Best movie I've seen in 2014. I don't know how this flew under the radar here. Also, the trailer sucks. Don't even watch it. Just see the movie.
The less you know about this film the better, avoid trailers etc. Just go for it.
With just an ounce of nuance, this could have been a great movie. As it is, it's a great showcase for J.K. Simmons, and I'm okay with it just being that.
this was a Great movie. capital G. most definitely in my top 3 of favourite movies this year. i could watch and dissect each scene's brilliance all day long. as others said, fuck trailers, i never watch them anyway. just enjoy the ride.
i think this popular movie deserves popularity
not super into it. loved the final scene. Loved a handful of scenes. lots of one-note writing. seemed like the director or the drummer didn't know THAT much about jazz drumming and was only fixated on playing harder and faster in every single scene. also super not into the way music was filmed in this movie. sorry.
i'd guess the drummer's "skillset" was indeed less influenced by jazz, and more by a desire to provide emotional tangibility for the audience. i think emotional tangibility was the goal through the movie, and i found neither the characters nor their behaviors believable. but i could feel them. feel their hearts
the family-dinner scene, for example, that's some bullshit. everyone is clearly being steered by a story and a script. the kinda conflict that's being demonstrated is highly relatable, but its execution is movie bullshit. at the end of the sequence i didn't think "omfg that's exactly like my family irl" but i did think "i've felt that way at a table with my family"
my summary is i liked the movie for its central theme. i think it's an important one, and i think it's relevant to our times. because everyone knows this is an age in which the internet will tell you what you're doing wrong, and i think that's trickled into our private lives in a massive way. but, simply, don't fucking let it ruin you. right? i agree with whiplash in that regard
Part of the problem is that they have to come up with a way to convey cinematically, to non-experts, the concept of one person drumming "better" than another. This inevitably requires dumbing down an extremely nuanced skill into something simple and quantifiable, i.e., who can play fastest.
I did like the movie, you guys. I know it sounds like I didn't, but I did. The movie and I just have some issues we're trying to work through. We're sleeping in separate rooms for now.
I don't know - those problems are not impossible, and if you were to turn to Japanese movies or even reality tv shows about craftsmanship (or some sports movies as well), there are ways to tell a story about craftsmanship or perfecting something without repeating one scene over and over again.
I think it's one of those movies where the subject is more exciting than the movie itself. I'm sorry guys, there are scenes that just really bothered me.
yeah but how's he gonna express the repetition of insults at him without the repetition of insults?
i think it's adorable you're apologizing for not liking the movie. you can not like it! i don't think there's a movie that everyone at xixax likes
[edit] had to edit "with" to "without" which is kinda funny
Though I loved this film, it's worth noting that Fletcher's teaching "methods" would never fly in even the most prestigious of music schools. Suspension of disbelief issues aside, it's so much fun seeing J.K. Simmons do what he does with this material.
Quote from: pete on January 14, 2015, 07:57:56 PM
seemed like the director...didn't know THAT much about jazz drumming and was only fixated on playing harder and faster
Oh totally. All kinds of weird things that even those with a relatively cursory knowledge of music would be able to call out. I don't think it's possible to determine a tempo WITH EXACTING PRECISION from a two-count, for instance. But it makes for a pretty good scene. Super strange that the writer/director has made two musical films and is in the process of making a third when he seems to know very little about music (or is dumbing it down for some bonehead mass audience).
More than the music though -- which is kinda like the who-cares, implausible science of Interstellar or Gravity -- the movie really gets the vibe wrong. Not only would the teacher's methods be prohibited (if not actually illegal), students wouldn't subject themselves to a program like this. Jazz people aren't athletes or military recruits. They're fuckin weirdo stoner types in goofy hats and shit. It's not about painstaking precision so much as feel and soul, artisanship,
cool... There's a math/speed element, but it comes secondary to the intangibles. The movie's approach is actually more of a metal/prog thing.
All this is not to say I didn't enjoy it; I did! Felt very much like jenkins. I was a little surprised to see it turn up on so many best of lists in such an exceptionally good year, but it's a fine, fun, somewhat populist picture.
but my problem wasn't lack of authenticity - or rather, it was lack of knowledge that resulted in overwrought scenes and acting because the director was bored with his own subject.
