Moonlight — Review

Based on Tarrell McCraney’s largely autobiographical play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,’ ‘Moonlight’ tells us a coming of age story at three different points of time in a young man’s life. Kind of like ‘Boyhood,’ except these assholes cheated and used different actors. Can you say “lazy?”

The subject coming of age here is Chiron, a gay black youth, who is portrayed in three excellent performances by Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes. We watch as Chiron grows up in a bad Miami neighborhood getting picked on by his drug-addicted mother (Naomi Harris) and classmates alike, finds first love, and eventually becomes a drug-dealer. I will add that this was also the profession of the his childhood father figure, Juan(Mahershala Ali), and that both are essentially dignified men of principle.

Finding him hiding from bullies in an empty building, Juan takes Chiron under his wing, and the scenes with the two of them were among the film’s highlights for me. Particularly a scene in which this young kid casually asks if his older friend sells drugs, and then openly makes the connection that his mother does drugs is simply devastating.

If you’re looking for some fancy story with twists galore or big CG explosions I guess I could tell you that ‘The Girl on the Train,’ ‘Arrival’ and ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ are all in theaters right now, and all three are not bad either. ‘Moonlight,’ though, is one of those slice-of-life dramas, the main selling points of which are watching a character grow and that everything feels real. It’s also one of the best I’ve seen recently, and writer/director Barry Jenkins is clearly someone to keep an eye on.