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Moonlight (2016)

Rate: 6
Viewed: 3/17

Moonlight
3/17: Moonlight is the first picture with an all-black cast to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

That's amazing. So, let's think about the history of black cinema the last fifty-five years: Shaft, Sounder, A Soldier's Story, The Color Purple, Lean on Me, Glory, Boyz n the Hood, Rosewood, and Antwone Fisher. Most of them would've won Best Picture if they didn't have to go against a stacked deck of superior films.

But the last twenty years, the quality of filmmaking has gone straight downhill. There are no great pictures anymore. Many of them are total dreck; that's why I've only seen a total of 22 feature films that were made the last ten years compared to almost 800 from the 90's.

When a 21st century film wins Best Picture, it's not comparable to most pictures from the 50's through the 90's. Hence, Moonlight is such that. It's told in three acts, and they've been inconsistent. The first act is okay but is mostly irrelevant. The second is when things started to improve; it was coming together so well with haunting moments. The third and final act is what torpedoed it, and the movie just sank to the bottom of the ocean floor like the Titanic.

Overall, Moonlight is an above-average movie but is certainly no Best Picture material. If they can just stick with Act II, I think we got something here. The truth is: nearly all films of the last twenty years aren't Best Picture worthy and are either plain or awful. When I finished Moonlight, I was mystified by the sheer number of awards that were heaped on everybody. The trouble with the voters is that they don't know how to evaluate a film properly.

The performances are good, and the players have done an excellent job of ensuring high quality filmmaking. Mahershala Ali won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and Naomie Harris was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Neither deserved it because they weren't remarkable enough. It's a case of "been there, done that." One aspect I hate, which is a common complaint for many recently made films, is the shoddy camera work. This one gave me a headache as the amount of close-up shots was almost 100%. Come on. Just show some space, and let me breathe, for goodness' sake.

All in all, the voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences need to call a spade a spade by letting the categories go default, even if it will last for years, until somebody truly deserves an Oscar for turning in an exceptional piece of work.