I've been watching the annual Oscars telecast every year since 1992 (at least, that's the first one I have vivid memories, in part because I was heavily rooting for
A Few Good Men, the one film of the five best picture nominees that I'd seen, to win (which it didn't, giving me my first taste of Oscar disappointment); it's entirely possible I'd seen some of the earlier ceremonies as well), and starting in 2001, I made a concerted effort to see each of the five nominated best pictures every year. When the Academy expanded the field from five nominees to, first, ten, in 2009, and then to a variable number between five and ten, in 2011, that practice became more difficult to reach, and though I came close in most years, there was always at least one I missed, usually by choice. But I knew the frontrunners, and if I didn't see ALL the best picture nominees, I usually at least saw all of the Best Director nominees and/or the presumed frontrunner, and so one way or another, I ended up having seen whatever was crowned Best Picture on Oscar night.
All of which is a lengthy preamble to say that Moonlight is now the first best picture winner I hadn't seen when it won since Shakespeare in Love in 1998 (I wasn't making a point of seeing everything back then, but it didn't matter, because it seemed so obvious that Saving Private Ryan would win). This is mostly down to having only seen an embarrassingly-low two of the nine best picture nominees at this point, a fact brought on by the dual circumstances of:
