Barry Jenkins
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Waves (2019)
Directed by Trey Edward Shults
influenced by Moonlight (2016), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Visuals Themes
Shults ( Krisha , It Comes At Night ) front-loads his story with so much feverish plotting and kinetic camerawork that that reach sometimes threatens to subsume it; it’s hard not be reminded of recent (and more fully realized) indie touchstones like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey , another film that soaked itself in the visual and musical language of contemporary youth culture, or Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight , whose Florida setting held a sort of dreamlike sway over nearly every scene.
There are shades of Moonlight (2016) and American Honey (2016) throughout: Shults grasps for a feeling of reckless abandon and “head dangling out the window of a speeding car” joyfulness, but struggles to replicate any of their mutual depth.
Set in South Florida — not so far from the microcosm Barry Jenkins illuminated in “Moonlight,” though a world apart in terms of social class and opportunity — “Waves” bends and surprises, radiates and engulfs, in a dizzying and ecstatic attempt to capture the love and pain and pressure visited upon a contemporary American family — an African American family, to be precise.
From the surface, Waves is another familial tale of tragedy and heartache, with the initial hallmarks and visual palette of a Barry Jenkin’s film, but Waves isn’t trying to be a mere imitation of Moonlight .
Like Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight from 2016, Waves is an accomplishment that belies the filmmaker’s relative inexperience; with just a few films to his name to date, this latest arrives as a declaration of vision, both cinematically and narratively.
Here, he’s doing it to capture the woozy feel of Tyler’s teenage hormones, and the result reminds you of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk in its rapturous depiction of black life, and the ways in which adolescent emotions can lead to disaster.
Directing, screenwriting, acting, cinematography and music combine superbly in the movie, which is based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney and has been compared to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” and Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep.”
Moments in "Moonlight" bring a whole range of disparate films to mind, its poetic involvement with day-to-day black life, for instance, recalling Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep" while its counterpointing of strong, often violent emotion with evocative music (Nicholas Britell did the score) echoing Terence Davies' "Distant Voices, Still Lives" to mind.
Given its structure, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight would be the obvious reference point, but there is little else about Amoo’s sophomore effort that compares.
“The Last Tree” (a title that remains opaque throughout) may not cover as extensive or as intricate a timeframe as Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight,” but it echoes that film’s understanding of disenfranchised masculinity in glitchy progress.
Amoo’s film brings to mind Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight in terms of its introspective sensitivity, toying with operatic aesthetics to explore the conflicted mind of its protagonist.
His transition into a muscly, misguided youth, his war with YInka, and his involvement with an older criminal link The Last Tree to Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight .
Writer-director Shola Amoo’s “semi-autobiographical” second feature is an affecting coming-of-age tale pitched somewhere between the sublime American poetry of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight and the streetwise British grit of Noel Clarke and Menhaj Huda’s Kidulthood movies.
Echoes of Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winning Moonlight abound in this dreamy and nuanced coming-of-age tale from the writer-director Shola Amoo (A Moving Image).
Much of the early film-festival coverage of "Moonlight" singled it out as an exploration in particular of black masculinity, eliciting additional comparisons to the gay themes to "Brokeback Mountain."
Where has been the black equivalent of Brokeback Mountain or Carol ?
An outline can't convey the provocative depth of Jenkins' screenplay, challenging black masculinity comparable to what Brokeback Mountain did for white machismo.
Adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Jenkins’ film is already being compared to Brokeback Mountain, another story about a thwarted gay romance.
It is one of the most well-written, well-acted and thought-provoking films of 2016, nothing less than a groundbreaking masterpiece, with content as compelling as other films such as “Brokeback Mountain” and “Precious.”
Jenkins pairs the melancholic power of the repressed sexuality in “Brokeback Mountain” and “Carol” with the subtle textures of burgeoning masculinity in “Boyhood.”
Like Boyhood, it sketches out a complete life—from childhood to adolescence to adulthood—that is unique but profoundly relatable, and it shares that movie’s big heart and open-spirited view of the world.
Told in three chapters over the course of about 16 years, “Moonlight” (adapted from playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s short, poetically titled theater piece, “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue”) is one of the first post-“Boyhood” indies to take a serious look at a young man’s evolution over time — though Jenkins employs the traditional strategy of casting different actors to portray Chiron (whose name is pronounced like that of the former Israeli prime minister) and his peers at the different stages of their lives.
