm by cinematographer Rachel Morrison, “Fruitvale Station” crackles with artistic intention and righteous indignation, two things that would course through Coogler’s later work. From here, Coogler would get snapped up by the studio system, but he would continue to excite and delight, with bigger budgets and more expansive palettes. But if you want to see where it all began, hitch a ride to “Fruitvale Station.”
3. “Creed” (2015)
It seemed like a concept that was so good that it would never actually happen; one of those projects that has the best of intentions but is waylaid by studio politics and complicated licensing issues. Incredibly, it not only came to fruition but was an absolute humdinger. “Creed” is a spinoff of Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” franchise, this time centered on Adonis Creed (Coogler’s constant creative companion Jordan), the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed (played in the “Rocky” films by Carl Weathers). He wants to be a boxer like his father, and who better to train him than Rocky Balboa? There’s an elemental power to “Creed,” an understanding of what came before it (and what made those movies so impactful), presented alongside a willingness to push things further, to contemporize what could have been something ossified and trapped in amber. Much of this has to do with Jordan’s full-blooded performance, which he has expanded into a bona-fide franchise. (Coogler produced the other two movies and Jordan directed the third film.)
And part of that has to do with the supporting cast, which includes Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad and Graham McTavish. “Fruitvale Station” was powerful but also kind of a bummer; “Creed” showcased Coogler’s mastery of premium entertainment that dazzles the audience but never waters down his message. (I remember seeing the movie weeks into its run and the audience bursting into applause multiple times.) “Creed,” with its $40 million budget, ended up being the perfect stopgap between Coogler’s Sundance-winning debut and his next project, a demanding, $200 million Marvel Studios production.
2. “Black Panther” (2018)
It’s been interesting hearing Coogler talk about how “Black Panther” was an open assignment. According to him, Marvel Studios could have chosen anybody to adapt their beloved character, who was coming off of an extremely well-regarded comic book run by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This idea borders on absurdity. Because you cannot fathom anybody else but Coogler tackling the character and the material so thoughtfully and so entertainingly. It remains one of the very best, if not the single greatest, Marvel Studios movie. And it gave us a true hero in Chadwick Boseman, who essayed the character with steely deamination and a very large heart.
He had been introduced in “Captain America: Civil War” but in his own movie, Boseman really got to shine. This is to say nothing of Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, arguably the first Marvel villain where you thought, You know, he does have a point … It’s the movie that proved that Coogler could make something politically and socially relevant, while also delivering all the fizzy fun that you expect from a movie like this. (He is sadly let down by some iffy visual effects in the third act, no doubt due to the studio not allowing the artists to have a proper amount of time.) It’s odd to say in a marketplace so besieged by superhero movies but when “Black Panther” was released in 2018, nobody had seen anything like it before. And it was enough to make you wonder why nobody had tried before? Maybe Marvel Studios was waiting for Ryan Coogler.
1 .”Sinners”
Coogler’s most recent movie is also his best. His first film not based on a true story or preexisting material, “Sinners” is many things – it’s a 1930’s gangster movie, a musical of sorts, a story about community and, chiefly, a scary-as-hell vampire movie. Michael B. Jordan plays twin bootleggers (Smoke and Stack) who return to their small Mississippi town to open up a juke joint. They want to give something back to where they came from and to create a safe space for the people in their town. And then some vampires show up, led by the villainous Remmick (Jack O’Connell). In a less complicated, interesting movie, the vampires would be stand-ins for the Klan. But in “Sinners,” the vampire make a thoughtful plea to the Black characters – he’s Irish and been oppressed and kicked around by the English. He knows how it is. And he’d be able to set you free in a way that nothing else could. This is one of a dozen or so fascinating ideas contained within “Sinners.” And it’s Coogler’s brilliance, as a writer/director, that these ideas all sing together harmoniously.
The filmmaker, inspired by everything from “After Hours” to “Assault on Precinct 13,” creates a compelling world that services his characters but also speaks to the enduring power of film itself. (There’s a oner too good to give away that will be talked about and dissected for years.) It’s lovely to see an artist given free rein, who has come up with something that is so full of emotion and life. It’s enough to make you wish that Coogler would keep making original movies and stay far away from the Marvel machine. He might still owe them a movie or two, but it’s the things that he is coming up with whole cloth that will be the true events. “Sinners” is absolutely astounding – a thinking, feeling, thrilling movie that only Coogler could have crafted.
