This is a really great film and one of the best I’ve seen in a long, long time. It is intense and full of surprises. J.K. Simmons plays an uncompromising studio jazz band leader at a top music conservatory, and he comes off as a raging Drill Instructor from Hell – demanding complete perfection and even more. Don’t miss his performance, because there will be major award nominations for it. The student that he drives so hard is played by Miles Teller. And the music is great.
Update: I just read that Damien Chazelle, the writer/director, is said to have been inspired by the intense USMC Drill Instructor played by R. Lee Ermey (once a real-life Marine D.I.) in the first half of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Whether it is true or not, it would make perfect sense.
Update: J.K. Simmons won his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role. No surprise.
-Zenwind.
