Category: Movies

As of today, I have seen seven of the nine Best Picture Oscar® Nominees. So far, I haven’t disliked any of them, but
Moonlight, turned about to be the one that held me under a spell when I saw it three weeks ago. I really enjoyed the artistry of LaLa Land and don’t begrudge that film’s acclaim. Yet, my take on the musical was that it is the sort of thing that Hollywood is predisposed to honor because it’s about Hollywood. So, I began preparing this blog Sunday afternoon with the thinking that it was going to celebrate why Moonlight should have won Best Picture.

Well, it ended up being a strange night. La La Land dominated much of the evening, and thanks to an unprecedented envelope glitch, was revealed as the winner of the top prize at the close of the ceremony. Yet, in a bizarre twist, the victory speeches were interrupted with the news that an upset had indeed happened. So, the outsider contender that I and several others were championing overcame the odds.

So, why did I Iove this little movie so much? I guess for me Moonlight  is one of those pieces of cinema that inhabits my head in the hours and days after I walk out of the darkened auditorium. The characters haunt me, and somehow I think about things a bit differently for having inhabited their world.

Based on a semi-autobiographical stage work by playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, Moonlight traces the heart-wrenching coming of age journey faced by a youth named Chiron in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. Director Barry Jenkins co-wrote the film’s screenplay with McCraney, and the two men fused together aspects of their own childhoods.

Jenkins and McCraney came to the project with many common perspectives, though Jenkins is straight and McCraney had written the play from his formative experiences as a gay man. So, the two penned Chiron as a boy–and later a young man–who must face the double whammy of growing up amidst poverty, addiction, and violence and also coming to terms with being “different from other boys” on streets where machismo is a matter of life and death.

I will do my best to set the scene without revealing spoilers, as I do hope that more folks give Moonlight a try, whether on DVD (starting Tuesday February 28th) or in the theaters where it’s still playing. The Miami setting plays a large part in the film’s motif. Like many tourists, I have experienced the glitzy side of South Florida and its famous beaches, though the Liberty City neighborhood presents a very non-glamorous setting, but the ocean breezes and sandy beaches still manage to mesmerize.

Chriron’s mother Paula, played brilliantly by Oscar nominee Naomi Harris, wantonly neglects her son, caught up in crack cocaine and a host of related destructive behaviors. Chiron often finds himself either home alone or–perhaps even worse–stuck in the apartment with his mother when she is either coming down from her latest fix or desperately seeking her next.

The vulnerable young Chiron meets a strong and kind adult-male role model named Juan, played to absolute perfection by Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. Juan and his girlfriend Teresa have a warm and comfortable home where food is always on the stove and love is unconditional. Chiron finds a special safe place to spend his nights and weekends.

Juan and Teresa would qualify as a surrogate mom and dad figures straight out of Norman Rockwell Americana, complete with swimming lessons and other rites of boyhood. Yet, in an ironic twist, Juan’s middle-class lifestyle comes from his work as the very drug-dealer from whom Paula purchases her crack.

This contradiction makes me think of a couple of different classic Dickens novel, where the criminal figure is somehow the one doing the mentoring and/or material support of boys when there is no one else on the scene. And, Juan has many noble characteristics. He is one hell of a nice guy, really.  His stance of rationalization/justification almost seems convincing, almost. Yet, when one steps back and sees the legacy of crack, those warm fuzzies grow a bit cold.

The action picks back up when a teenage Chiron finds himself less and less able to “pass” in the presence of his peers. With his friend Kevin, he experiences the bliss of a same-sex romantic encounter and the pain of betrayal. The remaining events take shape in a roller coaster ride of emotions.

I was raised in  a white middle-class background in the rural South. So, I can’t relate to Chiron’s experiences related to urban crime and poverty.  Yet, as a gay man who spent my formative years trying to suppress and deny who I really was, the experiences of Chiron and his complicated relationship with Kevin hit rather close to home.

Sadly, gay boys–and gay men–have a track record for turning on each other when internalized homophobia and the pressure to conform to the wider society dominate. So, sometimes the result can be that those very individuals struggling with their own thoughts and feelings end up being at the heart of bullying behaviors.

I realize that this is by no means a novel concept among  story lines tackling gay issues, the “thou dost protest too much” character stuck in the closet. Moonlight moves beyond the movie-of-the week clichés and  sermonizing of  past offerings and strips things down into something refreshingly raw. More than any other movie about gay issues, Moonlight made me think about internalized homophobia that I had witnessed in my own life experiences, not necessarily violent in nature, but stinging nonetheless.

Moonlight is not a movie designed to appeal just to gay people. I think it’s a pretty universal story about acceptance and reconciliation. Yet, at the same time, I admire the fact that the film didn’t try to water down the sheer weight of gay identity at the center of Chiron’s struggle either. And ultimately, what makes it such an unforgettable film for me was how painstakingly real the characters become, which I think speaks to the top-notch work on both sides of the camera.

