Spike Lee Praises Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners:’ “I just had the greatest experience of watching a film in years”

In an Instagram post, Lee extended praise to the Black Panther director, saying that he “just had the greatest experience of watching a film in years.”

“His magnificent artistry as a storyteller is on another level,” Lee said of Coogler, adding later in the post, “I haven’t felt this way in a movie theatre in a minute.”

“Last thing I told my brother, Ryan, ‘He really, 100, tapped into our ancestors on this joint,” he said.

The Malcolm X director also had positive words for Sinners’ main star, Michael B. Jordan, saying that he did his “thang, thang.”

Sinners is scheduled to release this year on April 18. The supernatural horror film will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. According to a synopsis from Warner Bros., the movie finds Jordan playing twin brothers, Smoke and Stack.

“Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers (Jordan) return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back,” the synopsis reads.

In an interview with GQ published last month, Jordan shared how he became involved with Sinners, which came about after he reached out to Coogler in hopes that the director would lead a project Jordan was circling.

“I was like, I’m just going to throw a shot at him. I knew I wasn’t going to get him to direct s**t,” Jordan said. “I was just throwing it out there to see if he was going to, but I knew he wasn’t going to do it because he only directs things that he writes. And he was like, ‘Man, I got something for you right now.’ He bypassed [the other project] and pitched me [Sinners].”