It is sequential
― devvvine, Saturday, 18 February 2017 22:39 (seven years ago) link
Thanks, devvvine.
― Heavy Doors (jed_), Saturday, 18 February 2017 22:40 (seven years ago) link
it's sequential but the difficult part might be recognizing that different actors (not always of strong resemblance) are playing the same characters in different time periods. especially the 2 > 3 part.
― ryan, Saturday, 18 February 2017 22:40 (seven years ago) link
Yes and different names used for the protagonist from sequence to sequence.
― devvvine, Saturday, 18 February 2017 22:42 (seven years ago) link
I think the first act is absolute classic, it might go a bit awry after the second - but it is hard to be critical after such brilliance.
― calzino, Saturday, 18 February 2017 22:58 (seven years ago) link
idk I think the rhythm and pacing of the diner sequence and onwards in the third act is breathtaking.
― devvvine, Saturday, 18 February 2017 23:14 (seven years ago) link
i prefer the third act as well. i think the other two give it emotional weight but it's just lovely.
― ryan, Saturday, 18 February 2017 23:15 (seven years ago) link
The third act is when it gets sexy. I could've done w/out most of the first act -- and I do mean "act," for it betrays its play origins.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 18 February 2017 23:36 (seven years ago) link
I found the last act really boring and didn't buy that his character hadn't got laid for ages.
― calzino, Sunday, 19 February 2017 00:09 (seven years ago) link
The last act was terrific, but overall I couldn't embrace the movie because I'm tired of Brokeback stories. It's why it's not a great movie. My my review.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 00:40 (seven years ago) link
sorry I wasn't trying to be some strident warrior type here, just my first impression.
― calzino, Sunday, 19 February 2017 00:45 (seven years ago) link
not at all! I want some resistance. Its enthusiasts are mostly straight.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 00:54 (seven years ago) link
Exact same reaction as Calzino--I would rather the whole film had been about the kid and Mahershala Ali.
― clemenza, Sunday, 19 February 2017 00:57 (seven years ago) link
I was really moved by the (suggestion of) emergence from extreme self-alienation in the third part of the movie. the third part distinguishes it from the character arc in Brokeback Mountain, I thought
I am curious why the photography/cinematography of this movie hasn't been talked about much...the bokeh, lens flares, luminosity, moments of suspended motion, and rotating camera shots were all amazing and felt different from anything I've seen
― Dan S, Sunday, 19 February 2017 01:11 (seven years ago) link
I didn't buy the steady goodness of Ali and Monae but accepted it as part of the movie's structure.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 01:12 (seven years ago) link
The received wisdom on Moonlight, a film about gay love in the black ghetto, is that it is “necessary” and “important”. It is an “urgent” and “relevant” examination of forbidden attraction in a world, “the streets”, that is largely hostile to gay men.
Only, relevant to whom? Certainly not the audience. Most will be straight, white, middle class. Nor is it particularly “urgent”: the story has been told countless times, against countless backdrops.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/film-review-moonlight-and-hidden-figures-fxj5rf7qq
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:06 (seven years ago) link
"Cinematography" is the film equivalent of "it's got hooks"
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:16 (seven years ago) link
someone tell me about all these countless films about gay black people.
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:23 (seven years ago) link
Who gives a shit if some white middle class audience members might say this story is "relevant" or "urgent"? How does that affect the quality of what's on the screen? Answer: it doesn't matter. The middle class delusions he imagines may be stimulated by the film do not make it either good or bad any more than the fact that an eleven year old boy may call a movie with kissing scenes "icky" or "gross".
And, if this critic hasn't noticed it before, allow me to point out that most stories have been told "countless times, against countless backdrops." That could just as well be said about Citizen Kane or The Postman Always Rings Twice, or just about any great film out there. What matters is how well it is told.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:27 (seven years ago) link
i would just prefer if there was some originality on our screens, rather than yet another story about gay black men.
reviewer is a she btw. and the review was for a popular british broadsheet. she has some odd kneejerk responses to films about 'niche' subjects (eg a united kingdom, which is actually a more subversive film than given credit for, and i daniel blake, which i have issues with as a piece of filmmaking, but its importance is about the subject, not how its been made)
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:35 (seven years ago) link
Someone should clue her in that whenever you let politics or social mores act as the frame for art, you've got it backwards. Art encompasses both and puts them in a larger context.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:41 (seven years ago) link
also, admittedly speaking as someone yet to see this movie, its just bizarre to say its only for white middle class people, or created with them disproportionately in mind, when support in the US has been right across the board.
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:43 (seven years ago) link
Let me, uh, point out that it's a film about Miamians and set in Miami and it's made a lot of its money playing in...Miami, a minority-majority city/county.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:48 (seven years ago) link
This for the sake of the film critic who won't read this thread, StillAdvance, not you.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:49 (seven years ago) link
the kid was uninteresting, what was he into? music? art? anything? he just seemed like a scared punchbag for the entire movie. i didnt buy juan the good-hearted drug dealer either or the fact the main guy never had sex after all those years but was still dreaming about a sloppy hand job he got once
― pointless rock guitar (Michael B), Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:55 (seven years ago) link
am worried there is no way this film can live up to the hype and wish i saw it last year before the hype had really kicked in. am also slightly wary about naomi harris. not sure about brits playing americans (also see: selma).
