Moonlight (2016) on Netflix
Bullies chase a boy nicknamed Little into a crack house, where the drug dealer Juan finds him. Juan and his girlfriend Teresa take him in; his mother Paula is an addict.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.4/10355,975 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
Chiron is a withdrawn Miami boy whose mother, Paula, is sliding into addiction, and the boys at school pick on him. The drug dealer Juan finds him sheltering in a crack house one night, takes him to eat, and brings him home to his girlfriend Teresa before returning him to Paula. Chiron keeps going back to Juan and Teresa, and Juan teaches him to swim and tells him that he must decide his own path. One night Juan finds Paula smoking crack with a customer and blames her for neglecting her son; she throws his dealing back at him. Chiron's only friend is Kevin. He asks Juan what the word faggot means.
In these lists: New on Netflix This Week: 40 Movies (US), 2010s Movies on Netflix Right Now (US)
Cast
- Duan Sandersonas Azu (as Duan 'Sandy' Sanderson)
- Herman 'Caheei McGlounas Longshoreman (as Herman 'Caheej' McGloun)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Moonlight (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- At the Academy Awards ceremony, presenter Faye Dunaway read La La Land as the Best Picture winner; co-presenter Warren Beatty said he had been mistakenly given the duplicate envelope for the Best Actress award, which Emma Stone had won minutes earlier for La La Land. When the mistake was realized, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz announced Moonlight as the actual winner.
- Moonlight was released as the first LGBTQ-themed mass-marketed feature film with an all-black cast. Joi McMillon became the first black woman nominated for an Editing Oscar, and Mahershala Ali became the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar.
- Tarell Alvin McCraney wrote the semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue in 2003 to cope with his mother's death from AIDS; the theater piece was shelved for about a decade before it served as the basis for the film.
- Naomie Harris was initially reluctant to play Paula because she did not want to give a stereotypical depiction of a black woman; Barry Jenkins stressed that the character represented both his and Tarell Alvin McCraney's mothers. She had vowed never to portray a crack addict, but said the script and the director's tolerance appealed to her.
- So that the three actors playing Chiron would not imitate one another, Barry Jenkins kept Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders and Alex Hibbert apart until filming ended, and each shot in separate two-week periods.
- Each of the film's three chapters was designed to imitate a different film stock: the first emulated Fuji to intensify the cast's skin tones, the second imitated Agfa, which added cyan to the images, and the third used a modified Kodak stock.
- Liberty Square, the Liberty City housing project where both Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney grew up, was one of the film's primary locations. The shoot went undisturbed because Jenkins had relatives living there, though the cast and crew had police escorts.
