Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, This Just In is a subset of the fortnightly The 250 podcast, looking at notable new arrivals on the list of the 250 best movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.
This time, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight.
Notes:
- Recorded 10th February 2017.
- This is the first episode of The 250 to cover a movie not on the IMDb‘s Top 250 Films of All-Time at time of recording; Moonlight entered the list on 1st February 2017, but dropped off before the show could be recorded.
- Moonlight at The Internet Movie Database.
- Rene Rodriguez at The Miami Herald on Moonlight‘s ties to the city.
- Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times interviews Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney.
- Pam Grady at The San Francisco Chronicle profiles Mahershala Ali.
- Eric Kohn at IndieWire profiles Barry Jenkins.
- Geoffrey Macnab at The Independent on homophobia in Hollywood.
- Greg Allen at NPR on the history of Liberty City in Miami.
- Follow The 250 on Twitter.
- Subscribe to The 250 on iTunes.
- Listen to The 250 on Stitcher.
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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: moonlight, The 250, This Just In |
I knew that the Oscar for best picture was a two horse race between this film and La La Land, so I saw both, and unfortunately I was disappointed by both. I’ve talked about La La Land on your review of it, but as for Moonlight, it was such a frustrating film. I thought the first half was excellent. Marshara Ali’s characters was compelling and the dynamic with him wanting to help Chiron, while also being the one responsible for Chiron’s mother sinking more and more into being drug addicted was incredibly compelling, especially thanks to Naomi Harris’ excellent performance. Ali also had good chemistry with the actor playing the kid, and I really enjoyed watching their relationship grow.
Therefore, it was highly irritating for me when there was a random time skip with Ali’s character having died in between. I felt like this would have been important to see, but nope. Then just as I was getting in the second act, we abruptly skip to Chiron as an adult. I’m sorry, but we need to see his life in jail. How did he do in it? Was he mistreated there as well? Did he have to toughen up? Is that what led to his becoming a drug dealer as well? Then the film just sort of ends, which I felt incredibly odd. If you are going to have massive time skips, then show us his whole life, rather than just random moments from childhood to adulthood.
I don’t know. I liked the “life in three acts” structure and the idea of taking a snapshot of a person at three stages of their development akin to that “photo every day for ten years” project. I think we could read the details between the lines, that the loss of Juan was not really important aside from depriving Chiron of a father figure and that Chiron’s time in prison was fairly standard. As he explains, he made connections there and that is how he got involved with drug dealing.