Review: "Whiplash"

“Whiplash” is ostensibly about music, but actually it’s an expedition into human depravity -- and greatness.

Andrew Neyman is a 19-year-old drumming prodigy who gets tapped by a brilliant, domineering conductor to be lead stick man for the top jazz band at the world’s best music conservatory, then is subjected to a barrage of abuse and sadism that is not to be believed. The film is the tale of their relationship: student and teacher, victim and bully, innocent and despoiler.

We loathe the teacher, of course, but then watch with a combination of fascination and revulsion as Andrew absorbs the man’s foulness and starts to become a reflection of him. This amazing film, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, dares to ask prickly questions about what it takes to be a great artist, or a great anything.

Do suffering and accomplishment necessarily go hand-in-hand? Should people of exceptional talent and drive worry about being a good person? If you are the best there is at something, does that excuse being a colossal jerk? Can you reach the pinnacle of a career without stepping on others?

These are the sorts of things we ask ourselves in the blackest night, and tremble at the answers.

How bad is Lawrence Fletcher? Imagine the nastiest teacher you ever had, multiple it by 1,000, heap in a mountain of personal vindictiveness, pettiness, egomania and cruelty, and you would still not be close to reaching the horror of the conductor of the Studio Band at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory of Music in New York City.

Fletcher rules the jazz program like a tyrant. Students and even other instructors bow their heads and fall silent when he strides into a practice room, spewing expletives and belittling judgment. Andrew, a freshman languishing as the alternate drummer in the second-tier band, is surprised and thrilled when Fletcher taps him to move to the top of the program. He’s even more flattered when the man chats him up and offers encouragement.

“Have fun,” Fletcher often says, though his chief vocation involves depriving everyone around him of it.

Andrew’s first practice session is instructive. The top drummer (Nate Lang) treats him like a flunky, there to turn pages and tune the snare drum. Fletcher throws out a trombonist when he admits to being off-pitch, even though it was actually another player -- to Fletcher, it’s worse to not know if you’re out of tune than fail to confess it.

Given a shot in the chair, Andrew is ridden by Fletcher to match his tempo, even though he seems to be spot on. Fletcher screams and spits, even slaps the boy around, then mocks Andrew when he weeps: “Oh my dear God, are you one of those single-tear people?”

Fletcher is, of course, a work of total fiction. In our modern age of lawsuits, anonymous professor ratings and touch-button video, the idea that someone like him could survive and thrive in such a high perch is preposterous. But J.K. Simmons never plays the man as a cartoon. Even though Fletcher’s antics are perpetually over the top, Simmons keeps him grounded, believable and utterly terrifying. It’s a masterful performance.

(I am astonished to learn that in his long and busy career, Simmons has never been nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe or individual Screen Actors Guild award. That’s about to change, I deem.)

Miles Teller, one of the finest actors of his young generation, holds the movie together as the sensitive, malleable Andrew. He throws himself into his work, determined to be the greatest jazz drummer since Buddy Rich, practicing until his hands bleed. Then he dunks them in ice water, bandages them up, and practices some more.

Andrew does this because he’s afraid of Fletcher, but also because he discovers inside himself a bedrock of determination, a will to succeed that matches his conductor’s. For a time they even appear to be in synch, as Andrew pushes away his adoring father and new girlfriend (Paul Reiser and Melissa Benoist) to focus on his music.

But Fletcher is always there to raise the standard another notch, demand more, and throw nails in his pupil’s path. He insists he does this to help Andrew become the next Charlie Parker, relating a story about the young Bird having a cymbal thrown at his head as motivation. The baleful gleam in his eye, though, suggests he merely enjoys the torture for its own sake.

A bravura tale of antagonism and ambition, “Whiplash” is a masterpiece in double time.

Reeling Backward: "Kit Carson" (1940)

It's funny to think about how much liberty Hollywood took with history back in its heyday. Nowadays if they make a movie about something that really happened and change around too many facts, audiences and critics would jump all over it for inaccuracies. But back in the day, they'd unfurl a whole bunch of BS and not blink twice.

