Every Best Picture Oscar Movie Winner Of 21st Century Ranked Worst To Best

Should have won!

Where does one even begin to explore the achievements of Barry Jenkins' masterpiece, a film charting the life of a boy who becomes a man with heartbreak, joy, tragedy, and hope lighting the way?

Should we start with Chiron himself, and the three actors (Alex Hibbert Jr., Ashton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes) who bring him so beautifully to life at various chapters of his life? Or how about with Mahershalla Ali, who plays his loving father figure and mother's drug dealer, a complex but honest man whose raw, flawed humanity helps shape Chiron's future?

Perhaps, instead, we should talk about the major experiences that lead Chiron into adulthood, his encounters with romance, abuse, sex, and how he finds himself as a gay Black man on the sun-drenched plains of Florida. And what about Jenkins, his control of the film's poignant emotional beats, its colour, and delicacy? 

Moonlight, however you look at it, is a visceral display of visual storytelling, as well as a rich tapestry of humanity at its best, worst, and most conflicted. Alternatively heart-wrenching and beautiful, it's a film that contain multitudes; every colour of the human experience is here, so vulnerable and healing and painfully honest you'll return to it again and again, and always find something new lurking within.

As far as Best Picture winners go, you can't get much better.