"Moonlight" is a technically better and more artfully impressive movie that "Green Book". However, I just think the final 20, or so, minutes of it are incredibly pretentious. The first two stories were perfect in every way, shape and form -- there was none of the preachy and didactic nature of the last third.
Read more“Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins says growing up he was inspired by “Aliens," “Die Hard," and “Coming To America"
“Which films inspired him, growing up? “I wasn’t really inspired by film,” he says, “but I admired Spike Lee’s movies because they just felt very, very, very black. I remember watching School Daze and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ There were colleges for black people that just black people go to? And those colleges had all this shit going on? This is so energizing!
“Otherwise, it was the really big Hollywood stuff – The Color Purple, Aliens, Die Hard, Coming To America. I would catch the bus to go to the AMC theatre downtown. But I never thought, ‘Hey, maybe one day I might like to do that.’ It just didn’t seem possible.”