― StillAdvance, Sunday, 19 February 2017 20:57 (seven years ago) link
the fact the main guy never had sex after all those years but was still dreaming about a sloppy hand job he got once
https://media.giphy.com/media/OhEyhZgVqUkPm/giphy.gif
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 19 February 2017 21:31 (seven years ago) link
lol
― pointless rock guitar (Michael B), Sunday, 19 February 2017 21:48 (seven years ago) link
Good, not great, IMO. It's a little underpowered. The main problem is the casting in the middle section, where the actors playing Chiron and Kevin couldn't feasibly (physically) be either the child or adult versions of themselves which, unfortunately, made me laugh because my movie-date leaned over at the start of the diner scene and said "how's he going to recognise him?" to which I replied that he should say "Chiron, you look so different. In fact I look more like you than you do".
― Heavy Doors (jed_), Sunday, 19 February 2017 23:36 (seven years ago) link
I loved the diner scene.
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 19 February 2017 23:53 (seven years ago) link
I thought it was weird that they were drinking red wine.
― Heavy Doors (jed_), Sunday, 19 February 2017 23:56 (seven years ago) link
That part made sense, especially if you know the restaurant. Lots of people drink awful red wine in Pizza Hut glasses.
Andre Holland as adult Kevin is perfect and sexy and beautiful, an ideal match for the adolescent Kevin. HE should've been the Oscar nominee.
What I couldn't get past is the cilantro on the black beans and rice, which would never happen in a traditional Cuban restaurant.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 20 February 2017 00:25 (seven years ago) link
I could've done w/out most of the first act
This opinion is violence against me
― flopson, Monday, 20 February 2017 15:48 (seven years ago) link
also, is there any evidence for 'most people who like this movie are white/straight'? seems like a kind of fucked up thing to just claim based on anecdata (especially when made by another white person who then goes on to critique the movie)
― flopson, Monday, 20 February 2017 17:03 (seven years ago) link
whenever you let politics or social mores act as the frame for art, you've got it backwards. Art encompasses both and puts them in a larger context.
been bothered by this issue for years without really getting at what I really think but this is so lucid and elegantly expressed and gets it exactly. it is intensely satisfying. thank you v much aimless
― ogmor, Tuesday, 21 February 2017 13:57 (seven years ago) link
This was fine, mostly. The third act is the most conventional, and i didn't believe all of it.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 26 February 2017 05:30 (seven years ago) link
Him trapping, or holding onto a memory from high school so tightly?
― waht, I am true black metal worrior (Neanderthal), Sunday, 26 February 2017 05:50 (seven years ago) link
the reunion, "You're the only man I let touch me," etc
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 26 February 2017 13:50 (seven years ago) link
I didn't buy that at all either, but loved the first two acts.
― calzino, Sunday, 26 February 2017 13:52 (seven years ago) link
Just for clarification: The implication is that he's going to jail at the end of act 2, right?
― Frederik B, Sunday, 26 February 2017 13:54 (seven years ago) link
I presumed his character would have gone to a juvie detention centre at least for his bit of gbh.
― calzino, Sunday, 26 February 2017 14:08 (seven years ago) link
didnt realize barry jenkins studied @ the peter berg school of camera movement + closeups
― johnny crunch, Monday, 27 February 2017 00:52 (seven years ago) link
Be sure to tell him.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 27 February 2017 01:02 (seven years ago) link
am i the only one who's seen Medicine for Melancholy?
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 27 February 2017 01:09 (seven years ago) link
i've seen it!
― horseshoe, Monday, 27 February 2017 01:14 (seven years ago) link
my husband loves it and has loved it for years and made me watch it when we first started dating
i found it forgettable, but now i want to rewatch it
― horseshoe, Monday, 27 February 2017 01:15 (seven years ago) link
moonlight, i loved though.
not a white person, not a black person, not sure how to score the fact that i loved moonlight.
Moonlight > MfM, but not really by a million miles.
I know you're probably talking about "hits," but there are a fair number.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 27 February 2017 01:21 (seven years ago) link
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/DorothyCondoms.gif
― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:35 (seven years ago) link
As I say!
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:37 (seven years ago) link
I've heard it all the way here, back in St. Olaf!
― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:41 (seven years ago) link
No queer cultural touchstone is safe from a Horny Grandmas ref
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:42 (seven years ago) link
In this case, offered merely as a corrective to The Turdcage.
― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:43 (seven years ago) link
A quick point... there's something significant i haven't seen discussed in the first (major?) scene btwn the 7-year-old boys: the urging by Kevin that Little not "be soft," and the fight/play/wrestling that follows. No one (outside of a clinical context) is allowed to say out loud very often in America that children are sexual beings, but given the future path of these two boys, it seems partly like an act of nascent sexplay.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:49 (seven years ago) link
That plus the behind-closed-doors comparison game.
