Foxcatcher

Steve Carrell is John DuPont, the crazy DuPont heir who murdered wrestler Dave Schultz. Channing Tatum is Mark Schultz, Dave's brother and author of the book on which the movie is based. The casting here is very solid and Carrell, in particular, shines in his role. Unfortunately, the movie itself is a mess. There's so many factual distortions, changes, and flat-out creations that it's hard to take the movie seriously. And I don't mean stuff you'd only know if you knew the story intimately. I mean stuff like having the wrestlers in the movie (in 1988) watching a UFC fight from 1996. And then you get the bigger things - creating scenes with DuPont shooting a gun inside the gym, having Mark & Dave training together at Foxcatcher (they didn't), and a million other things. And, like the book, the movie suffers from too much Mark Schultz. It's essentially the story of him when it really needed to focus more on DuPont and Dave Schultz. In the end, this is a pretty good movie with some terrific performances but some really, really glaring issues, too. 7/10.

Whiplash

his is a movie full of great performances in search of a great movie to put them in. JK Simmons is Terence Fletcher, a ruthless, maniacal jazz instructor at the top music school in the country. Miles Teller is Andrew, his newest student. What follows is something of a rehash of An Officer and a Gentleman with Fletcher berating Andrew, throwing stuff at him, throwing gay insults at his classmates, and generally just being a jackass. Then there's a conflict and a resolution. The end. Oh yeah, along the way we get a throwaway diversion with the girl at the movie theater, some wasted scenes with Andrew's father, a "My music is as important as your sports" scene with Andrew's family, and a whole lot of drumming. Simmons here is off-the-charts. Incredibly great. Intense, angry, maniacal, instructive, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately, the movie itself is really just a rehash of stuff we've seen before, told in a not-particularly-unique way. It's a good movie but nowhere near the tour de force it's been hyped as. 7/10.