Saturday, January 31, 2015

Whiplash

It's about damn time the movie theater I go to started showing this! Technically they had it last week, but the showtimes just didn't work out for me then. Everyone I've talked to has been praising this movie and now I can see why. Wow! I was blown away by how good it was.

Whiplash is about a talented young drummer named Andrew Nieman (Miles Teller) who attends a prestigious music academy in New York City. He's accepted into the studio band of famous music instructor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Fletcher's methods of unlocking a student's potential are very controversial... and that's putting it mildly.

I sat there in the theater just in awe at the amount of effort director Damien Chazelle put into this movie. Everything about it is amazing- the cinematography, editing, music, etc. I was very impressed with what he was able to do with a $3 million dollar budget.

I was surprised just how good Miles Teller was. The only thing I had seen him in before this was Divergent and he was pretty forgettable. That's not the case here. He's actually a decent actor and a hell of a drummer!

But as much as I liked Miles Teller, we all know the real star of this movie is J.K. Simmons. I've always been a fan of his, but I had no idea he could pull off a performance of this magnitude. His character is crazy- one minute he seems calm and then next minute he just snaps! Anytime he was on screen I swear I felt more tense than I would watching a horror movie. It's pretty safe to say that J.K. Simmons is a lock to win Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

That being said, if I had anything "negative" to say about the movie is that there's a small romantic subplot that, though I understand what the director was trying to do, I felt was unnecessary. They could've removed it entirely and the movie would've been just as good.

Even if you're normally not into these types of movies I still think you should go see Whiplash. J.K. Simmons performance alone is worth the price of admission.

My Rating: 9/10

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