SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

rogermanning995 Numerous American reviewers on this site reveal their limitations in their comments. A lot of what they criticize or complain about in this movie are things that take us deeper into the moment of the story that takes place in a different world than they're familiar with. I was also thrown off a bit, until I realized that this wasn't from the European world of film that I'm used to (France, Spain, Germany, Italy).Larien (playing the main character) is brilliant. What the film does lack is over-played dumbed-down dialogue and over explanation. The settings nicely reinforce the various moods. The girl's coming of age theme is brilliantly played out with subtle and not so subtle devices.

fedor8 A typical European pretentious "message movie", except I've no clue what the message could be? Here's a list of possible messages: 1. If you find a foreign boy who is wounded and running away from drug-smugglers, it's best to call the police, or at least tell your parents about it.2. If you shoot a boy, make sure you check he's dead, because a rich adopted girl living in ther woods could find him, nurse him, have sex with him, and then... NOT call the police.3. If you want to have pedophiles watch your movies, get your 13 year-old actress to take all her clothes off and have sex with a 13 year-old boy.4. 13 year-old Afghan boys who are mortally wounded in the stomach are perfectly capable of having sex - for the first time - just hours before they die, with their new-found Dutch girlfriends.The movie has barely any dialogue, as is typical of so many European, especially Scandinavian dramas (yeah, I know, Holland is not in Scandinavia, but it's close enough). However, the movie is sufficiently strange as to be watchable, in spite of its absurd premises.Naturally, the movie ends tragically. Anyone surprised?How many pedophilic internet forums discuss/worship this movie? I wonder...

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre 'Moonlight' is (so far) the only movie I've ever seen that was shot in Luxembourg, but I fervently hope it's not a typical example of Luxembourgeoise cinema. This movie is a lot more arty-tarty than it needs to be. For starters, the title is nearly irrelevant: some of the action takes place in a house named Mondschein ('moonlight'), but that name is completely arbitrary and unrelated to the plot.SPOILERS COMING. 'Moonlight' is the first movie I've seen that's directed by Paula van der Oest, and (again) I fervently hope this is not a typical example of her craft. In 'Moonlight', she shows a penchant for camera set-ups that are distracting and serve no useful purpose. When young Claire feeds her dog, van der Oest plumps for an overhead shot as if we were watching a Busby Berkeley musical. Later, Claire and the fugitive boy break into a house during the resident family's absence, and then attempt some sexual fumblings in the parents' bed ... only to be caught in the act when two people walk in. Van der Oest uses a very contrived camera set-up to make us think that the arrivals are the parents, then uses a reverse angle to reveal that they are actually the family's son and daughter. The switcheroo serves absolutely no purpose except to disorient us. Elsewhere, Claire tells the boy that she's a foundling: is this true, or is it a lie told in a childish attempt to impress him? We never find out. Either way, it's irrelevant to the story.'Moonlight' could have been a straightforward thriller. A boy from an unnamed country (apparently Turkey) has arrived in Luxembourg as a drugs 'mule', his digestive tract packed with condoms filled with narcotic contraband. When he fails to excrete them quickly enough, a drugs runner shoots him and leaves him for dead ... but stupidly doesn't bother to check. The girl Claire finds the boy and helps him, but oddly she never tells her parents about him. (If she's a foundling, they must be her foster parents.) Very implausibly, she runs away from home with the boy, having no clear destination in mind. Are there no police in Luxembourg?The film places some emphasis on pubescent sexuality: Claire experiences her menarche just before she finds the bleeding boy, and there's some attempt to equate her bloodstained knickers with his bloodstained gut. Later, there's a deeply implausible sequence in which the two runaways enrol themselves in a girls' convent school, where the nuns accept them without question. Claire introduces the boy as her sister: he is very clearly male (even while wearing a Communion dress), yet all the nuns and at least one priest automatically accept him as a girl. Speaking of girls' clothing, I could have done without the shot of the Down's Syndrome girl stripping off to her bra and underpants.Obscure joke: Claire's dog is named Quick, and at one point the dog seems to have a stunt double. I couldn't help wondering if the stunt double's name is Flupke. (Americans won't get this reference.)This is one of those movies in which increasingly contrived events keep happening ... and AFTER each one occurs, we realise that it didn't really happen after all: Claire seems to be turning more and more hallucinatory as the film proceeds. At the end of the film, Claire commits suicide by an extremely implausible method. Or ... DOES she? Sheesh!I well and truly wanted to like this film. When director van der Oest puts aside her arty crotchets and she sticks to the story, she shows some genuine narrative talent despite the increasing incoherence of this plot line. In the lead role as Claire, young actress Laurien Van den Broeck is extremely pretty and personable, with significant screen presence. I wish her good luck elsewhere in other projects.If you watch any five consecutive minutes of 'Moonlight', you'll mistake this for a brilliant film. If you watch it from beginning to end, as I did, your response will likely be similar to mine: namely, "HUH?" I wish that all this talent and these resources had been devoted to a more coherent screenplay, and I regretfully rate 'Moonlight' only 4 out of 10.

twine- I had never heard of this movie until monday, when i found out it would be available for rent(dvd) the next day. (02/04/2003) So i decided to pick it up as the imdb info and comment looked quite promising.After watching the trailer on the dvd (before watching the actual movie) i thought, well this is going to be a good mysterious and a bit romantic movie. But boy, am i disappointed.Let me start with the positive things first. The cinematography is quite good, beautiful filming and shots at times. The acting (especially by the young Laurien Van den Broeck) is good aswell. Just 13 or 14? years old and already speaking fluent english including some french and german. I hope she will develop herself to a good actress in the future. But then we get to the plot, which is really really weak and terrible slow. *** SPOILERS AHEAD ***The basic story: A boy from afghanistan is used by some criminals to smuggle drugs(coke rolled in plastic, he eats it and keeps it in his stomage to poop it out at the destination) something goes wrong and the criminals shoot him 2 times. Thinking the boy is dead they run/drive off, he actually isn't and ends up wounded at the house of Claire. Claire finds him and decides to take care of him. The criminals ofcourse find out he isn't dead and start looking for him, when claire sees the criminals kill an innocent man she decides to go on the run with the boy.The first 35mins revolve around claire taking care of the boy at her house. This part is very slow and contains some unnecessary parts imho: the ~2mins intro /w credits where the camera flies over the woods. Nice cinematography and all, but what does it contribute to the movie? Thats right, nothing. Ok you know where the movie starts, (in the woods) but does it really have to take 2mins to show that? The movie shows having the girl her first period, contributes nothing to the story. The movie shows a 1min swimming scene, and i still don't understand what that part had to do with the story.After 35mins claire sees the criminals(which are looking for the boy) kill an innocent man and she goes on the run with the boy. (leaving her house) You would expect a nice thrilling follow up of the movie now. Too bad, it won't happen. The rest of the movie is as slow and stupid as the first part. They visit various weird locations, (including a convent) the typical dutch elements for a movie get thrown in again: The boy/girl start sniffing/using the coke(why?), the girl goes naked(thought i was looking at child porn here) and has sex with the boy, one of the criminals tries to rape(literally) the girl. And it contains alot of unnecessary parts, which only seem to be there to get the movie at the final 85min running time.I could probably go on for another 5mins, but i think i will stop here. Final conclusion is that the plot/story is very weak, pathetic and it ruins the movie. 4/10 (cinematography, acting is good. But the plot takes the rating down bigtime) PS. I tried to get my 4$ back at the videostore, but no...... :)