But this is also the point: Moonlight isn’t Boyhood.
The easy comparison for Moonlight is the 2014 Richard Linklater film Boyhood, because both films move its lead characters chronologically, so that the coming of age becomes visually literal; there is not one specific journey these characters embark upon at the end of which they feel more adult or mature or grown.
It’s strangely reminiscent of the 2015 best picture nominee “Boyhood,” which director Richard Linklater filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast.
Directing, screenwriting, acting, cinematography and music combine superbly in the movie, which is based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney and has been compared to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” and Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep.”
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
Directed by Joe Talbot
influenced by Moonlight (2016)
Visuals Themes
Like the Moonlight helmer’s films, Talbot’s camera lingers on his character’s faces for long, dialogueless takes in The Last Black Man in San Francisco , as if looking for their soul.
Rivaling the likes of Barry Jenkins and his remarkable filmmaking in Moonlight , The Last Black Man in San Francisco displays a confidence of perspective and an inventiveness in storytelling that, once it’s done breaking your heart, will only leave you wanting more.
The way Talbot blends haunting imagery with a mournful score (by Emile Mosseri) is dreamlike, recalling the work of “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco has the same generosity of spirit and tenderness that Barry Jenkins brought to the Oscar-winning Moonlight .
But the films that Last Black Man recalled for me were those of Barry Jenkins, who tackled themes of black extinction in San Francisco in his first film, Medicine for Melancholy , more than 10 years ago—and whose languid romances ( Moonlight , If Beale Street Could Talk ) reach their wrenching intensity in part through intimate close-ups of actors looking just shy of straight into the camera.
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
influenced If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Moonlight (2016)
Themes Visuals
Well, that film is called Moonlight , and it’s on the same level as those others, though it bears a closer resemblance to Wong Kar-Wai’s 2001 romance In the Mood for Love, a love story of regrets and missed connections.
It also evokes the styles of other world filmmakers whom Jenkins has acknowledged as his influences, including Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-hsien and especially Wong Kar-wai, the Hong Kong auteur best known for his romantic melodrama “In the Mood for Love.”
It’s a film of intimacy, with its truly extraordinary performances allowed by Jenkins to breathe, but also a film of grandeur, a lushly cinematic romance under a sociopolitical cloud (Jenkins took inspiration from Wong Kar-Wai’s similarly lush In the Mood for Love).
Jenkins has cited Hong Kong filmmaking legend Wong Kar-wai as a major influence, and Wong's sumptuous, colorful romances like In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express clearly shaped the way that Jenkins interprets Baldwin's book.
Much like Moonlight , and its direct inspiration In the Mood for Love , Jenkins uses the diner as love’s breading ground (a diner where Fonny’s friend, played Diego Luna works).
As in something like In The Mood For Love , the period details almost fade into the background, the film evoking a nostalgic mood without overdoing it on the popular music.
Both times that I've watched Moonlight, I've been reminded of a work that precedes it by almost thirty years and that was made in an entirely different idiom: Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989), a personal video essay full of spoken-word poetry and monologues about desire, shame, and racism that declares "black men loving black men is the revolutionary act."
(The last similar movie I can recall was Jane Campion's 1990 biopic An Angel at My Table.)
The Lion King (1994)
Directed by Roger Allers
influenced Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)
Visuals Characters Themes
Mufasa: The Lion King opens in the only way possible, a heartfelt tribute to James Earl Jones, the original and iconic voice of the titular character from the 1994 original. As fantastic of a job as Aaron Pierre does as the king before he was king, Mufasa will always be synonymous with the rich tones of Earl Jones. But what a delightful tribute this 2024 instalment into the franchise is.
And with Jenkins at the helm, Mufasa: The Lion King is also a marked visual improvement from the 2019 Lion King's pallid, nearly shot-for-shot re-creation of the 1994 animation.
With this prequel to 2019's photoreal-ish re-do of 1994 Disney alpha-hit The Lion King, director Barry Jenkins (of Moonlight Oscar-win fame) has joined the ranks of cool indie auteurs going for a surprising splash in the studio guard-railed mainstream.
