**** out of ****
Rated R
(for some sexuality, drug use, brief violence, and language throughout)
Released: October 21, 2016
limited; expands November 18
Runtime: 111 minutes
Director: Barry Jenkins
Starring: Ashton Sanders, Alex R. Hibbert, Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, Janelle Monáe, André Holland
Available to rent through Amazon Video or buy on Blu-ray and DVD. Proceeds from purchases made through these links go to support this blog.
Ranked #8 on My Top 10 List For 2016, and 2016 Academy Award winner for Best Picture
My review of Moonlight, for The Tulsa Voice. This tender portrait of a young gay African-American from a Miami slum is a story of homosexuality, but not strictly sexuality. It’s of his struggle to figure out how to be a man, not simply a gay man.
Moonlight has a “quiet, vulnerable power” in a cinematic memoir “that’s not pushing an agenda”; a gay film not about pride, but humility. In being so, director Barry Jenkins “reveals a man (and a filmmaker) searching for peace and catharsis.”
To read the full review, click here.
This movie was exceptional. Raw. Painful. Real. Filled with darkness and light…I felt a kind of awe to have such an intimate view inside the isolation and bleakness of the unfolding boyhood and coming of age of Chiron. The cast of actors was superb. Naomie Harris, so real and authentic in the devolution/ evolution of her character. This was hard to watch and important to watch … there was a tenderness that revealed itself …touching me even more deeply than if the story had hit me over the head with “ordinary” violence. I’m glad this movie was made; this story was told…especially now…
And the Academy just completely agreed with you. How about that? 🙂