This was pure cinema, I saw it back in December. I don't think a better looking movie, with a lush, seamy, dangerous palette has been released since Moonlight, from which this clearly takes a lot of cues. The acting was extraordinary, from all involved, it's a shame Kelvin Harrison's great performances this year, this, and Luce, have been overlooked. Sterling K Brown, whom I have never seen, was full of anger, love, and the tension that creates in every scene, he was overbearing, loving, and ready to fall apart. What a captivating performance.
The music, the direction, fuels the tension of teenage days, that I remember too well, with a queasy stomach, watching and waiting for whatever tragedy is lurking around the corner. I wonder how I made it out of high school alive, given the amount of drugs, alcohol, sex that was in me, and all around me. I felt for these kids, as they struggle with life and relationships in the stunning twilight of South Florida. The way the actresses nails lit up against the blackness of the ocean. It was pure bliss.
The second act could have trimmed the last storyline, with the dying father, but the scenes where she comes into herself as a person, as a young woman, and that conversation with her Dad, was just breathtaking. The Frank Ocean montage, the shots of the dissolving marriage, and the aftermath of a family tragedy. It's a brilliant and beautiful and heartbreaking, inspiring movie, that should be a best picture nom. Watch Waves, and the majority of the BP noms, and tell me, how seriously anyone can take the Oscars.
