Whiplash Review

Tough love---Miles Teller as an aspiring jazz drummer and JK Simmons as an abusive professor of a prestigious music group in Whiplash
                                                      There's never been an argument quite like the one made in Whiplash, a daring and stirring drama about a nice kid named Andrew (Miles Teller) who wants to be a top jazz drummer but ends up under the watch of Terrence Fletcher (JK Simmons,) a professor with a terrifying way of telling people they're doing it all wrong. On his first day of class, Andrew gets a chair hurdled at his head simply because he's slightly off tempo. However, this film tries to give Fletcher some humanity by trying to explain why he might be coming across as such a monster. In another film, this would be forced....only FEELING as if there's a question of Fletcher's humanity. However, Whiplash shows writer-director Damien Chazelle giving more depth than just a questionable response. He explores Fletcher's seeming evil nature and shows the point of view of both determined but terrified Andrew and supposed villain Fletcher. Chazelle also puts the ultimate power of the answer in the hands of the audience, a risky but ultimately provocative move on his part. This film would not have worked, however, if it weren't for the brilliant Simmons. He dives into the role, giving it all he possibly has and never petering out of what he's supposed to be. If Simmons does not win the best supporting actor Oscar..it will be one of the biggest sins in the history of The Academy Awards.

                                                       The film is mostly told from the point of view of Andrew, who loves his devoted father (an excellent and underused Paul Reiser) and even gets up the nerve to ask a movie theater employee named Nicole (Melissa Benoist) out. However, once introduced to Fletcher and his prestigious, highly regarded band, Andrew is torn between the success of making it big and the detriment of falling out of line with his life. Fletcher pushes Andrew to never be a second late to any rehearsals or classes and diminishes his confidence every time he misses a beat..literally. It's interesting to note that Simmons, while having played some unlikable characters, has never played a character that is truly evil (I have been told by multiple sources that he did in the highly regarded TV show "Oz" but I have never seen a single episode of that and his role in the Mark Wahlberg thriller Contraband wasn't evil so much as a bad dude) until now. Sure...he screams a lot and is aggressive in the original Spiderman trilogy but this shows a whole other side of him. He makes Fletcher not just a monster but inhumane in the way he presents himself. It's hard to say how Simmons and Chazelle make him such a vile, disgusting washout of a man without giving anything away but it's pretty incredible right from the first scene.

                                                        Simmons' performance proves to be a detriment a few times. This is only because, as great as Teller, Benoist and Reiser all are, the film always feels to lose its spark when Simmons is off screen. He walks away with the part and, throughout almost every second of his screen time, quite literally caused my jaw to drop. Right off the bat, the audience feels Fletcher's presence in the auditorium they are sitting in. Although Simmons seems like a nice guy from what I've seen on talk shows and read in various interviews, he is so realistically crazy and evil here that it's almost hard to imagine a  nice guy pulling this role off.

                                                          This is also a perfectly edited film, with Chazelle directing the beat of the drums as well as the sounds of the other instruments with a purposeful intensity. He gives the film a chilling claustrophobia that makes the audience feel just as trapped as Andrew. Even in a scene where Andrew and Nicole go out for pizza, the direction is so zoomed in and close that it makes the overall feelo f the situation uncomfortable. This scene is also nerve wracking because it makes Andrew and Nicole's eventual downfall within their relationship feel closer and closer as the scene goes on.

                                                         Whiplash is a great film with a more than Oscar worthy performance from Simmons. His performance is definitely the best I've seen all year and I dare say one of the best I've seen in my multiple years of watching films obsessively. If it weren't for him, this film still would have been very good but he drives the film to the status of great.
(5 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong language including some sexual references)