Kit Carson, a mountain man, scout and quasi-military man, was already a legend during his lifetime. He helped blaze the trail to California through Oregon, fought in the Mexican-American War and, briefly, the Civil War. Books were written about his adventures as far back as 1849, there were a couple of movies, including 1940's "Kit Carson," plus a 1950s TV show. Most everything about his life, from the books to the shows, was made up out of whole cloth or twisted around to a laughable degree.

Fir instance, Carson actually made several expeditions with U.S. Army Captain (later general) John C. Frémont during the 1840s. Rather than Frémont recruiting Carson as the most renowned scout in the West, the two men bumped into each other on a steamboat cruise and the frontiersman pitched his services to the soldier.

Both men fought in the Mexican-American War, though separately. And both were already married when they met each other -- in Carson's case, several times over to American Indian brides. The certainly never fought gallantly over the hand of a wealthy Californian's daughter, Dolores, played by Lynn Bari.

In one of the more interesting aspects of this movie, each man is actually pushing the woman they love toward the other fellow. Dana Andrews is upstanding and charming as Frémont, while Jon Hall plays the country bumpkin angle to the hilt as Carson. The well-bred Dolores, in typical fashion, finds the lanky scout to be an insufferable savage, until she recognizes his finer qualities.

Frémont offers to marry Dolores, even though he knows she loves Carson, because he's such a selfless guy and all that.

The two men butt heads several times in the early going, but without rancor, as Frémont insists on following his orders to find the most direct route to California to the letter -- even if it means riding right into a trap the Shoshonis have laid out for his troops. Carson, as the hired wagon master for the pioneers trailing in the soldiers' wake, urges caution and forbearance.

"It's better to lose 60 miles than 60 lives," he reckons.

Carson's two gleeful sidekicks are Ward Bond as Ape, a good-natured liar, and Harold Huber as Lopez, their south of the border amigo. They're always ready to ride off with Carson at a moment's notice, quick with a joke and a laugh. Ape gets a love interest of his own, a pinch-faced woman named Genevieve (Renie Riano). But, like Carson, he can't countenance the idea of giving up a life of roaming and beaver pelts for a bed and a home.

The heavy is General Castro, played by C. Henry Gordon. He's secretly supplying rifles to the Indians and goading them into attacking the American wagon trains.

Gordon is as white as me and Huber was a Russian Jew, and don't make for very convincing Mexicans. But that's about par for the course in this movie, in which the several shots of the Shoshonis clearly show most of them to be white guys in war paint and feathers.

"Kit Carson" is amiable, formulaic and dumb as a desert-baked brick.

Video review: "Jersey Boys"

“Jersey Boys” was fairly ignored at the box office, but it’s just the sort of movie that clicks on video.

It’s got a historical story that appeals to older audiences, not to mention a soundtrack that plays like a Top 40 list from the 1960s. Couple that with winning performances and a dark – though not too dark – look at the underbelly of the music biz, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a home video hit.

The story of The Four Seasons is the story of America’s transition from the relative stability and conservatism of the 1950s to the upheaval and pandemonium of the ‘60s. The band, who combined the smooth vocals of the old-timey barbershop quartet with the beats and theatrics of rock, owned the airwaves prior to the British invasion.

Based on the Broadway show and directed by Clint Eastwood, “Jersey Boys” stars John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli, whose effortless falsetto was somehow both angelic and masculine. Young, who also starred in the stage version, manages to play Valli from age 16 to 60 without ever straining.

I also appreciated the fact that rather than having the actor lip-synch to vintage recordings of the real McCoy, Young actually provides his own facsimile of the distinctive Valli sound – and a really good one, too.

Rounding out the cast are Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio, who wrote many of the Four Seasons songs; Michael Lomenda as Nick Massi, the go-along-to-get-along member of the group; Vincent Piazza as Tommy DeVito, the resident bad boy; and Christopher Walken as a local mafia don with a soft spot for the boys.

A lot of movies get lost in the shuffle of summer, and most of them deserve to. But “Jersey Boys” nails its high notes.

Extra features are merely so-so. The DVD comes with just a single making-of featurettes, “Oh, What A Night” to Remember.” Upgrade to the Blu-ray combo pack and you add two more, “From Broadway To The Big Screen” and “Too Good To Be True.”