Spoilers
Good movie, nothing more for me. My main issue was the dumb ideas of escalation between Teller and Simmons to play out the level of their feuding and hatred for each other. The fact they made Teller insufferable is fine, but the dramatic conclusion of Teller bottoming out in school with a car crash before a performance, escaping a totaled car, showing up bloodied and distraught and still being allowed to perform? Add on to that you have an absurd fight on stage when the whole thing fails? The film was not patient enough to dramatize a more likely subtle and lengthy abuse by Simmons of Teller where Teller eventually does something - more reasonably - dumb and gets expelled. Or his ego becomes eventually destroyed and he just leaves feeling like he can do nothing right. That would have required more attention to small moments and focus on things that could have gotten the film to disappear when trying its very best to get noticed during the festival scene. I hate the film had to go routes it did because so much of it is well made. It has a perfect simplicity to staging and composition angles that reminds me of what PTA did with Hard Eight so I think the director will do a lot better later, but still, too many issues.
oh ok. it's the same problem i heard about the dance of reality. it's not a literal movie. that simple really
Dance of Reality's problem for me is that the symbolism was dumb and obvious.
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on January 15, 2015, 05:31:14 PM
My main issue was the dumb ideas
The film was not patient enough to dramatize a more likely subtle and lengthy
That would have required more attention to small moments and focus
yeah, it's a thing you don't like. i hear ya. it's so gross, all those themes lying on the surface, all the eviscerated emotions of dumb obvious people, littered across the pretty screen. ye-uck. me, i love it, i consider it an x-ray into the soul of the person. which i don't think would be called an x-ray. must be chakras i'm thinking about. love 'em
Quote from: pete on January 15, 2015, 02:04:22 PM
but my problem wasn't lack of authenticity - or rather, it was lack of knowledge that resulted in overwrought scenes and acting because the director was bored with his own subject.
I don't know that the director was necessarily
bored by his subject; more that the subject and desired themes run in opposition to one another at times. In Full Metal Jacket say, the "dehumanizing abuse of power" stuff works despite "unrealistic" performances/stylization/etc because it's credible in the real world context. It may not be REAL, but it's authentic enough. Here, that's simply not the case and so, much of the juicy stuff is affected. The feelings are real, but they're not arrived at in a realistic/authentic way. The film overcompensates to get its point across.
Most of the objectors would probably be cool with the unbelievability if the plot didn't click so damn loud. I don't think anyone is asking this to be a literal movie (SPOILERS obviously the final showdown is a preposterous situation, the family dinner wouldn't be so outrageously bald-faced, among other things SPOILERS OVER). I can still dig it, but I see why people would take issue.
so it shoulda been like pta. so it shoulda been like kubrick. so it was dumb like other dumb things. various insults against the movie are true or true enough, but imma say they're matters of taste. if i can feel the movie and feel the person behind the movie while watching the movie, i like the movie
Nah nah, man.
Not shoulda been like Kubrick at all. Just saying the setting. Coulda said This Boy's Life.
well I think the car crash (which I completely forgot about) was a fine example. it's just something loud and brash that really has nothing to do with what the story is about. the movie is unable to show the difference between good playing and bad playing so as a result it needs to contrive blood and sticks being dropped and music not being in front of you and essentially all these situations in place of drama. so really it's about the most bumbling person in a universe of bumbling people, on his bumbling pursuits, and how he bumbles less in the end, rather than about anything that's actually internal or psychological.
I think the reason for all this praise has to do with how few movies of this genre are available to Americans. the last one that I remember was Black Swan (a much better film). So we become a lot more forgiving of whiplash's contrivances because we are convinced that without a car crash or three instances of people throwing and punching stuff, a story actually can't be told. I don't know, it's not that I hate this movie or anything. I thought some scenes are great, but I just feel like it's more generic than it needs to be and is not as rare as people think it is.
ps that bourne shot in which the truck appears from the driver side window crash gag is this generation's wide shot of guy walks down the street and gets sideswiped by a truck gag.
spoiler fest
i first remember the shot from adaptation. and yeah, i see it all the time now. if there's an interior shot of a person driving a car and i can see out the driver's window, i assume there's an impending collision. does anyone have a pre-adaptation example of this shot?
SPOILERFEST TOO
does that dude get hit by a car in all his movies?
