Whiplash

Dustin: 4.5 of 5 stars Nick: 5 of 5 stars Average: 4.75 of 5 stars (Tweety canary)

Dustin: Whiplash is a movie about how obsessively people can push themselves to succeed and asks whether there’s a line. The film stars Miles Teller as a conservatory student and J.K. Simmons as a psychotic teacher who uses abuse to push students to their limits.

Nick: The movie somehow manages to be the best thriller and best romantic comedy of the year. Romance coming from the love between a man and his instrument while humor spewing through J.K. Simmons’s performance. I obviously laughed through most of the abuse, though the film was still very tense and engaging.

Dustin: Teller’s and Simmons’s performances were what made this film. While it was well-crafted, the characters could have easily turned into trite cliches in lesser hands. Teller mixes awkwardness with surety in a way we believe his character. Simmons plays his character as something of a drill sergeant. He is like an American Gordon Ramsay. He naturally has a certain depth in his eyes that makes you believe there’s more to his character than his actions.

Nick: I was about to be upset when you said it was their performances that made this film, but you followed it up nicely. The film was so expertly crafted. The editing and cinematography is outstanding and engrosses me as much as either of the actors. But you’re right in the sense that with two lesser actors the film would certainly have been ruined. Simmons should get every part where he gets to be an asshole. This almost makes me want to check out his failed TV series where he plays a blind father and the humor is drawn from his being blind… hysterical.

Dustin: We both praised Teller earlier in our review of Divergent. I thought his performance almost saved the dismal and depressing *ahem* comedy 21 & Over. I recognized his talent before and have been waiting for a movie that was good enough for him. I went into this movie knowing nothing about it, and was excited when it opened and the camera moves slowly down a hall and into a studio where Teller is pounding away on a drum kit. I had high hopes, and this movie delivered.

Nick: Well I told you about The Spectacular Now in our review of Divergent, which is a film that made me recognize him and was also one of my favorite films of 2013. One question… is Teller involved somehow in a car crash in 21 & Over? For some reasons there always seems to be a random car crash in his films.

Dustin: I don’t remember. But it seems like there was a lot of drinking and driving around in 21 & Over, so there should have been. I didn’t see The Spectacular Now, but I remember you mentioned he played something of a jerk in it, as he had in 21 & Over and Divergent. Here he is playing a distinctly different role and was still very good, so he’s definitely not a one-trick pony. He reminds me of a young, much taller Dustin Hoffman.

Nick: I read today people think of him as a better acting version of Vince Vaughn, which I’d have to agree. He always plays a jerk who has some redeeming qualities, but that no one can see until later into the movie. Teller plays the same role here as in The Spectacular Now. I don’t mean that as a negative. He plays selfish teenagers who sees love as in object that gets in the way of whatever his goal may be. Nobody seems to get him in this movie because he is so shut off and focused on drumming he comes off as an asshole to everyone at some point or another.

Dustin: You mentioned the love element, and that’s my one and only criticism of this movie. I didn’t buy the romantic subplot at all. He asks out the cute girl who works at the movie theater, who he’d never had the confidence to talk to before. He’s visibly nervous (which tends to make women nervous as well), and she doesn’t even know his name. There was no rapport before. I had a hard time believing she would go on a date with him. Then, after a boring date at a pizza parlour, we see she likes him because she touches her foot against his. They break up at the next date. I realize the subplot was a device to show how he’s sacrificing everything for his drumming, but even as a device, it shouldn’t have been handled so lazily.

Nick: I thought it was handled well enough. She seems to be alone in a new city, and this cute boy who she has come into contact with many of times finally has the courage to ask her out. I agree if it was his first time ever talking to her and he was visibly nervous she would have definitely said no, but they do have some sort of rapport. They feel after talking they’re both family minded in the sense she feels homesick and he still goes to see movies with his dad all the time. I like that what is normally the subject (romance) is given the sub-plot and the object (drums) becomes the plot. In a different movie we would have seen him realize his drumming obsession and his need to please his professor as very unhealthy and he would have ended putting the drums away and ending up with the girl.  