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Review: "Big Hero 6"

I miss comic books, though I don’t know if they miss me. It’s been 25 years since I bought one, and since then an entire generation of artists has grown up and created books I’ve never heard of -- including “Big Hero 6,” which has now been adapted into a Disney animated film.

Apparently, the Disney folks weren’t acquainted with this lesser-known Marvel title until about three years ago. But it supposedly, in Hollywood parlance, “spoke to them.” I’m just not sure if they understood what it was saying.

The problem with “Big Hero 6” is that it’s structured as the gentle tale of a boy and his robot, and then it veers suddenly into a superhero team genesis story with lots of boingy action and sneering bad guys. Not only to the two halves never really mesh, but the other four members of the “6” wind up as afterthoughts.

In this tech-heavy story, they’re literally add-ons.

Based on the comic by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle, “Big Hero 6” is set in an alternate version of our world, slightly in the future. The locale is San Fransokyo, a multicultural mix of East and West sensibilities. Fourteen-year-old Hiro Hamada (voice of Ryan Potter) is a science whiz who’s already graduated from high school, but spends his days hustling in robot battle matches. His older brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), thinks Hiro should follow his own lead and enroll at the Institute of Technology, where they’re taking robots and gadgets to the next level.

Tadashi’s own big invention is Baymax (Scott Adsit, who must have the most calming voice I’ve ever heard), a funny-looking medical robot made of inflatable vinyl. He puffs himself up to full size when he senses a person is injured, resembling a crossbreeding of the Michelin Man and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters.”

(I pause here to point out that, though I’ve not read the comic book, I did enough research to learn the Baymax in it resembles the portly, vanilla-personality version seen here not at all. He’s a huge, mean, green warrior.)

Anyway, bad things happen and Hiro decides to transform Baymax into a blinged-out badass -- a serious challenge, considering he’s basically a white balloon who leaks air if even slightly abraded. His programming is about helping the sick and injured, not laying down the hurt. But Hiro tinkers with his exterior, transforming Baymax into a big red flying goliath, and with his innards, rendering him more assertive.

The rest of the team are assembled late in the game, and are other students at the institute. They include Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), who wields energy blades sprouting from his hands; Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), who concocts all sorts of strange goos from within her handbag; Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung), who skates around on and wields gravitational discs; and Fred (T.J. Miller), a dim-bulb dude-ish type who dreams of becoming a fire-breathing dragon… and does, sort of.

It’s kind of nice to have a team of super-heroes who did not get their abilities via gamma rays or mutation, but through sheer dint of their brains and hard work. They’re basically nerds in super-suits. Interestingly, the outfit Hiro creates for himself does not grant him any powers; he basically just rides around on Baymax’s back like ballast. It’s also weird that, after an early moment spraying Hiro’s burn with ointment, Baymax never employs his medical skills again.

The villain is a mysterious bad guy in a kabuki mask who has stolen Hiro’s micro-robot technology to create a seemingly invincible army of tiny minions who can form themselves into any shape he imagines. (I was never quite clear why Hiro, who creates all the incredibly advanced power-ups for his team in a garage, isn’t able to just whip up some more microbots.)

Other notable characters include Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk), a reckless industrialist; Professor Robert Callaghan, benevolent head of the institute (an excellent James Cromwell); and Maya Rudolph as the Hamada brothers’ loving aunt.

I really liked the early part of “Big Hero 6,” when it’s just the story of a lost and lonely kid who uses his smarts to invent a friend. Then it tries to go all “Avengers” on us.

Review: "Interstellar"

"Interstellar" sure is an odd, dense, occasionally brilliant and occasionally maddening cinematic experience. The latest from director Christopher Nolan continues the mind-trippyness of "Inception" and marries it with an outer space story about astronauts from Earth exploring other galaxies and dimensions, in between disastrous explosions and human frailty.

It wants to be the thematic and aesthetic inheritor to "2001: A Space Odyssey" but registers several orders of magnitude lower on the scale of worthiness. It plays out as one long (nearly three-hour) space ride with a lot of mind-boggling science and pseudo-science mixed into the humanist blender.

The movie never failed to engage me, but it didn't leave me very satisfied, either. Nolan and his cast and crew get the quantum mechanics of their space tale right, but the human element never makes it off the launch pad.