Kill The Messenger Review

Front page covered story----Jeremy Renner as journalist Gary Webb, who got way too deep into drug smuggling scandals in Kill The Messenger
                                 Kill The Messenger starts and ends with real footage of drug smuggling stories. The start involves stories questioning the methods of day to day citizens within drug smuggling rings. The end involves footage of the higher powers taking all the blame for such crimes. It's a perfectly defined way to show who Gary Webb really was. He was a journalist who, above all, was determined to reveal the truth and what people needed to know. He didn't care about a paycheck or respect, he just wanted ordinary citizens to be aware of what was going on around them. Of course, it's not a spoiler to say that the film finds Webb finding that the higher powers are a substantial part of why drug smuggling rings are running rampant. The film poses an interesting question of how much information is truly being hidden from the general public. Needless to say, the higher ups didn't want this information getting to ordinary citizens. This puts Gary's boss (Oliver Platt) and editor (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in a position where even they are forced to throw him under the bus. Kill The Messenger is also that rare film which works better when less is happening. The deeper and deeper Gary gets into this conspiracy, the less interesting the story truly is. This is not to say that everything he finds isn't interesting. On the contrary, every bit of information as well as the rabbit hole he sinks himself into is fascinating. It's just that the very present air of mystery before the reveal proves to be the most intense. It's like watching or reading And Then There Were None for the first time without knowing who the murderer is.

                                Webb is played in top form by Jeremy Renner, an actor who baffles me. He's an excellent actor but seems to pick roles such as The Bourne Legacy and Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters that don't let him show his considerable talents. Perhaps he has fun taking an easy role every now and then and films such as The Hurt Locker and The Town give him a justified "one for them, one for me" approach. Renner looks so much the part that when they showed footage of the older Gary Webb at the end, I thought they put makeup on Renner to make him look older. Renner's quick, witty way of telling it like it is works spectacularly for playing Gary Webb. This was not just a man who changed journalism inadvertently, this was a man who was not living if he was not changing journalism. The film is perfectly cast for everyone else as well. Director Michael Cuesta and screenwriter Peter Landesman (who takes the script from both Webb's book "Dark Alliance" and Nick Schou's book "Kill The Messenger") bring in people who obviously know what they're doing for what would be thankless, nothing roles by lesser actors. Great talents such as Michael Sheen, Ray Liotta, Barry Pepper, Paz Vega, Yul Vazquez, Robert Patrick, Andy Garcia, Michael Kenneth Williams and Tim Blake Nelson come in for brief scenes and make the best of what they have. Other extremely talented actors also have solid roles. These include Rosemarie DeWitt as Sue, Gary's supportive but massively skeptical wive and Lucas Hedges as Ian, Gary's supportive but massively skeptical oldest son.

                                 The real strength of the film comes from Cuesta's direction, which makes use of both the quickly moving rabbit hole that Webb finds himself in, which is symbolized by shots of Webb riding his motorcycle and the slow burn that comes from being addicted to such information, such as when Liotta shows up briefly as a man who also got addicted to heaps of information he shouldn't have had. This is the kind of film that works as a conspiracy thriller equally as well as it works as a psychological "how far is too far" investigative drama. It's exciting to watch someone so passionate about exposing lies that affect people who are just trying to make an honest living. If you do not know the story and have not seen the film yet, I advise you to skip the next paragraph as I am going to integrate part of the conclusion into my review.

                                Nothing about the film shows Webb's passion for finding the truth and exposing it quite as much as a scene at the end in which Webb gives a big "screw you" to his boss, his editor and the world of journalism as it stands in general. After winning a National Journalists Award, Webb first imagines his view of what he has done compared to every other person in the room's view on his story. He imagines a huge standing ovation complete with a lot of "what to go, Gary" being told to him. Flash to the actual event and there are only a few people reluctantly clapping for him. Of the four people barely clapping for him, two of them are his wife and his older son. He then goes up to the podium where people look at him with the interest of a kid wanting dessert being handed a plate of broccoli. He then launches into a speech of how he thought, as a journalist, he was supposed to publish and uphold the true facts of what's going on in the world, whether good or bad, for everyone to see. Of course, this is after his editor and boss have thrown him under the bus and asked him to resign. He explains he does not want to work for any paper or news outlet that hides wrong doings of higher ups simply because they are higher ups. He then throws his signed resignation sheet at his boss and editor and walks away in complete silence. This is who Webb was---a man who cared more about giving the general public the information that needs to be said than just simply working as a journalist. Most journalists would be too scared to even utter a word about this story but Webb gave away the entire farm on the drug smuggling scandal.