This is a prequel and a sequel — the split is about 85/15 — to 2019's "The Lion King," the live action-like photorealistic remake of 1994's "The Lion King."
Mufasa is known to be a wise and philosophical ruler from the 1994 animated film The Lion King; however, the screenplay of Mufasa: The Lion King has really few scenes that could convince us that his journey in this film moulded him into the Mufasa we know and love.
Couched in the context of a modern fable like The Lion King, that tale has the chance to reach virtually everyone, especially the children who need to hear it. And that’s a powerful thing that Mufasa doesn’t shy away from.
And when, in the movie's final section, Chiron is reunited with a dear childhood friend, Kevin, the encounter becomes reminiscent of (though, admittedly, not as bleak as) the final meeting of Wilma and Bud in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass.
Aftersun (2022)
Directed by Charlotte Wells
influenced by Moonlight (2016), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
Themes
Barry Jenkins is one of the producers, which is appropriate, because in films like Moonlight he also uses childhood as a launching point for a complex story of relationships echoing down the decades.
As for Calum, his outward calm seems to cover demons of denial; a trancey energy that threatens to break through the placid surface of his current life, dragging him back into a more chaotic – or euphoric – existence ( Moonlight director and Aftersun co-producer Barry Jenkins describes Calum as “wading through wells of quiet anguish”).
Meanwhile, the film counts amongst its producers Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski, the director and producer behind the phenomenal Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk .
Talent škotske filmašice prepoznao je oskarovac Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”, “Ulica Beale”) i producirao njezin prvijenac, iznimno poetičan i osoban komad melankolične, pa i elegične drame.
Meanwhile, the film counts amongst its producers Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski, the director and producer behind the phenomenal Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk .
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (2009)
Directed by Lee Daniels
influenced Moonlight (2016)
Themes
Informed by both Jenkins’ and McCraney’s own Miami upbringing, this environment may be gritty, but it’s not “Precious.”
The excessively charitable atmosphere at Moonlight’s New York Film Festival press screening led me to recall how Precious similarly won over a condescending audience.
It is one of the most well-written, well-acted and thought-provoking films of 2016, nothing less than a groundbreaking masterpiece, with content as compelling as other films such as “Brokeback Mountain” and “Precious.”
But while films like Ballast and Precious made it almost a badge of honor to rub our noses in miserablism, Jenkins is too sensitive a filmmaker to indulge in such exploitative tendencies.
Throughout, Jenkins conducts a symphony of naturalistic impressions from his cast, resulting in the most abundant handful of breakthrough performances since Lee Daniels reoriented the playing field with Precious .
Jenkins’s impressionistic and subjective shooting style isn’t so far removed from that of some of Terrence Malick’s equally personal and heartfelt films or of David Gordon Green’s George Washington.
It's also reminiscent of David Gordon Green's George Washington in its visual lyricism, and its conflict between poetic feeling and harsh reality in looking at poor black neighborhoods.
Both directors learned it from Pasolini’s Accattone.
The cooler hues and intimate close-ups found in darker, bleaker sequences are reminiscent of some of the compositions Barry Jenkins and his team achieved in Moonlight.
The use of three actors to play a young Black man at different ages has already earned the movie comparisons to Barry Jenkins' sublime 2016 drama, Moonlight.
Moments in "Moonlight" bring a whole range of disparate films to mind, its poetic involvement with day-to-day black life, for instance, recalling Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep" while its counterpointing of strong, often violent emotion with evocative music (Nicholas Britell did the score) echoing Terence Davies' "Distant Voices, Still Lives" to mind.
Despite the film’s gangsta trappings (drugs, guns and gangs) the effect is more Boyhood than Boyz n the Hood.
Hablando acerca de Moonlight, Jenkins ha mencionado a Lynne Ramsay y Ratcatcher, a Richard Linklater y Boyhood, a Hou Hsiao-hsien y al escritor James Baldwin.
Still, in other aspects, the film’s style serves to heighten the experience, particularly in the nonlinear way the narrative unfolds, flowing naturally back and forth between their present struggle — including a fantastic sequence when King, all but channeling “Foxy Brown,” flies to Puerto Rico to confront Fonny’s accuser — and defining moments before his arrest.