The story -- Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, wrote the screenplay -- is set in a typically vague near-future where things have gone awry for humanity. An agricultural blight is wiping out the Earth's crops one by one, and dust storms blow in from time to time like biblical revelations.

Cooper (Matt McConaughey) is a pilot/engineer-turned farmer. There's not much use for science guys these days, just those who make food. Cooper resents the way humanity has bookended its ambitions -- we're supposed to be explorers and pioneers, he laments on his dirt-caked porch, not tenders of sod. His son, Tom, embraces the agrarian future but his 10-year-old daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy), dreams the dreams of her father.

Through a quick, not entirely coherent succession of expository scenes, Cooper is recruited to lead a NASA mission that represents humanity's last hope. It seems a stable wormhole opened up near Saturn 50 years ago. Previous astronauts were sent through to scout out a habitable new home world for the species. Cooper and his crew, chiefly Anne Hathaway as astrophysicist Dr. Brand, are supposed to link up with them.

The space travel scenes, through wormholes and gravitational slingshots and whatnot, are transcendently beautiful and awe-inspiring. Aided by Hoyte Van Hotema's cinematography and the familiar pounding musical score of Hans Zimmer, Nolan has captured the notion of space wrapping in itself in an ingenious way previously unseen on the big screen.

I won't give away too much about what they find on the other side, other than to say the passage of time is a primary consideration. The theory of relativity states that time travels at different speeds depending on where you are, so the team must complete their quest before everyone on Earth starves. Meanwhile, Cooper frets upon the children he left behind, who transmit video messages into the ether they aren't sure if he'll ever see. (Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck play them as adults.)

Unfortunately, the Nolans' script suffers from similarity lapses in relativity, though on the narrative rather than the temporal plane. The story races ahead heedlessly at times, testing the audience's ability to keep up based on half-garbled dialogue. Then it will go into a slow spin, as the characters get all moony and contemplative, and we wish they'd fire up the jets or blow a hatch, or something.

(I should also mention I often had difficulty hearing the dialogue -- not understanding it, but just hearing it. I'm not sure if was the speaker system in the theater or the film's sound mix, but Zimmer's music blasts at you in waves of organ chords that overpower the actors' voices like lily pads caught in a tidal wave.)

There's power and majesty in "Interstellar," but also smallness and limitation. The film's sheer grandiosity serves to expose its inability to coherently line up the X-Y-Zs of its plot. Nolan & Co. aim for the stars, quite literally, and if they don't reach them they provide us enough of a glimpse to leave us dazzled and befuddled. It's like being knocked out of your regular orbit, teetering off to points unknown.

Reeling Backward: "Cottage to Let" (1941)

Though it's not a particularly good film, "Cottage to Let" is interesting to consider, both as wartime propaganda and with regards to genre.

Released in late summer of 1941, production would have had to begun right after the declaration of war between in England and Germany. Since it was based on a stage play by Geoffrey Kerr, someone must've been dreaming this thing up not long after Poland fell.

The bad guys are shifty German agents who have infiltrated seemingly every nook and cranny of the United Kingdom, including remote Thrail Manor in the Scottish moors. Essentially it's an Agatha Christie-ish whodunit, except instead of trying to find the murderer we're attempting to discover which of the residents, or which ones, are the Nazis.

The movie's title was later changed to "Bombsight Stolen," which may just win the award for worst film title, ever. Though "Cottage to Let" isn't much better, suggesting a frothy romance about Brits on vacation.

Narratively, the movie is structured like a slamming doors, upstairs/downstairs comedy of manners with plenty of potboiler elements mixed in. The audience's alter ego is Ronald (George Cole), an "evacuee" boy -- moved out of London amidst the bombings and forced to live in the country manor of the Barringtons. Ronnie is a puckish lad who takes Sherlock Holmes as his personal hero, believing him to be an actual historical figure. Soon he's sleuthing out clues all over the estate.

Mrs. Barrington (Jeanne De Casalis) is the adorably absent-minded matron trying to run various war fundraising efforts and social cotillions in the midst of urchins left at her doorstep, injured RIF Spitfire pilots being dumped into her lap and her eccentric inventor husband, John (Leslie Banks), in danger of blowing up the place.

