Tag: Paul Reiser

Whiplash snuck into theaters way back in October was a limited release and I obviously didn’t get to see it. It left theaters quickly, and I was left on the internet cold and sad. You see, people kept talkin’ ’bout Whiplash. About how good the acting was. What a surprise. How cool it was.

And I was all like “But, but, but, but…I don’t know anything about this movie! :(“. And then they laughed at me of course.

But now I am back, having seen Whiplash, before I compile any sort of top of the year list for myself. It feels good to watch things before awards season. It must be similar to how people feel reading a book before it was even announced that a movie version was going to come out. Pretty intense, I do say.

You can tell you are being intense if you have your mouth open.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is a drummer. He likes to drum, he is in a great music school for bands, and he thinks he is decent. But he is his biggest fan, and who cares what his opinion is.

You see, there is an elite jazz group at his school, led by the legendary Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Everyone is crisp, always finely tuned, always with the right tempo, and always winning awards.

Andrew wants to be apart of that band, but Fletcher is mysterious and only has surprise auditions in the middle of other classes. And somehow, Andrew is able to win himself a spot.

Fletcher seems nice to him at first, but it turns out he is kind of a hard ass. He yells, he screams, he demands perfection and he can tell who is the best after only a couple of seconds of play. He wants to develop the next great star by forcing people to move out of their comfort zones and become an elite player. He also likes to mind fuck people, which I am sure is very helpful.

(Zany announcer voice) It looks like Andrew should have been careful what he wished for!

Also with Paul Reiser as his dad, Melissa Benoist as his girlfriend (and yes, she was on Glee), and Nate Lang/Austin Stowell as other drummers.

The closed mouth next to the open mouth amplifies the intensity levels.

Intensity is the key word of the review, because getting whiplash is an intense injury. Not as intense as a broken bone or falling off a cliff or anything, but it exists. The film is called whiplash for the feeling and the jazz song which is one of the main two pieces their group ends up playing.

And it is also the only way to describe J.K. Simmons’ character. I could listen to him yelling at teenagers every day of my life. His voice is why he became J. Jonah Jameson and is why this role was made for him.

In fact, I am pretty sure this movie exists entirely to get him an award, because he was a huge asshat and acted his hatass off.

Whiplash on its own is also a very entertaining film. A lot of energy is put into what most people would assume is just a drummer in a jazz band, but the quest for greatness has its costs. Hell, even the cinematography was great. The ending is basically a giant ball of emotion wrapped that is looking to escape, and then does, and hey credits.

Nothing I just said makes any sense. So I should just use the word intense again.

Yes! More movies in the supernatural rom com genre!

There hasn’t been a lot of these, I guess. Most of them are dramas more than comedies. Apparently that is where they think the money is at, teenage girls. But the comedy element? Outside of Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies), there haven’t been that many.

So sure, Life After Beth is giving us love and zombies again, a year later, but just like regular romantic comedies, as long as they are done in different and unique ways it shouldn’t be an issue.

You don’t need a beating heart to float on water!

Beth (Aubrey Plaza) is dead. You can’t change that. Freak accident. Her boyfriend at the time, Zach (Dane DeHaan) is taking it really badly. Yeah, sure, he lost the love of his life, but it ended badly too. They were fighting. He didn’t her what he really felt.

So yeah. That sucks. Trying to cope after a death is hard. He has even been hanging out with Beth’s parents (John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon) in the down time.

But then he sees Beth. Walking around. Seemingly normal.

What in the highest amounts of fucks? Was this some joke to get him out of their lives? A shitty way to break up with him?

Or, was she resurrected, like her parents believe? They don’t care. They were missing their little girl and are happy to have her back, regardless of any complications.

You know. Zombie things.

The parents of Zach are played by Cheryl Hines and Paul Reiser, he has a brother who is a cop played by Matthew Gray Gubler, and Anna Kendrick as an old friend and old fling.

Sometimes your flirt face is the same as your scare face.

While other supernatural movies may strive for extreme supernatural things going on, Life After Beth keeps it surprisingly realistic. Yes. Sure. Zombies happen. These zombies may have big strength, start to decay, don’t feel much pain, whatever. Normal zombie stereotypes.

But the emotions and reactions are surprisingly real feeling. The grief Zach feels over words not spoken. His reactions to her being alive, the many that occur. The parents, unsure of what to do about it. And ignoring the problems as things get worse and worse over time.

Life After Beth does a great job about moving on but in a unique way. Just because the dead are rising up and walking around doesn’t mean that life is over as we know it, right?