by Armando Vanegas

Waves is the new epic family drama from every millennial’s favorite movie studio A24 and writer/director, Trey Edward Shults. Going into it, I was excited. Mainly because it was Sterling K. Brown aka Randall from This is Us in what looked like a lead role. Also, the trailer, like any for an A24 movie, looked like this was another success in their long ring of successes. I don’t know anything about Shults as a filmmaker, although I heard very good things about his previous movies, It Comes at Night and Krisha. Look, as a black person, there’s not a lot of family dramas in the mold of Terence Malick and Punch Drunk Love coming our way, so the fact that was a movie about a successful black family having nothing to do with them being black in addition to some beautiful cinematography was exciting. I was getting The Place Beyond the Pines feelings as I was hearing about the details about it and the way people were being so elusive about what it specifically was about. It’s cool that movies like this or Sorry to Bother You or Moonlight are finally getting the chance to have a platform to tell stories featuring black centric casts, yet making the stories universal. Having seen the final product, I appreciate what Shults, who happens to be white, did with the ideas he had of telling this story about these very specific individuals and it paid off very well.

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