Whiplash

I don't remember this film being released in the cinema, I don't remember any adverts for it but I saw it at the BAFTA's and added it to the list this year.
Whiplash is another insight into what it takes to become a top musician. The stress, the physical pain that you have to put yourself through and the transformation from nice person into completely self obsessed jerk.

This time it isn't classical music, it's jazz. Jazz is a completely different style of drumming and Whiplash is about one kid at the best musical school for jazz in the country and how he lets a guy get the better of him for ages until he gets him back on the big stage.
People think that if they practice every day then they will transform themselves into another Louis Armstrong or Mozart and they wont necessarily do it, it has to be your life, you have to be better than good and you always have to push yourself to be better.

There were times when i was like, 'well i kinda can see why i don't remember anything about it'. At the time of it's release there were other films like 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' being released and they were films that were absorbing and very well written. With this film, if you don't appreciate jazz or just aren't that interested in the academic side of music then this film was never going to appeal to you.

From the moment that J.K. Simmons walked in I was unsure about his character, I was sitting there saying to myself 'there has to be a twist in his character' and I kept telling myself that all the way to the end of the film. Maybe there was and maybe there wasn't but he was a completely different guy to the dude that we saw in Juno and the guy that we loved in Juno. I guess that is what earned him his awards though, because of the transformation and the portrayal is accurate. I can imagine myself sitting at the royal school of music, having things thrown at my head and being told that i wasn't good enough because i can't read lots of notes together- that's just how it is, you have to be perfect to reach the top. Ok, maybe not perfect but you gotta keep pushing yourself all the time and you get stuck with the meanest critics of all in the forms of mentors and lecturers. This guy was as convincing as I would ever see, one of the best conductors because i knew what he was doing (therefore probably slightly unrealistic) and the attitude was spot on.

The only criticism that I have of the film is the way that it ended. It didn't feel like it had ended, it didn't end in the way that most people would have thought that it should have. Not a disappointment but just unpredictable.