Mr. Barrington is supposedly the most brilliant scientist in the U.K., though he stubbornly insists upon working in his isolated laboratory with a single assistant, Trently (Michael Wilding), rather than in London surrounded by military and intelligence handlers. Unfortunately, there's a leak somewhere in Thrail Manor, and some of Barrington's best inventions -- such as a self-sealing airplane fuel tank -- are getting into the hands of the Germans almost as soon as they go into production.

The injured pilot is Perry (John Mills), a dashing young officer who clearly is up to something. Director Anthony Asquith and screenwriters Anatole de Grunwald and J.O.C. Orton show him unplugging and re-plugging the phone to report his downing while lying bloodied and bandanged in a hospital bed at the cottage next to Thrail Manor, so we immediately know he's a bad egg. Soon he begins to woo his nurse, young Helen Barrington (Carla Lehmann), which puts the long-suffering, amorous Trently into a fit.

The M.O. for this story appears to have been to cast doubt on half of the cast members, and see who cracks. Trently is under suspicion because he was educated in Germany and traveled there before the war. The butler, Evans (Wally Patch), is a little too martial in his bearing and clumsy in his housekeeping skills to be a simple servant. The cook, Mrs. Trimm, quits suddenly in a huff, and confers with Trently after giving her notice.

Then there's Dimble (Alastair Sim), a strange bird of a man who has rented out the cottage before all the new boarders arrive. Tall, thin and with a false sense of friendliness, Dimble pokes his nose into everybody's business, often while peeling a potato with a penknife.

It would seem amateurish to make Dimble, so homely and awkard compared to the rest of the cast, the Nazi stooge, and the filmmakers pull a reversal on us near the end that's supposed to be a head-snapper. But I figured it out barely a third into the movie, and I doubt if any audience members wouldn't do so, too.

The stage roots, and flaws, of "Cottage to Let" are glaring -- a limited number of locations, who's-your-uncle dialogue repartee, a romantic angle that feels tacked-on and unnecessary. I rather liked Leslie Banks as the bumbling-but-decent inventor, but his limited screen time registers him as more a sideshow than the star of the picture.

Maybe if they'd made Ronnie the Boy Detective the bad guy -- then we really would've had something.

Video review: "Maleficent"

Hollywood likes to boast of big stars in big movies that “no one else could have played the part,” but in the case of “Maleficent” I think that’s demonstrably true. Only Angelina Jolie has the requisite combination of compelling screen presence, supernatural beauty and somewhat eerie star persona to play in this revisionist take on the Sleeping Beauty fable.

In many ways it’s surprising that Disney would commission such a dark twist on one of its most iconic animated films. Jolie plays the villainess as a maligned antihero who has everything she loved torn away from her, and responds in kind.

In this version, Maleficent is a powerful fairy who falls for a human boy, only to have him betray her and cut off her wings in order to gain the throne of the kingdom for himself. She dubs herself the queen of the Moors, the land where the magical creatures hide, and later places a curse on the new king’s daughter, Aurora (Elle Fanning).

As the years pass Maleficent finds herself spying on the girl, from whom goodness shines like the sun, and eventually befriends her. Despite her hatred for Aurora’s father, she finds herself regretting her curse, which says the girl will fall into a deathlike slumber upon her 16th birthday.

Tonally it’s a tough act to pull off, to balance this oft-mesmerizing mix of woe and whimsy, and not one that first-time director Robert Stromberg is entirely up to. (Reportedly they even had to bring in a more seasoned filmmaker to “help” with reshoots.)

Still, it’s a visually captivating journey, and certainly one that’s never boring. Jolie’s get-up as Maleficent, with her horns, ebony dresses and facial prosthetics, is can’t-take-your-eyes-off amazing. I only wish the story equaled the eye candy.

Video extras are quite good, though you have to opt for the Blu-ray combo pack in order to get the best stuff. The DVD comes only with “Aurora: Becoming A Beauty,” a featurettes focusing on Fanning’s casting and transformation.

The blur-ray includes a half-dozen making-of featurettes touching on all aspects of the production, including the special effects to create Maleficent’s look and the film’s battle scenes. You also get a handful of deleted scenes.

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