The Credits / MPAA: Sorry to Bother You’s Costume Designer Deirdra Govan’s Vintage Vision

Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You is a revelation. It’s usually a cliché to say “you won’t see another film like it this year,” but you won’t see another film like it this year. Or next year. Or, likely, the year after that. There’s a reason Sorry to Bother You took years to make, even though everyone who read the script fell in love with it—when you go this far afield from what people expect, it takes time to bring them around to realization that the films we remember and that end up shaping cinema often seem bizarre on first blush.

Without giving too much away, Sorry to Bother You focuses on a young telemarketer named Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) and his political activist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Cassius is trying to make a name for himself in sales while Detroit is trying to right wrongs in a dystopian future America that’s trippy and bizarre yet scarily believable. When Cassius discovers a magical secret to success for a man of color in business, Sorry to Bother You goes from clever and weird to gonzo and brilliant. Stanfield and Thompson are dynamite, and they’re joined by co-stars who seem to relish the chance to play in Riley’s sandbox. Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Kate Berlant, David Cross, Armie Hammer, and Terry Crews are all on hand in a film that, as you can see, defies easy descriptoin.