Millennials: The Musical

Films: La La Land
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are times when I give in to a particular perverse urge on certain days of the year. I have, for instance, watched Rashomon on St. Patrick’s Day or an Australian movie like Breaker Morant on Super Bowl Sunday. This year, for the 4th of July, I figured I’d embrace the day and instead look at something truly American in origin: the movie musical. In this case, that means the most highly acclaimed musical since Chicago: La La Land. I had high expectations going into this, as did my wife. In fact, I waited for several days to watch this until she could watch it, too.

I want that on the record, because it’s going to be very easy to write off this review as simply being the fact that I often dislike musicals. La La Land didn’t live up to the hype, and my wife had the same opinion. Not 15 minutes in, she looked over at me and said, “I’m not loving this.”

Not Quite My Tempo

Film: Whiplash
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

Typically, I spend a good portion of movie reviews going through the basics of the narrative of the film under discussion. I do this mostly because narrative and plot and how these things work within the context of a film are what interest me the most about film in general. I’m not going to do this for Whiplash. The reason is that Whiplash turns out to be a film that is very personal for me for a couple of reasons.

For all of the music, for all of the legendary abuse heaped onto the main character, at its heart, Whiplash is the story of the relationship between a teacher and a student. I am a teacher, and I have a number of students with whom I’ve developed a relationship over the years. That’s true with anyone who teaches. I have former students as Facebook friends and who talk to me if they see me out in the world. I’m certain that I also have former students who think I’m a massive jackass. But I can look at students who honestly took a leap of faith to trust me as a teacher. Far be it from me to call anything sacred, but if anything is, that sort of trust is in the running.