Moonlight

I have rated 65 movies in my brief stint on Letterboxd. The first of these was Guillermo Del Toro’s Shape of Water, to which I gave a perfect score. No other film received a perfect score after that point. As we come now to my 66th film, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight has shattered the ideas I had about coming of age stories, about vulnerability in film, and about subtlety in screenwriting. It tells an unparalleled tale of the fragility of masculinity, of how individuality can be crushed by poor circumstances, and displays the message “be yourself” in the most complex, sincere, and heart-shattering way I have ever seen it done. This is not just a film to cry in front of. This is a film to rethink your perspectives on life in front of. This is a film to watch time and time again and to understand more each time and to truly understand its characters as people. Moonlight’s characters are almost as close to real people as I have ever seen a film get, after all. Moonlight will touch a part of your heart that you may not have even thought to look for, and it will give you an incredibly complex look into dozens of cultures that will take you days of thinking to unpack. And it is for this reason that today I award it my second perfect score ever, and likely my last for a very long time. See it. No matter who you are. See it and take it in. This is the definitive coming of age story. Ever.