This year, the Oscar season prayer has a name, and it is “Sinners.” With “Sinners,” writer-director Ryan Coogler, one of Hollywood’s most quietly seismic forces, steps into a genre long neglected by the Academy,

Ryan Coogler is already getting Oscar buzz for Sinners, but he's also breathing a sigh of relief for the smart financial deal he made for the film. Like many aspiring filmmakers, Coogler had significant student loan debt from his master's degree at the University of Southern California's School of