Whiplash Review

Chazelle shoots a jazz rehearsal like a boxing match: hands, snare, blood on the head, cymbals in isolation, then a whip pan to a face waiting for a verdict. The film's real instrument is Tom Cross's editing, which cuts on the beat and on the threat until the audience's pulse is doing the work. J.K. Simmons plays Fletcher not as a bully but as a man with a coherent, monstrous philosophy, and the chair thrown across the room lands because the scene before it was quiet.

Miles Teller's Andrew is written with unusual honesty as an unpleasant person, ending a relationship in one ruthless conversation because she is drag on the ascent. The dialogue strips down to threats and provocations, and Fletcher's Charlie Parker anecdote is the thesis, repeated later with a single detail changed. What lifts it into the top rank is the nine-minute finale, an ambush that becomes a duel and ends on a look between two people who have wrecked each other and are, briefly, delighted.