NYFF: Whiplash: The Passion of the Drummer

The NYFF coverage continues. Here's Michael on Oscar buzzing Whiplash...
 

Terence Fletcher is a notoriously demanding music teacher whose go-to story is about how Charlie Parker got a cymbal thrown at him by drumming great Jo Jones when Parker choked onstage at a jazz club as a teenager. To hear Fletcher tell it, that public humiliation was the impetus for Parker to dedicate himself to his craft and become the jazz legend known forever as Bird. Knowing this about Fletcher, it’s little surprise that freshman Andrew Neyman’s gets a metal chair thrown at his head for the crime of being off tempo on his first day on drums as a member of Fletcher’s elite studio band. 

To be clear, that’s thrown at his head, not near his head. Damien Chazelle’s blistering Sundance smash Whiplash makes it clear that this is not the story of a hard-assed but wise teacher who applies tough love to coax the best out of his students. Fletcher’s behavior crosses the line quickly and often. His “lessons” are often little more than playing interrupted by slurs, slaps, and cruel mind games. It’s as if he learned how to teach by watching Alec Baldwin’s Glengarry monologue on a loop. 

To Fletcher, there is no such thing as too far, because any student capable of greatness needs someone like him to test his or her mettle against. [more...]

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NYFF: '71, Your Opening Weekend Nightmare

The New York Film Festival begins tonight. Here's Nathaniel on the Irish thriller '71 starring this year's breakout actor Jack O'Connell (see also: Starred Up, and Unbroken)

Rookie soldier Gary Hook (Jack O'Connell) is already breathing heavy when '71 begins. He and his fellow soldiers are deep in military drills, managing obstacle courses, target practice and running hard miles. Introductions are brief and rote as they meet their commanding officers, only one of whom drops the protocol for a little personality. Lt. Armitage (Sam Reid) attempts to win the new recruits over by admitting that's he's green in his position, too. This isn't comforting to everyone. Just as soon as we've begun the new soldiers get their orders and learn that they're not flying out but staying put in Ireland.

You aren't leaving this country." 

For some that sentence will be literal, and a fatalistic omen. But which country are we talking about? Whose country? Belfast in 1971, where the story takes place, was deep into "The Troubles," a bloody and decades long conflict over the identity of Ireland itself. [more...]

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Review: 'Pride,' the Year's Most Adorable Movie

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with their permission...

Truth is stranger-than-fiction and also often gayer. The new feature PRIDE dramatizes a largely unknown historical anecdote from the bitter year-long miner’s strike in Thatcher-era Britain when a group of gay activists fundraised for the miners. This alliance is at first an awkward tense match but it eventually finds heartwarming pockets of oxygen when these two unlikely groups are breathing the same air.

It begins with a handful of gay activists (“and lesbian!” their only female member interjects with a small wave in a recurring joke), notice a sudden decline in police bullying in their neighborhood. They make the connection: the conservative government has a new minority to scapegoat. They form a group called LGSM “Lesbians and Gays for the Striking Miners” to help the people suffering without paychecks for months on end — a byproduct of Margaret Thatcher’s war against the unions.

At first, though, these gay heroes can’t even find a miner’s group that will take their money in this cross culture dramedy. [more...]

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Review: The Maze Runner

This review originally appeared in an abridged version in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with their permission for your reading pleasure... or displeasure depending on how you feel about The Maze Runner. 

Dylan O'Brien stars in Maze Runner

The last thing anyone will ever enjoy about The Maze Runner, should they be so lucky as to enjoy it, is a review describing the finer points of its narrative. Let if suffice to say that Stiles from Teen Wolf wakes up in a large glade surrounded by a huge stone maze. It is not a metaphor for Dylan O' Brien's navigation of sudden stardom. The only inhabitants of this sealed environment are a group of similarly aged boys, none of whom are frequently shirtless werewolves, dammit.

Why are they there?

Who put them there?

Can they ever escape?

What’s different about Dylan O’Brien besides the largest paycheck?

Will there be a sequel?

The movie shall answer all of these questions in 113 minutes! And many more. In fact The Maze Runner so loves to ask and answer questions, that it does so in literally every scene rivalling Inception in sheer expository percentages of dialogue uttered.

Since the movie loves to answer, here's 12 more questions if you click to enter the maze

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Review: Tracks

Michael Cusumano here to talk about a quality title before the similar Wild completely overshadows it. 

When people ask Robyn Davidson why she intends to trek across 1700 miles of punishing Australian desert with only four camels and her dog as company, she dodges the question or falls back on clichés like “Why not?” But even if Davidson is reluctant to spell out her motivation, director John Curran manages to make Robyn’s actions clear by tuning in the camera to her state of mind. In Tracks, the true story of Davidson’ 1977 journey, people are most often framed as mindless, swarming groups which descend on her, shattering her solitude. Journalists, tourists, even friends and family. They are all mobs. The sound design makes little attempt to separate their dialogue into discernable lines, letting them blend into a pack of chattering hyenas. 

Having effectively put the audience on Robyn’s wavelength having her explain herself in words would be redundant. We too are ready to spend some time limited to the company of camels.

The obvious comparison for Tracks is to Into the Wild, the major difference being that where Into the Wild showed Christopher McCandless to be blithely overconfident, even reckless, in the face of nature, Tracks shows Robyn as clear-eyed about the dangers of her expedition. She has done the calculation and simply decided that, for her, it is worth the risk. [more...]

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