                                While Kill The Messenger does lag in a few parts and perhaps could have reached its conclusion sooner, it is no doubt a worth seeing story about a man who changed what people brought to their papers. Renner is the driving force here, with a great cast backing him up to deliver a truly entertaining and fascinating film. This is both a fascinating study of just how scary exposure and investigative journalism can be and a solid mystery of just how much is being hidden from us day by day. Even as I sat here typing this review, there could potentially be hundreds, even thousands of dangerous and threatening stories being swept under the rug for fear off exposure. In that alone, this is a film well worth watching.
(4 and 1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for language and drug content)
                             

The Guest Review

What's wrong with this picture?---Dan Stevens as a mysterious man claiming to be an old war buddy of a welcoming family's deceased son in The Guest
                                                    The Guest is the greatest spectacle of film making anyone will see this year, and perhaps ever. It is a throwback to a different era of film that is so bad ass, so invigorating, so suspenseful, so edge of your seat and so damn entertaining that it's almost hard to think a film this great could still be made. It's not surprising to report that the film comes courtesy of director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett,  the team behind last year's stunning horror flick You're Next. As they did in that film, here they combine two seemingly impossible to mix, completely tired genres and bash them together in a way that would not be expected of anyone walking into the theater. In You're Next, they combined the standard home invasion thriller and the dysfunctional family comedy (it's a great combo even though it suggests The Strangers meets Four Christmases.) Here, Wingard and Barrett take the "you never know who's under your own roof" thriller and the conspiracy thriller genres and make a combination so incredible that it literally sent me into a state of shock leaving the auditorium. A lot of the film's success is due to star Dan Stevens, however, who takes an easily tedious and unbelievable characters and plays both ends of the spectrum exceptionally well.

                                                 Stevens plays David, a man who mysteriously shows up on the doorstep of the Peterson household. Their son has died in service and David claims to have been on his squad and says they were really close. Mother Laura (Sheila Kelley) buys into it, if not just to have a memory of her son. However, daughter Anna (Maika Monroe,) son Luke (Brendan Meyer) and father Spencer (Leland Orser) are much more skeptical. They wonder why this man just decided to come to their home out of nowhere. Couldn't he have called to see if it was alright? Why did their son never mention this man? That all changes, however, when David proves to be a compassionate and fun friend to all of them. I choose to end the synopsis here because the less one knows going into this film, the more incredible of a ride it will prove to be.

                                                 This is the kind of film that revels in the idea that the audience will be nervous about what will happen next. Another great thriller from this year, Enemy, did this almost as well. This film works brilliantly at keeping the audience on edge about why David is there and what his end goal is. Stevens manages to play David with an increasingly large amount of coolness and relaxation, which makes the suspicious aspect of his visit even more effective. He never tries hard to be cool, which makes the end product of his ease and swagger something of a miracle.

                                                 The supporting cast is also great, creating characters that are shockingly sympathetic. These characters are not just people who are there to run around and scream. Rather, these are actually people with jobs, aspirations and lives. While the end may leave some cold due to the current nature of the characters, it is no doubt a fascinating conclusion to behold. The film makes use of its setting, as well. Not only does the middle of nowhere dwelling make the ambiguous nature of David more thrilling but such settings as a pre-Halloween dance decorated gymnasium and an off the beaten path bar are used to great effect.

                                                  The Guest will certainly not be for everyone. Its concept may be too broad and loosely threaded for some while others may find the nervousness that comes from watching Stevens too much to handle. However, it is an exceptional piece of film making for anyone looking for a classic throwback to horror films from the 80's that directors and screenwriters seem incapable of producing any more. In other words, if you think you're excited to see this film, then by all means see it.
(5 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for strong violence, language, some drug use and a scene of sexuality)

The Zero Theorem Review

In need of a reality check today?-----Christoph Waltz as a computer hacker being slowly driven insane by the meaning of existence in The Zero Theorem
                                                  Here is a rare complaint to have for a film---it relies too much on its own cool nature. It should be noted that The Zero Theorem is perhaps the only film I have ever had and will ever have this complaint about. I suppose it's the most appropriate film to have this complaint about seeing as it's Terry Gilliam's latest film. Outside of the Monty Python films he has directed, I have never actually loved a film of his. I have highly respected and immensely enjoyed such films as Twelve Monkeys, Brazil and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas but they've also irritated me in the process. He too often feels like a man who's too wrapped up in the process of being cool to actually focus on other elements that would improve his work immensely. He's the equivalent of the high school star football player that everyone loves who gets very, very, very mediocre grades. I admittedly do understand the getting wrapped up in coolness factor of this one perhaps more than others. After all, it does star the already legendary Christoph Waltz and has an exceedingly kooky and wholly creative premise. However, those things can only last so long (maybe Waltz's legendary pull can last forever but the premise, not so much.) This is a film that will certainly only speak to a certain few. I can't decide whether I want to put myself in that group or not. Most people will hate this film due to its story that is, mostly, intentionally hard to follow. One minute a premise will be introduced but the next there won't even be a hint of what happened for the last 60 seconds. This may be a tactic that Gilliam is using since the film is about a man desperately searching for the meaning of existence and being contradicted by one thing or another every step of the way. However, most people will just find it pretentious and tedious, or so I imagine.

