I don't write film reviews very often. A film has to be strong enough to haunt my imagination, and compel me to speak about it. The last time I reviewed a film was over two years ago, for Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Ironically, that film has certain themes in common with the film I reviewed today at The Huffington Post. Here's an excerpt from my review:
"Moonlight" is a contemplative masterpiece of filmmaking, and a profound and subtle meditation on the fragile construction of masculinity. It’s a shattering tour through the aching vulnerability of boyhood, and the glowing embers of boyhood that continue to smolder inside the cooler pretensions of manhood. It explores how we piece together a makeshift identity for ourselves from the alternating threads of trauma and tenderness with which adults and other children pierce our hearts as we grow. And it turns a fierce, compassionate light on the ways that we boys and men armor ourselves against the emotional and physical violence of homophobia, and how the armor we grow to protect ourselves becomes a hardened shell in which we live out the rest of our lives, seemingly protected but actually trapped inside our protection.
Click here to read the rest of my review at HuffPo.
Go see "Moonlight." It's in limited release this week, and opens nationwide next week. And while you're at it, come follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. See you around!
