Andrew (Miles Teller) enrolls at one of the best music schools in the country with dreams of becoming one of the greatest drummers to have ever lived. He soon falls under the tutelage of Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), an absolute monster of a jazz instructor who pushes his students way beyond what is expected of them.
As you can tell from the poster, this has been getting rave reviews ever since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. I've been disappointed by some critically acclaimed movies this year ('Birdman', 'Theory of Everything', 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'), but thankfully this not only lived up to the hype but it greatly exceeded it in what is one of the best movies I've seen this year. The music is all great, the story is something most of us can relate to (being pushed past our limits by others to achieve something better), but what truly anchors this movie are the performances from Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons. The best comparison for Simmons' Terrence Fletcher is R. Lee Ermy's Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in 'Full Metal Jacket'. Imagine if the latter character was a jazz instructor. An absolute monster, but it's a great performance that fully deserves the talk of being a front runner for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Based on a best selling young adult book that I never read nor heard of before the movie's trailers started popping up, 'The Maze Runner' follows Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) as he wakes up in a metal cage that sends him to a community of other teenaged boys like himself. He soon discovers that they are trapped in a maze and teams up with other runners to find a way through it. Also co-stars 'We're The Millers' star Will Poulter and 'Game of Thrones' star Thomas Brodie-Sangster as other members of the community (known as 'Gladers', because, reasons) and Patricia Clarkson as a mysterious scientist.
Not gonna lie, I sat on my couch for it's 113 minute running time and I fully paid attention to it. But at the same time for most of the movie I had absolutely no idea what was going on or why certain things were happening. Sure people hate it when movie's explain too much, but this explains nothing. When I actually understood what was going on, I still thought it was kinda dumb. The acting isn't bad at all, and it's actually well shot. Just severely lacks in the story department. I'm sure the book (or it's sequels) is better and provides way more details and explanations as to what's going on.
Based on a non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand (author of 'Seabiscuit') that I actually did have to read in college, 'Unbroken' follows the true story of Olympian runner Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell), who spent 47 days drifting at sea after a plane crash in World War II while surviving storms and sharks, only to be captured by the Japanese and sent to various POW camps.
Simply put, overall I thought this movie was good. It wasn't great by any means but it was still good. Plenty of times in the first half of the movie it just drags on and on with random flashback scenes that just pop up out of nowhere. It was hard initially to get invested in it, but as the movie kept going it got better and better. It's an incredible story and it is quite inspirational. Greatly helps that it's well shot.
Still one more movie to see in theaters and a few to watch on Netflix before I'll call it a year. Here's what this week will look like schedule-wise:
TOMORROW 12/30: A new edition of 'I Finally Watched...'
NEW YEARS EVE: EVEN MORE REVIEWS
NEW YEARS DAY: TOP 10 of 2014 and Honorable Mentions
FRIDAY 1/2: 2014 Disappointments
SATURDAY 1/3: 2014 Surprises, NFL Wild Card picks
Next week I'll get around to reviewing 2015 as a whole, my Top 10 most anticipated movies for 2015, and some blog updates for 2015. I am going to try to stick to this schedule but that will all depend on computer availability. My laptop's battery is still dead and I'm going to wait until my next paycheck comes in to go get a new one. That leaves me with three options:
- The home computer, which recently has had issues with internet access
- My mom's laptop, which has keyboard issues
- The library.
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