SPOIL3RS
And in real life.
via Punch
"[Miles Teller] was in a near-fatal car accident in 2007, leaving him with multiple scars on his face and neck."
To its credit, it was a beautifully executed version of that hyper-cliched car crash shot. Maybe the best since Let Me In.
ok.
so you guys have made me feel really really stupid with all of these reviews.
i'm really hoping that i'm not, and you guys are retarded.
but what i'm coming away from all of this criticism and attempting to decipher everything said, and again i apologize if this sounds naive, but this is just stupefying to me.
are you guys really complaining that a fictional movie wasn't realistic?
i mean, im sorry if i'm being dumb here, but this is ridiculous.
its a fucking movie and its really really good. its not a biopic or a documentary.
its fiction, and its a great cinematic achievement. it does what you expect movies to do and what they are SUPPOSED TO DO and i dont understand why that's a problem for anyone, let alone my friends on this board.
and since others went there, ima fuckin go there too.
i thought the master was a great movie but does the director realize that a human being cannot physically drink those kind of chemical concoctions frequently and survive?
that would never happen in a real army, amirite you guys?
It doesn't have to be realistic, it has to ring true.
Quote from: 03 on January 16, 2015, 07:50:51 PM
are you guys really complaining that a fictional movie wasn't realistic?
No, and I don't get why this is the counter argument. I think everyone is more or less in agreement that this is a good, even very good movie. But it's got a few key scenes that come off as contrived to some viewers. The sort of narrative coddling/deck stacking that some saw recently in Interstellar and shat all over uncontested. Some of these problems may stem from unbelievability, but that's not why they matter.
stahhhp it. we're all gonna agree to disagree and don't make me repeat things
Sought out Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Hell of a picture. Crazy that it's the same dude. Anybody seen it?
SPOILERS
When I was six and entering what americans call elementary school, the private school I attended had an obligatory music class. They taught us to read music and play the flute. The teacher wasn't some nice old lady, but an orchestra conductor. I vividly remember this. The first day of school this guy, a man in his early 40's, completely different to any other teacher I ever had, steps into the classroom and in a matter of seconds screams at the top of his lungs and manages to shut everyone up. 30 minutes later, he had already explained how you play each note and the class was over.
Next class he barely enters and he goes to the first kid on the first row: "Give me a B", and the kid plays it. "Give me an A", the kid doesn't do anything. He snaps. "GIVE ME AN A!". The kid can't do it. He goes to the next kid, same story. Five kids later it's my turn. I'm already scared shitless. "Give me a B". I got this, so I play this motherfucking B. "Give me a G". I don't know how to play a G, and he's batshit crazy by now. "B! B! Don't you know how to play a damn B?!?!?!" Nobody had ever screamed at me like this. He takes my hand and fingers and shows me how to play a goddamn B while screaming "LIKE THIS, LIKE THIS!" This guy was our music teacher for six years. In fact, later when I joined the band to play trumpet, he was my conductor for an extra three years.
I gotta say, kids always complained about him, but fuck me if I didn't became the best in that fucking class. When watching this movie, I could totally see this happening. Art schools and art teachers set their own rules. The only other time I had a teacher on that vein was in theatre school, and shit, I thank that woman for her toughness. J.K. Simmon's methods in the movie are not implausible at all in this context, even within jazz.
Also, the film never says that playing faster makes you a better musician or player. It's about the difficulty of playing fast and slow and in the tempo the piece needs, and making it work. However, playing any instrument fast is hard as hell, and only the best can do it right, so it's not at all a bad way to illustrate difficulty for a drummer.
Yes, the films has it's flaws. That car accident is so unnecessary, but things like being unable to play without a music sheet and having the drive to endure an asshole because you are an asshole yourself, that's great. That scene with the family, when the guy stands up to everyone and basically says to everyone: "what you do is worthless, I am a genius". Shit, that's much more real than the usual scene of the sensible guy being under appreciated and misunderstood. People with the drive to be "one of the best" always have that moment in their lives when they assume their inner asshole. And the film does something very right by ending with the drum solo. There's no emotional payoff because this character doesn't want it. His goal is to play on his terms and that's his reward. We know he's an unbalanced individual, we know he can be an asshole with his loved ones, and we know he will probably never stop suffering from anxiety. That's his future. But he goes after this thing and gets it, and then the movie ends.
I liked Whiplash