Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★½ 111

  WAVES feels like A24’s Magnolia. an operatic plea for people to be better to each other, and a cautionary tale about why you should be wary of anyone whose favorite Kanye album is The Life of Pablo. a whole lot of it doesn't work but i couldn't help but respect the ambition and open-heartedness of it all.

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  Review by Karst ★★★ 52

  Exactly what you’d expect from a movie to play Kanye, Kendrick, Tyler, Cudi, Frank Ocean, Chance, Radiohead and Animal Collective all in one movie. The first half of this film is literally so chaotic but in a really good way. The opening credits are sick, but I can’t tell if that’s just because I like Floridada by Animal Collective. And that’s how I felt about pretty much most of this film. Do I like this or is it really just the music? And then in the second half they dial it down on the music and you’re like yep...was definitely just the music. A mess, an absolute mess. Such a god damn mess. But maybe...MAYBE....that was the point. But a mess. This film will mean a lot to a lot of high school kids and I respect that but ehehhhhh

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  Review by maria ★★½ 13

  when that aspect ratio changed from widescreen to 4:3, my ass clenched along with it

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★★ 22

  “what a difference a day makes.”

  a tale of two halves. the first holding your breath and breaking your heart in two, the second walking beside you piecing it back together again. it’s a tragedy that gives itself the time to heal, the time to breathe. life changes with the tide, it comes and goes in waves. but with every retreating tide is the promise of another to come. each wave brings its own adventure, its own highs and lows. out there is an ocean full of new chances. chances to forgive, to forget. to grieve, to rebuild. to love. this is cinema at its most powerful.

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  Review by Jay ★★½ 14

  im already trying not to think of the meme potential to watching a teenager trash his room and punch a wall after getting a bad text what makes you think playing tyler the creator over it will help

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★★ 14

  no u don’t understand that second half literally heals my mind body and SOUL

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  Review by marcos ★★★ 3

  im convinced trey edward shults wrote this only so he could use his ~vibes~ playlist as the soundtrack

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  Review by iana ★★★½ 4

  didn't always work for me, and sometimes it gets carried away with its own ambition, but i adored the latter half. i think waves is at its best when it focuses on forgiveness.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★ 67

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  As if a r/hhh playlist tried to mimic the aesthetic of Moonlight - truly an embarrassment. Second half plays better as it settles down, but Trey Edward Shults has no consideration for the interiority of human beings, and even less so for the functions of drama, so the whole tapestry collapses. The moods and energies of his work are completely unfounded - all anxiety and pain but no basis in concrete characterizations. Everyone in this is a type, an object to be painted all pretty and backed by music expected to do the heavy lifting, and it leads to a disingenuous visceral assault on the senses. This is a shallow kiddie pool playacting as an ocean of feeling, with…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★ 9

  Real 2013 tumblr ass cinema. Deeply contrived, monotonous histrionics and misery porn with the volume and extremity of the Directing cranked up to 11. Really feels like Shults wanted to make a Spotify playlist more than a movie. Some nice performances (especially when given the chance to breathe after things settle down a bit in the second half) but someone please buy this man a fucking tripod.

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  Review by kevinyang ★½ 124

  The most arrogant type of film - one that presumes to understand the lives and experiences of people of color, yet refuses to acknowledge its own shortcomings while gleefully inserting itself into every facet of their cultures. It's a film that thinks the words "autobiographical" or "color blind" will somehow absolve itself of all accountability in the misguided portrayals we see on screen. But pretty photography can't hide everything.

  I thought Krisha was great - it felt like the story of the Shults family at an incredibly intimate level, and the filmmaking fit the story. But to call Waves autobiographical in that sense, thereby superimposing a white Texan man's story onto that of a black family, is arrogance of the…

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  Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★★★★★ 12

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