This awards season has been a tale of two films: “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” As the Academy Awards show approaches March 15, this two-horse race has only intensified.

Although “One Battle After Another” has been the front-runner all season, “Sinners” excels where it fails, and should be honored for that reason. Let's take a walk down memory lane to remind you why I'm right.

“Sinners” is a vampire-horror film that follows a set of twins who encounter a supernatural evil when they visit their hometown in the Jim Crow South. Set in the 1930s Mississippi Delta, the film is an anthology of Black American culture and music. Director and writer Ryan Coogler shows his reverence for such a rich history, not just through the film’s incredible story but also in its stunning visual language.

Beneath all its action and bloodlust, “Sinners” intertwines the past and the present; the oppressor and the oppressed; the spirit and the flesh. These contrasts coalesce to ground the film and provide a layered, Afro-surrealist portrayal of the condition of Black art in America – and how whiteness pervades in malicious, and even unknowing, ways.

“One Battle After Another” depicts a group of revolutionaries called the French 75 who reunite after an enemy kidnaps the daughter of one of the members.

It’s an incredibly well-made film. The cinematography is breathtaking, the action sequences are thrilling and the performances nuanced and embodied. None of its two hours and 42 minutes of runtime weighs on the viewer due to Paul Thomas Anderson’s directing prowess.

'Sinners' and 'One Battle' show what political films should and shouldn't be

Like “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another” is a film of contrasts: two fathers searching for their daughter for polar opposite reasons; the resilience of staying and the quiet power in leaving; two groups of people fighting to change the........

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