― insidious assymetrical weapons (Eric H.), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:50 (seven years ago) link
right, I forgot!
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:51 (seven years ago) link
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2o7V1f7lbk4/hqdefault.jpg
― kurt schwitterz, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 17:54 (seven years ago) link
Won Best Kiss at MTV Movie & TV Awards
― some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit (cryptosicko), Monday, 8 May 2017 03:41 (six years ago) link
and Best Handjob
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 8 May 2017 11:25 (six years ago) link
The Edge of Seventeen might have taken that one.
― some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit (cryptosicko), Monday, 8 May 2017 14:41 (six years ago) link
My bro recommended this, so I put it on hold at the library. At the time I was #270 in line. My number came up and I finally watched it a couple of days ago. I would not call it a great film; it had too many flaws for that. But it was just damned refreshing to see a story about being a black man in the USA, told from the perspective of a young black man in a large US city.
Incarceration was just a common fact of life. Drug dealing was a thing that happened down on the corner and drug use was a common problem you worked around the best you could or used to numb the stress. These elements weren't sensationalized, unlike most Hollywood treatments of urban black life. Even the violence was unsensational: mostly taunts, shoves, kicks and punches instead of blazing Uzis.
Oddly enough, the plot elements around being gay weren't particularly compelling, even though that was supposed to be the central theme of the film. For me, the larger subtext was of lives so thwarted, circumscribed and precarious that just surviving another day was a full time job. Being gay seemed like just one more burden in a life that would have been soul-crushing, even without being gay.
― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, 27 June 2017 17:50 (six years ago) link
Barry Jenkins will direct his adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk. The Hollywood Reporter’s Mia Galuppo notes that it’s “set in ‘70s Harlem and follows engaged couple Fonny and Tish. When Fonny is falsely accused of rape, Tish, who is pregnant, races to find evidence that will prove Fonny's innocence. . . . Jenkins, who has worked closely with the Baldwin estate on the project, wrote the screenplay during the same summer in 2013 when he penned Moonlight.” Jenkins is also currently writing and will direct an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, a limited series for Amazon Studios.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/moonlight-director-barry-jenkins-adapt-james-baldwin-novel-next-movie-1019669
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 12 July 2017 17:08 (six years ago) link
The leads are gorgeous, supporting cast is strong, but If Beale Street mostly a stiff.
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 26 December 2018 13:32 (five years ago) link
I liked most of Beale Street--parts of it, in no small measure because of the score, are beautiful--but didn't care for the detour to Puerto Rico, and thought the last 20 minutes in general meandered.
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 December 2018 21:25 (five years ago) link
Just saw a commercial for Beale Street that used "Killing Me Softly." Did I miss that in the film? Not a song I've ever cared for, and it wouldn't be the first commercial that used a song not in the actual film, but if it is, I didn't notice it at all.
― clemenza, Thursday, 3 January 2019 02:22 (five years ago) link
I dont remember it either, Clem.
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 January 2019 03:37 (five years ago) link
agree completely alfred
― flappy bird, Thursday, 3 January 2019 04:24 (five years ago) link
with....?
― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 3 January 2019 04:33 (five years ago) link
your review!I also thought it was a stiff. Too tied to the source material - the structure is exactly the same as the book and its discursive tendencies don't work when copied exactly to film. the book is able to meander, in the film it's just fragmented and rudderless
― flappy bird, Thursday, 3 January 2019 04:38 (five years ago) link
Of note!
This is a thing we did 🙏🏿MOONLIGHT8 x 11 in. / 224 pages - Forward by Frank Ocean- Essay by Hilton Als - Academy Award Acceptance speeches pic.twitter.com/ubbRSjMShS— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) September 26, 2019
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 26 September 2019 17:47 (four years ago) link
by the end, i had forgotten my annoyance at how chiron stumbled across the most sensitive, supportive, and lovely drug dealer ever because i am so tired of protagonists that announce their struggles by simply not speaking when spoken to. at least the movie is self-aware enough to make a joke of it in act 3.
there's something evocative and vivid in the filmmaking, and some charming moments in the 3rd act, but as hard as jenkins tries to make you forget it, it's a play and not a very good one.
― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 3 March 2020 03:30 (four years ago) link
chiron stumbled across the most sensitive, supportive, and lovely drug dealer ever
Actually I thought it was more complicated than that, and this was one of the best things about the movie -- that Kevin says to him in the first part of the movie that he can't be soft in the world, he has to show he's hard, and that resonates with what he learnes from Juan, but does it work for Juan? No, Juan's visibly hard and so he gets killed and leaves Teresa alone. When Chiron finally shows he's hard and beats down Tyrell with a chair, that's what sends him to prison, that's what sends him down the path of helpless repetition of inadequate male role model and leaves him a sexless, locked-down fuckup who can't even either rage at or forgive his mother, he's just hard and stuck. And it all starts with Juan.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 26 March 2024 03:24 (one month ago) link
xyzzz otm: "I like that quietitude about it."
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 26 March 2024 09:18 (one month ago) link