Sticks And Stones ...

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2015)

I'm going to aim for a little perspective here. If you click on my user name you'll see that this, when posted, will be the 2650 th film that I've reviewed on IMDb; a little over two and a half thousand movies may seem a fair amount but it's really a drop in the ocean. I joined IMDb in 2003 and became active more or less immediately so now we can factor in another figure, two and a half thousand films in eleven years. but we're still miles off because I was already an adult when I joined IMDb. I was probably carried into my first cinema by one or both of my parents around the age of three and by age five I was able to distinguish genres, actors, etc. By ten I had - for a layman - a pretty good working knowledge of how the things worked. I watched most stuff and good distinguish between Warners, Fox, Metro, Columbia, Paramount, RKO etc, with the best of them. I had little taste for horror, sci-fi. didn't mind the occasional Western but was more at home with mellers, straight drama, comedies, musicals, bio-pics if they dealt with songwriters (Night And Day), performers, (The Jolson Story) or , peripherally, jazz (The Benny Goodman Story, High Society). By the time I penned my first review for IMDb in 2003 I had seen, conservatively, some 5,000 films; and yet I've still only reviewed barely half that number. That's because of a self-imposed rule: I don't trust my memory so any and all films I say PRIOR to 2003 are off limits UNLESS they turn up on television, on DVD, or at a Revival House. Here's where perspective comes in: Whiplash is, no contest, the BEST film with Jazz as a background I have ever seen! Immediately, I sense, I am in trouble with some of you; you, in the second row, the lady with the green scarf. You are, I feel, itching to set me straight and cry "But Whiplash isn't about Jazz, it' s about Power, it's about Control, it's about Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter ... Stop right there, did I actually say that Whiplash was ABOUT Jazz? No, I did not. I was careful NOT to say so: What I said was 'the best film with jazz as a background'. And I'm happy to stand by that. What we have here are two exceptional acting performances, one merely brilliant and one - in the words of Duke Ellington - beyond excellence, praise, category, any and ev'rything (Okay, Duke, you didn't actually say that back in the day, but you WOULDDA if you'd see Mr. J.K. Simmons, you wouldda, believe me. See, what we have here is a young, sullen-looking Elvis lookalike locking horns with a Col Tom Parker mentor/controller and all we have to do is stand well back. Seems those naysayers were right after all, it's not about jazz.