I wanted to provide my personal take on Hollywood’s best for 2014. Okay, I don’t think this topic is going to win me any prizes for timeliness.  However, not too long ago, the Academy Awards didn’t take place until well into the springtime, but the Motion Picture Academy felt that the Golden Globes were stealing the spotlight, so the proceedings were moved up to Winter. Also, I figure that many folks may just now be playing catch-up via  DVD and other home video outlets.

Most of the time, folks present these kinds of lists in an order that builds toward the top pick, but I am going to be contrary and start with my favorites. Overall, I think it was a good movie year, but as is often the case, the quality grown-up films didn’t make it into wide release until the holiday season and beyond. So, at the risk of sounding like a movie snob, I must say that there were some really long droughts in the spring and summer dominated by big-budget blockbusters that have that “been there done that” feel.

My Pick for the Best of the 2014 Best Picture Nominees and also My Choice for the Actual Best Film of the Year as Well–The Imitation Game

The meme at the top of the page probably gave it away, but if I were handing out little golden guys myself, I would shower the love on The Imitation Game. This biopic recounting the life of Alan Turing–the code-breaker who helped turn the tide in the fight against Hitler and ultimately became known as the father of modern computing–tackles some timely issues about self-acceptance and the very sad history of society’s efforts to “cure” gay people.  Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley shine in their roles. The film’s message moves beyond the notion of “tolerance” for those who are different toward the revelation that we as the human race are made richer by the creativity and intelligence of our misfits.

Not Nominated in the Best Picture Category but My Runner-Up Favorite Film–Gone Girl

I know that Gone Girl is probably a bit of a popcorn movie, but as usual director David Fincher kept me on the edge of my seat, and Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike was mesmerizing as the mysterious wife at the center of the thriller adapted from Gillian Flynn’s bestseller. Okay, now that I got that aside out-of-the-way, back to the flicks that DID get nominated.

Very Near the Top–American Sniper

My politics are pretty liberal on most issues, and I am not sure that Chris Kyle’s take on foreign policy issues or cultural diversity would be the same as mine, though I remain grateful to him and his fellow soldiers who have put their lives on the line to defend our freedom. I am getting a little tired of the whole red state vs. blue state approach to movies, and I disagree with my friends on the left  who dismiss American Sniper as pure right-wing propaganda.

Clint Eastwood is one of my favorite directors, and he masterfully ties together the whole package. Bradley Cooper continues to amaze me, and there were moments when his performance sent chills up my spine. I was challenged to contemplate the experience of war both on and off the battlefield, and I left the theater asking myself difficult questions.

Very Good–Boyhood and Whiplash

Boyhood was an evocative roller-coaster ride of coming-of-age experience. Yes, the novelty of shooting a movie over a twelve-year time period may have run the risk of overshadowing the actual plot, but the twists and turns of family life rang true. Patricia Arquette certainly deserved her Supporting Actress Oscar for playing a hard-working single mother.

J.K. Simmons has been working in the acting trenches for years, including his role as the fatherly Farmers Insurance spokesman. Yet, in his Academy Award-winning role as a sadistic college jazz-band director in Whiplash, Simmons found the perfect place to let his talent shine. This intense movie presents a level of bullying by an authority figure that can be extremely difficult to watch at times. I found the experience quite compelling, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

Good–Selma, The Theory of Everything, and The Grand Budapest Hotel

This was a strong field, so I still regarded these three nominees quite well. Selma offers a much-needed window into the struggle for voting rights in America. As an armchair Presidential historian, I objected to the portrayal of LBJ, but all in all, it was a worthy endeavor.

I am happy for Eddie Redmayne’s Academy Award success with The Theory of Everything. He captures the courage–but also the humanity and vulnerability–of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in his prolonged battle with A.L.S. Given the whole British smart-guy dynamic, it was inevitable that this one got compared with the above mentioned Imitation Game. I have my biases on that head-to-head, but it’s nice to see science celebrated on the big screen so enthusiastically.

I am always curious about what director West Anderson has up his sleeve. Sometimes, his efforts click more for me than others. Yet, there is much to admire with  The Grand Budapest Hotel. Ralph Fiennes really lays on the charm as the eccentric hotel operator, and the usual ensemble of talent from Anderson pictures (Edward Norton, Bill Murray, et al ) also provide entertaining eccentricity. I scratched my head sometimes, but at least I was never bored.

Hollywood’s Best Picture Winner Birdman: I Just Don’t Get It

I saw all eight of the Best Picture contenders, and as luck would have it, the only one of them that just didn’t do it for me was the one that took home the big prize, Birdman. (I know there is also a really long subtitle that goes with it, but I can skip that oddity.) I absolutely loved director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s earlier films 21 Grams and Babel, and I figured that such a wonderful cast (Michael Keaton, the previously mentioned Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone). I consider myself an artsy kind of guy, but I just didn’t get this one. It’s not that I hated Birdman, but I just didn’t grasp the significance of Michael Keaton suffering a nervous breakdown in the middle of Times Square clad only in his tighty-whities.

So, there you have it. At the moment, I am in the midst of another drought where there really isn’t much playing at the multiplexes that I want to see. Yet, I am sure this too shall pass, and the meaty choices will arrive later in 2015.