Sean T. Collins joins us today to write about the success of Ryan Coogler's new film Sinners and how audiences are clamoring to see depictions of racists and fascists getting dumped in the fucking trash. He also digs into The Pitt and Daredevil and Andor. It's a real fun one.

By the way after resisting any new Star Wars bullshit for years I finally recently gave in and have become fully Andor-pilled. There's a scene in the first episode – which Collins references below – that got me instantly on board. Oh. Okay. It's gonna be like that is it?

"There is an audience — a massive one, as Sinners proves — for forceful fuck-yous to fascism, racism, willful ignorance, gleeful sociopathy," he writes.

Sinners and its audience say fuck you to fascism

Sean T. Collins on Sinners, Andor, The Pitt and Daredevil

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Paid subscribers can read it in full down below or jump to it here.

Then some more of my shit after that as well including a good reader letter and the coolest photograph I've seen in a long time and Luke's Movie Corner and some new music.

This Hell World from six years ago today just popped up in my memories. Let's take a look at what I was worried about at the time.

My 4-year-old daughter was shot in the head and she has a bullet in her brain

I’ve been waiting on this opportunity for a lifetime really

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Sometimes people say shit like I can’t wait for this generation of racist old hateful right wingers to die off and they’ll give an example of some young kids doing something kind and inclusionary and they’ll say those kids will live in a better world but I’m not sure I would bet on that. This shooter was nineteen years old and the one at the church in Charleston was twenty one and the shooter in Parkland was nineteen so I don’t know it seems like they already have their own freshman class of terrible people coming up and they’ll probably be worse than the older ones because they also know how to use the internet.

Ah crap.

Just a few short months ago Canada's Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre seemed almost certain to be elected Prime Minister in yesterday's elections. Then the country was reminded how much Donald Trump fucking sucks as he refused to shut up about annexing them. Long story short Poilievre didn't even retain his own seat this time around and the Liberals seem to be on track to win if not an outright majority then close to it. Hit the bricks shit head.

Not that the Liberal Party up there is much different than our own liberals down here but in times like these we can take solace in any reminder of just how unpopular this fucking turd Trump is.

It's also not to say Trump was the only pertinent issue either but Prime Minister Mark Carney sure singled him out this morning in a victory speech.

“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,” Carney said, as he hailed a remarkable reversal in fortune for his party. “That will never ever happen.”

Carney reiterated statements he made on the campaign trail about the vastly changed nature of Canada’s relationship with the US.

“We are over the shock of the American betrayal but we should never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves. And above all we have to take care of each other,” he said.

I think I shared this one before but it's worth reading Nathan Munn in Flaming Hydra again on how Canadians have taken these treats from Trump:

At the Edge of Empire

A dispatch from Canada

Flaming HydraNathan Munn

Here’s the thing: every time Donald Trump or one of his piece-of-shit lackeys talks about my country, they threaten my family. They insult my grandfathers. They spit on my identity. They say we are nothing, and that they will do whatever they want with us. This inspires something in me—not hatred, but rather a grim sadness that I may be called upon at some point to defend my family in a war against fascists, as my grandpa and his generation did. All I want is peace. But I, and millions of Canadians, don’t have it in us to kneel before a bully. We’ll do whatever we have to do.

I am telling you that as scary and dark as things seem down here in the States right now this fucking piece of shit is simply not popular – multiple recent polls have his approval rating between 39-41% – nor is he as strong as he seems. Aside from the secret police running around kidnapping everyone. That part is pretty scary sure.

I mean that like any bully he is a fucking coward at heart and all he can do is cry and cry about how unfair everything is to him personally. Look at this sniveling little baby:

As his approval rating sinks, Trump wants investigations into pollsters

Instead of dealing with the failures that have led to his drop in support, the president is blaming pollsters and news organizations.

MSNBCSteve Benen

None of his scariest major proposals are popular either as a recent ABC News poll found:

"86% oppose the United States trying to take control of Canada. Eighty percent oppose Trump serving a third term, 76% oppose trying to take control of Greenland and 66% oppose sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons."

Uhhh I guess 1/3 of people do support sending citizens to foreign prisons though so that's not great.

You would think that more Democrats would have gotten the message by now that they need to loudly and forcefully and directly pushback against him.

JB Pritzker is one who seems to understand what is necessary anyway.

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” the big boy from Illinois said in a speech on Sunday. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”

“We’ve been guilty of listening to a bunch of do-nothing political types who would tell us that America’s house is not on fire, even as the flames are licking their faces,” he said.

“The reckoning is finally here."

What was the White House's response to that? Crying.

Find a May Day protest in your area here.

All of which brings us to the point of Sean T. Collins essay today. Fascism is not popular. It will not win. It cannot be allowed to win.

Collins previously wrote for Hell World on Fargo, The Curse and the 2024 election; Sexy Beast, vampires and class warfare; Godzilla Minus One and the trauma of war; and the surveillance cinema of The Curse, The Zone of Interest and Skinamarink.

Sinners and its audience say fuck you to fascism

by Sean T. Collins

The number one movie in America two weeks running, which enjoyed a smaller second-weekend box-office drop than any film in modern history, ends with Michael B. Jordan machine-gunning Klansmen. This is not a coincidence. 

Sinners, the new movie from Black Panther/Creed/Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler, is a gorgeous and raucous vampire period piece about undead bloodsuckers descending on the grand opening of a Black-owned juke joint in 1930s Mississippi. Shot on large format film, it’s the most beautiful mashup of The Lost Boys, Road House, From Dusk till Dawn, and the cover of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You you’re ever going to see. The vampires are instantly memorable with minimal makeup: some fangs, some reflective metallic eyes, and voilà, a monster design for the ages. When the bloodletting finally gets going, it’s spectacular. I’m talking Sam Raimi levels. 

Beyond that, it’s gorgeous to look at. Twilight is a sumptuous purple, night a blackness lit by stars and fireflies, the juke joint the warm and inviting brown of wood and beer bottles. There’s a surprising and welcome amount of material about eating pussy, and the sex scenes are hot and refreshingly frequent. Finally, every actor in the thing — Michael B. Jordan (twice! he plays identical twins!), Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson — is very sexy and very talented. 

In short, Sinners is a good old-fashioned unpretentious Good Time At The Movies. A big costumey good-looking pulse-pounding genre drama for adults starring actors people like to watch. It’s Conclave-core. 

It is also a very Black movie, from the writer-director, to the cast, to the subject matter. It’s a story of the Jim Crow South of the sort that the federal government is attempting to purge and suppress. And it climaxes with the indelible image of Jordan, a movie star with billions at the box office under his belt, using a World War I sniper rifle and machine gun to slaughter an entire chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The Grand Dragon getting riddled with bullets at point-blank range just offscreen is basically an applause line in this thing.