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 world for the better or maintain the status quo by any means necessary.

The two films have been the top winners all awards season. “Sinners” won big at the Actor Awards, taking home best actor for Michael B. Jordan’s portrayal of twins, Smoke and Stack, and best cast ensemble. “One Battle” has secured directorial and best picture wins at multiple awards shows.

Teyana Taylor of “One Battle” won the supporting actress Golden Globes for her portrayal of Perfidia Beverly Hills, while Wunmi Mosaku won the same award at the BAFTAs for her role as Annie in “Sinners.”

Despite both films’ success and similarities, they differ, not just in the stories they tell but also in how effectively they tell them. Although it’s a less overtly political film, “Sinners” expresses its politics in the lives of its characters and the community they build – and are forced to defend – in the segregated South.

“One Battle After Another” falls short when its politics are examined through an intersectional lens. And Anderson’s commitment to staying apolitical throughout the film’s well-funded campaign hasn’t helped.

When the film was first released, critics waxed poetic about its revolutionary, prescient messaging and how it would spark a militant resistance against the proletariat. This was obviously hyperbole. Any moderately political person would understand that the “revolution” won’t be screened at every AMC in the country.

In reality, the film treats revolutionary politics as window dressing. The film starts out promising as the French 75 initiates a raid to free immigrants from a detention center on the U.S.-Mexico border. This is where Perfidia begins her perverse sexual relationship with White supremacist Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (a quietly terrifying Sean Penn). The French 75 then goes on to blow up some more stuff: a campaign office of a senator who voted for an abortion ban, a bank and a transmission tower.

Despite the explosive antics, the depiction of leftist politics is too shallow for the uninitiated to view the French 75 as anything but anarchists and disruptors. (The protagonist being a bumbling pothead ‒ Bob, played by Leonardo DiCaprio ‒ doesn’t help, even if it serves as a critique.)

At its best, “One Battle” is a humanist portrayal of the cyclical nature of progress and how, despite or because of our failures to create a better world, we instill hope in the next generation to continue the fight for their children and their children’s children. Though the righteous anger that inspires violent resistance reads as hollow and juvenile, the relationships outside these actions certainly do not.

Even Teyana Taylor can't save Paul Thomas Anderson's problem with Perfidia

One relationship Anderson struggles with, though, is the one between race and gender. “One Battle” runs into a major problem with its depiction of Black women, particularly Perfidia Beverly Hills. At times, like in her original interaction with Lockjaw, she uses her sexuality to assert power.

But in most cases, Perfidia is hypersexualized to the point of parody. She’s too horny to care about Bob’s ramblings on the mechanics of a bomb and pounces on him the second she gets a chance. In another instance, she’s more concerned with having sex than getting away from an exploding bomb.

Even her politics are expressed through her cartoonish sexuality. “This p---y don’t pop for you” is her last middle finger to the oppressive, fascist state determined to stifle her cause. The phrase is borrowed from Junglepussy, a New York-born rapper who plays a character of the same name in the film. Based on her name alone, she’s not spared from Anderson’s version of horned-up Black women.

Anderson’s portrayal of Black women eerily resembles the Jezebel stereotype, a film trope where Black women are depicted as innately promiscuous, sexually deviant, exotic and often eager for male, especially White male, attention.

With this historical context, I’m able to be of two minds about the Perfidia problem.

On one hand, I understand the fatal flaw of representation postures with marginalized characters as avatars for entire populations of people, denying them the nuance and individuality they deserve. I’m also able to understand that certain identities, Black women specifically, should be written with care and sensitivity to avoid harmful stereotypes.

It’s clear Anderson and the other White writers of the film lack the range and racial awareness to write Black women characters with interiority and desires besides getting laid.

'Sinners' grasps the breadth of racialized political identities

Anderson’s choices seem even more irresponsible when contrasted with the Black women of “Sinners.”

Annie, played beautifully by British actress Wunmi Mosaku, is explored with such fullness and craft. We see her sexuality in her relationship with Smoke. We see her sensitivity as she uses her hoodoo practices to protect the twins while they open a juke joint for the local Black community. We see her wisdom and strength as she rallies her community to defend it.

Racialized political identity in film, specifically the Black female identity, can be a powerful testament to the historical contributions of marginalized people in progressive political movements. Unfortunately, “One Battle” flattens the identity of Black women in servitude to the White male.

“Sinners” deserves recognition, not just because of the creator and the characters' identities, but also because it humanizes the Black political identity in accordance with history. It's something “One Battle,” despite being an adaptation, failed to do.

Kofi Mframa is a columnist and digital producer at USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network.

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