Dustin: They might have had a passing rapport, but there was no indication she might have been interested in him. In one scene, he is entering the theater, and he turns around to get another look at her. She’s just staring ahead and doesn’t even notice him. It might have been more believable if they just got rid of the boy-meets-girl scene and started with them as a couple that had been together for a few months. Teller seeming nervous when he asked her out didn’t add anything to the character we couldn’t already infer about him (again, thanks to the strength of his performance).

Nick: But it wasn’t a boy-meets-girl scene--they had met many times before. I understand what you are saying, but saying it’s unrealistic is silly. I once knew a girl who said yes to anybody who would ask her out if she was single, because to her you never know, and first impressions can sometimes be happenstance. I find it believable this teenage girl in a new city, at a school where she has no idea of what she wants to major in, meets a cute awkward boy and is like sure lets go get some pizza. I like that it doesn’t get a lot of screen time either and it just jumps to when they break up since it’s the subplot, although it makes the subplot feel somewhat pointless, but I think that’s the jarring effect of taking something one is used to and flipping it upside down.

Dustin: Was that really Teller playing the drums?

Nick: Judging from the editing my assumption would be no, but he might have learned a little and played the easy things, but when the drumming gets intense the cuts are mostly of Teller’s face, or a POV shot from behind the drum set.

Dustin: I just looked it up. He wasn’t playing. He was acting!

Nick: ACTING!

I just think Teller likes to bleed.  He has an obsession with bleeding.  In every movie he bleeds a lot of his own blood.

Dustin: He certainly put his sweat and blood into this role. The final confrontation where he plays the drums and defies Simmons’s character is more satisfying than any “epic battle” Hollywood has thrown at us in recent years.

Nick: Woah Woah Woah... What about that one in TransFormers 4: Add subtitle here, where this one robot is fighting another robot and there’s clanking and stuff and ol’ Mark Wahlberg is running around and more stuff? That was pretttttty good.

Dustin: You mean Trans4mers? Sadly, I don’t remember much about that movie except Mark Wahlberg and robot dinosaur action figure. But we digress.

Nick: The syncopation between the music and the editing/cinematography is so stellar especially in that climactic scene. Whenever the horns blow, there they are, and then drum solo BAM there’s young’n Teller slappin’ them cowhides and whenever Old Man Simmons waves his hands dramatically you know its all about to go down.

Dustin: In conclusion, go see Whiplash while it is still in your art house theaters!

I Declare War

Dustin: 3 of 5 stars Nick: 3.5 of 5 stars Average: 3.25 of 5 stars (Woozy canary)

Dustin: Sometimes adults need children to show them the absurdity of their behavior. I Declare War is about a group of kids who take capture the flag to an extreme, acting out their fantasies with realistic war strategies. What did you think of I Declare War, Nick?

Nick: What a fun and clever idea. A movie called Son of Rambow came out a few years ago that I was really excited for but ended up missing, but I Declare War is how I hope that film played out.

Dustin: I thought it was clever at times too. The relationships between the characters are complex and believable. The main character, PK (Gage Munroe), is a strategist who always finds a third option when only two are presented, and opposite him is Jess (Mackenzie Munro), who is an expert manipulator who turns friends against each other. PK’s other antagonist is Skinner (Michael Friend), who takes over the other army in a coup. While the kids are playing with make-believe guns and water-balloon grenades, he resorts to actual violence to win and doesn’t care about the rules. However, he and PK have a lot in common. PK refuses to break the rules (although there is a plot hole here I’ll get to later), but he does cross unwritten lines in interpersonal relationships to win. They both go to unacceptable extremes and only differ in their methods. And both commit violence on Kwon (Siam Yu) to achieve different ends.

Nick: The only poor characterization in this film is of Skinner. While every other character is basically a normal person throughout the film, Skinner acts like a psychopath, and why he was invited to play this game is beyond me as they play up how he used to be a friend of the game but nobody likes his company.

Dustin: I think he got into the game by joining the other team that didn’t know much about him. I thought Skinner was a believable character. I’ve known people who were insanely jealous when their friends began hanging out with other people, and were no fun to be around because they wouldn’t follow the rules that ensure a game is fair and fun, and then threw a tantrum when they lost.

