A Most Violent Year

A Most Violent Year follows Abel Morales (Oscar Issac), the owner of a successful, private oil company in New York City during 1981, which is statistically the city's worst year for violent crime.

Abel and his wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain), started their business from scratch and built it up into the successful enterprise it is now. When hijackings of their vehicles start to happen and then start to turn violent, they struggle to keep their heads above water. Let alone expand, which they wants to do, by purchasing an important new property.

His workers are beaten, his oil trucks are stolen and he has 30 days to pay off a loan, so he wants answers from the police but none are forthcoming. 

Instead, led by DA (David Oyelwo), the police begin to investigate his company and eventually file charges. Certainty aspects of their company are a bit dubious... Why else would you hide all the company paperwork under the house?

Yet whilst everyone around him seems to be corrupt, even his wife, who is the daughter of a gangster, he refuses to stoop to their level. Morales by name, Morales by nature (perhaps a deliberate play on words here). He sees himself as an honest hard-working business man and he attempts to stay within the boundaries of the law despite all that is going on against him. It is fair to say his slightly eccentric wife favours a more direct approach. The question is, is he actually as bad as her and as bad as everyone else?

It’s a slow burning crime thriller, which could well be the best thing so far this year and Oscar Isaac is quickly becoming a man to look out for.

Whiplash

Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is a first year student at an elite music conservatory in Manhattan who has dreams of becoming a great jazz drummer in the vein of his hero Buddy Rich.

Andrew is a dedicated lad with the drive and ambition to succeed but is that enough? When offered a chance in their top ensemble, Andrew quickly discovers his conductor and mentor is a man unlike anyone he has encountered before. Terrence Fletcher’s (J.K. Simmons) teaching style is to bully, intimidate and humiliate his musicians to make then reach for greater heights. In the process, he works his students to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. In particularly Andrew, who he pushes to the limit in order to make him try to attain his full potential. Fletcher wants to produce the next big thing in jazz, his Charlie Parker.

At times he plays Andrew off against other drummers until he becomes so desperate to be the band's preferred choice that he practices for hours, dripping blood (literally), sweat and tears over his own drum kit. In the process he shuts out his personal life and starts copying some of Fletcher's own less desirable traits.

The two of them go head to head through the entire film and they are essentially the only characters in the film. There are a few other minor characters, to remind us what normal unobsessed people look and act like. We meet his father and some of his family, who he upsets with his blind ambition.

Also at the start of the film we see Andrew chat up Nicole (Melissa Benoist), a girl who works in the local fast food joint he frequents. She becomes his girlfriend, sort of. ‘Sort of’ because he never really has time for her and then when he realises he can’t even spare five minutes for her if he wants to get in the band, he rather crudely dumps her.

By the time he finds out he needs to rebuild some bridges in his personal life, it’s too late and she has found someone else.

The film is good and the two leads are very good particularly Simmons who is a total unlikeable force of nature.

This may be a film about drumming but it could have focussed on many things. Greatness doesn't come easily whatever your field of dreams. Hard work and self-sacrifice are always part of the game. Any top coach will always try to push you to the limits. Whether Terence Fletcher’s way is the best is the debate.

Well worth seeing. Film of the year so far.

Testament Of Youth

Testament of Youth is considered to be one of the greatest war memoirs ever written, telling Vera Brittain's own story of the First World War from the viewpoint of those not actually on the front line.

The film opens pre-war, Brittain (Alicia Vikander) is living in Buxton Derbyshire from where she watches her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) and his friends Victor (Colin Morgan) and Geoffrey (Jonathan Bailey) getting ready to head off into the world to better themselves. Convention dictates that she will not follow them but will instead get married and raise a family. Given that particular career path investing in her future would be a waste, so her father (Dominic West) initially rejects her desire to attend Oxford University. 

Then when he is persuaded to relent and she passes the entrance examination, the outbreak of war means she will go there alone. By now she is courting her brother’s close friend Roland (Kit Harington) but Roland will not be joining her at Oxford because he is heading off to war along with the others.

Unable to focus on her studies at Oxford, Vera abandons her hard-earned place to sign up to be a nurse where she tends to the wounded and dying of both sides.

Sadly for the film, it is only at this point that the story develops any bite. Until now, it's all been rather unadventurous and frankly quite dull when such a tale should have been at least inspiring. Never does anyone seem to develop much passion for anything, least of all Vera herself and especially not for her passionless heavily chaperoned romance with Roland. If not inspiring it could at least have been harrowing but by the time we finally move to the trenches for a bit of much missed muck and blood it’s all far too late. Even when the bodies of friends and family start to stack up it often feels like it's no big deal.

Even one possible great scene with Vera speaking German to a dying soldier who had previously been shooting at her own side comes over as overly tame.

The whole film is all rather too much like a Sunday evening costume drama on the BBC, so I guess it was no surprise to see the BBC’s name on the opening titles. An opportunity missed.