Film: Whiplash

So clearly this is review month.

Maybe there's nothing going on in my life. Or maybe I just have a lot of time on my hands now that SB doesn't have a tyre and for that reason, I can't seem to feel inspired to leave the house.

Whiplash, the movie I was watching at midnight, is about a guy who goes to a prestigious music school and finds a slightly psychotic teacher who he is dying to be validated by. Drums are his tool, and that chap is his poison.

This movie was pretty good. It's gotten a couple of Oscar nods and awards already, and made quite a lot more than what it cost to make. I mean...it IS a good movie. Great? I don't know. The shooting is interesting - the cinematography reminds me of a cross between Locke and Black Swan. It has a weird yellow kind of thriller movie-hued shooting - or maybe I was watching a camera copy? There are also a lot of artistically fulfilling shots - cuts for intensity's effect, I suppose - between characters and drums, characters and other characters, etc. It's visually satisfying, in a more 'What-shot-did-he-choose' way as opposed to a 'That's-such-a-pretty landscape' way. And the music - my weakness - is good! Jazz! And all that...jazz. :D

The whole movie is very Black Swan-esque - a student who wants it all and wants to be it all and thinks of nothing else all the time, and a teacher whose madness only serves to fuel his own. The student is played by Miles Teller, who is making better and better choices in his career (you know him from the bad guy in Divergent and in The Spectacular Now, which I don't know him from because I haven't seen it, but give me time). He puts on a great and mostly believable performance. I didn't understand the brief depiction of his teenage angst because he hadn't come across as angsty the entire movie, but family does bring out the worst in you, lol, so I guess that's valid.

J. K. Simmons plays the mad teacher well, which was interesting for me (he's the one getting the Oscar nods) because the last two things I saw him in were Men Women and Children (very good, but playing a normal dad character) and Growing Up Fisher, one of my favourite shows from last year, in which he plays a dad character with a twist - the fact that he is blind. Very candy flossy warm fuzzy feelings inside but also very funny. So this was interesting for me. He did it well.

Critics are saying that the movie is dependent on these two stellar performances, and it is worth it because of them. It is. Go see it.

tSN