Nick: OK, but that is exaggerated in this character multiplied by whatever ridiculous number will convince you it’s surely exaggerated. The character could’ve been toned down a little more and the ending would’ve been stronger because we were supposed to feel some empathy for Skinner, but because of his ruthlessness, it was hard for me to see his warped vision.

Dustin: The whole movie was exaggerated. Their make-believe guns become real, and seem to fire actual bullets, although there is no blood and no one actually dies. Also, I’ve never known kids who could build a sturdy tree house and formulate such intricate strategies.

Nick: Well PK is totally like Brad Pitt in World War Z: he is ultimately flawless. Everything that is exaggerated in the film I enjoyed when it was on the side of representing violence but no violence occurring. While in Skinner’s situation he was committing pretty extreme acts of violence in the theme of a movie that wasn’t as finely put together as say Lord of the Flies, where we see the kids grow into something that is quite scary.

Dustin: I thought PK was a flawed character. He didn’t hesitate to sacrifice his best friend to achieve his goal, and he never learned to put others’ needs before his own. He gets what’s coming to him, but he doesn’t seem to learn from it.

Nick: That’s not a flawed character, that is a static character. Kwon is supposedly the main character who goes through a change and he is ultimately the only one who didn’t take the game too far. Kwon realizes this at the end and instead of acting irrational, like the rest of the kids, walks away and says he’ll call PK later. (Which, shhhh, I don’t think he will.)

Dustin: Overall, I thought the characterizations were quite good in this movie. It was also good from an artistic standpoint. There were some flaws in the writing, which was lazy at times.

For example, in one scene, Kwon utilizes a lighter and some type of oil spray. There is a crummy CGI showing he has a lighter in his pocket right when he needs it, and the audience immediately understands how he will use it. The lighter should have been “planted” earlier so the scene would have been more satisfying rather than irritating. But that would have required writing a second draft.

There is an excellent plant and reveal in the movie Mud from earlier this year. Mud uses two boys to run errands for him, and he has them deliver a note to his girlfriend. We see the note is written in permanent marker, and we guess maybe that’s the only writing utensil he has since he’s in hiding, or maybe it’s just another of his many eccentricities. Later in the movie, there’s a dramatic scene where a permanent marker comes in handy, but the audience doesn’t question why Mud is carrying the marker since it was already subtly established this is what he writes with. That is an excellent example of the use of this technique that other movies could learn from, and was painfully missing here.

Nick: With the narrow focus, it’s hard for me to find too much fault in anything, but at the same time with such a narrow focus things like “plants” can be focused on more.

Dustin: There was also a plot hole involving the Asian kid who pretends to be Kwon’s brother. Early on, PK tells the Joker that using cell phones during the game is against the rules, but PK apparently called this other boy to come help rescue Kwon. And we already know PK wouldn’t break a rule, so how did he call the Asian boy?

Nick: I believe he was Kwon’s brother, but he was lying about their mother breaking her arm.  You’re right though! Maybe he made some smoke signals or maybe he has people waiting on the other end of a walkie talkie (off screen of course). I failed to notice this.

Dustin: He wasn’t Kwon’s brother. Kwon is clearly half-Asian, but this boy was full-blooded. Kwon looks just as confused as Skinner when this boy shows up. Also, when asked personal questions about Kwon to prove he’s his brother, like what’s Kwon’s birthday, he becomes evasive. I figured PK just called the only other Asian he knew and hoped Skinner would fall for it.

Nick: Since it is such a narrow focus, how do you know that it isn’t his step-brother or half-brother and maybe his older brother is an asshole who doesn’t feel like being questioned when his (maybe) brother is being tortured. I see your point though, and I saw the character’s evasiveness, but when Kwon breaks free and goes back to PK, he asks about the Asian character and seems generally concerned on how well he is after being pelted with large rocks.

From a technical film point, this film was solid and maybe was made to showcase their talents, which is why the script seemed a bit lazy. The film could have followed Jess more like when she leaves the game to go home and maybe she saw Quinn and they have another conversation because of how much time we are forced to watch her fixate about him.

Dustin: I would have liked a scene where the real world comes in to set these boys straight like Lord of the Flies. The comparison between the two is obvious, and most reviewers are mentioning it. I think an adult coming in at the end would have put things into perspective and provided an opportunity to drive home the point of this movie (if there was one).