                                              The film stars Waltz as Qohen, a worker bee in one of those futuristic societies that's actually a metaphor for our society today. Other films that have this kind of future society can be seen in would be the classic 1982 film Blade Runner, this year's Snowpiercer and a few hundred films from those 32 years in between. This is not to say this is an awful concept. The two other films that I have mentioned are both fantastic and stick with you long after you leave the theater. However, it's a tricky concept to maneuver if the writer(s) and director(s) don't have every idea in their head predetermined. There has to be a specific reason that the people involved in this kind of film are making it. Usually these types of films are love it or hate it. I suppose this one will be for most people as well but I'm fairly on the fence about my feelings for this one.

                                               The plot? Oh yeah....I forgot to explain that. Qohen is tired of working day to day at his dead end futuristic job and decides to rebel against the highest power (I know that sounds familiar to anyone reading this as well.) However, when Qohen does this, he's assigned to a job in which he has to try to make these millions of cubes fit with one another and thus prove an idea named The Zero Theorem, which states that life has no purpose and everyone lives and dies and there's no reason for them to do so. Of course, in order to prove this, Qohen has to consistently almost but not quite figure out the idea of the cubes. A computer will tell him "0 equals 96.79 percent and 0 must equal 100 percent," and so on and so forth. The plot goes further, with a sexy, bubbly blonde (Melanie Thierry) who proves a temptation for Qohen and an annoying but helpful teen (Lucas Hedges.) I choose not to really go into the actual plot because part of the intrigue of the film is where it's headed and why.

                                            Gilliam is exactly like Lars Von Trier to me. I don't like Von Trier's film per say but I totally respect his approach to simply making what he wants to make and the audacity to make everyone watching the film furious when all is said and done. Giliam does the same with his films, including this one. The ending seems to wrap things up nicely but is rather a disguise for just how little the film and all its events ending up meaning. Waltz is incredible in a role that requires a lot of effort to pull off. This is a blank slate of a man who must be made sympathetic in order to be interesting. Faults does this with perfect ease. Waltz is very similar to Christopher Walken in that he is inherently fascinating because no one can match the type of presence that he has on screen. He continues that here and is mostly why a fair amount of the film actually works. Get someone else in his role and every single part of this film falls to pieces.

                                              First time screenwriter Pat Rushin brings a certain energy to the dialogue and situation. However, he seems more invested in the idea of this world than actually giving any of the characters any kind of, well, character. For example, Tilda Swinton shows up, seemingly just having walked off the set of Snowpiercer, as a goofy "woman" (she's actually a computer program) who serves as an overly nosy therapist to Qohen. This is a very cool and potentially great idea and while it does work to some degree, Rushin is too obsessed with the sheer bizarre nature of the character. It is never explained what her motives are or why she's even there. This happens consistently during the film. Characters that could potentially be a great counterpart for Qohen show up but are given absolutely nothing to do beside be wacky. Even the blonde and the teen, who are both on screen a lot, are just people who are there for no real reason and with no real motivation driving them. Come to think of it, Qohen is also a meaningless, non-driven character but he works simply because Waltz is so great and gives the character significantly more depth and meaning than was written for him.

                                           As you may be able to tell at this point, I don't really know my own feelings for this film. Sure, it's kind of inventive and somewhat enjoyable but it's also a shallow project with no real payoff. I feel as if this is a film that will reach cult status but more in the way that something out of Troma does than in the manner that Brazil did. I can not stress enough how incredible Waltz is but a line must be drawn somewhere between what's a good film and a film that's just a flash in the pan. This film goes across the line to just  a flash in the pan but only by  a nose. I can't say I hated it and I may even watch it again in a few years and get more out of it. However, I must say that, as of now, this is a film for anyone who wants some nice visual imagery and a great performance but who don't care if there's any purpose to what they're watching. I am not one of those people.
(2 and 1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity)