Movie Muser

It’s back to the repressed 1950s in Masters Of Sex – Season 2, where Bill Master (Michael Sheen) is still dealing with the fact the world is less ready for his study into the body’s physiological response to sex than even he expected. He’s been let go from the hospital and is finding it tough to find somewhere to resume his work. Even when he finds a new hospital, it may not be the perfect fit he was hoping.

Things are complicated by his new baby, especially as he is aware the child probably isn’t biologically his. That also puts pressure on his relationship with his wife, as does his increasingly complicated relationship with the co-author of the study, Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan). Their sexual dynamic has stretched beyond their scientific experimentation, but they still wish to maintain a strong working relationship.

It seems the world is determined to stop them, but Bill & Virginia know that there is a host of sexual dysfunction going untreated and causing misery simply because the world is too squeamish to talk about it, and many would prefer to pretend that nothing sexual exists at all.

Although it can be a little slow at times, Masters Of Sex is a great show with some excellent actors playing fascinating characters. With Season 1 there was a tendency for everyone, particularly Bill, to verge towards being more unlikeable than complex, but that’s tempered here so while he is still an arrogant prig, there’s also more warmth and humanity, and his negatives are understandable rather than purely him being an ass.

What the show does best though is to look at social issues in a complex and interesting way, using the prism of 1950s repression to shed light on problems that are equally pressing today, even if we’d like to think we’ve got past them. Of course the series has a massive interest in the dynamics of sex, not just in terms of the physical side but also the subtle psychological issues that come along with it.

Those range from Bill and Virginia’s difficulties defining what their relationship is outside the study to the problems faced by Bill’s mentor, Barton Scully (Beau Bridges), who is reeling from the fact his wife now knows he prefers boys to girls. Masters Of Sex isn’t afraid to show that in the 1950s being outed doesn’t result in the relief and resolution that we’d like to believe it does today (even though in many cases it doesn’t), but sees Barton seeking out shock therapy and perhaps trying to end it all.

Sadly though after the brilliant look at how his wife (Allison Janney, who won an Emmy for the part) dealt with being a middle-aged woman who has been emotionally and sexually starved by a husband who has shut her out and refuses to be even vaguely honest with her, she’s only in the first episode of Season 2.

It’s not just sexuality that the show is interested, as it also begins to engage with things such as the era’s changes in race relations, particularly in the character of a young, black nanny the Masters hires. Again Masters Of Sex manages to highlight modern issues by looking at the past, here showing things such as how well-meaning white people who think they’re progressive can undermine someone’s cultural heritage and reinforce their assumptions about their superiority without even knowing that’s what they’re doing. Bill also has to confront an unexpected issues when someone tries to ban black participants from his sexual studies.

What’s perhaps most surprising about the show is that it hasn’t won more awards, as quite frankly Lizzy Caplan should have cleaned up, as she’s brilliant as one of the best female characters on television at the moment. Indeed, the show in general is one of the best looks at the role of women in society and the battles they face.

While the show may only be partially true to the real story of Master & Johnson and their pioneering studies, what it does captures is an honesty about the world and society that is still unfortunately rare.

Overall Verdict: Masters Of Sex continues to be one of the best shows around – intelligent, interesting, brilliantly acted and with a complex and nuanced attitude to the sort of social issues that were repressed in the 1950s but are still rarely dealt with properly on TV today.

Special Features:
‘Making History’ Featurette

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

It’s not too surprising that most of the posters for Whiplash, and indeed the DVD cover, is covered in quotes and star ratings from reviews. After all, it was always going to be a tough sell at the cinema to get your average moviegoer to give it a chance, as few people will go ‘Do you fancy seeing the one about the young drummer who gets shouted at a lot?’ – unless you give them a damn good reason, that is. JK Simmons deservedly winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar didn’t hurt either.

It’s actually not too bad a plot synopsis that this is a film about a young drummer who gets shouted at a lot. It’s about a lot more than that too, not least what it takes to make someone truly great at something, rather than just being good.

Miles Teller is Andrew, whose been accepted to the prestigious Schaffer Music Academy – the best school in the country. If you’re studying jazz there, the group you want to be in is the Conservatory Session Band, and Andrew unexpectedly gets the chance to get close to this inner circle when he’s drafted in to be the alternate for the drummer.

This brings him into the sphere of the teacher/band leader, Fletcher (Simmons), a man who is absolutely determined that his group will be the best, and does this by endlessly hurling insults, beating his students into the ground and pushing them beyond the point of breaking. The students put up with it because they know that being part of the band can a great thing for their careers – and their paying – but is the chance of success worth the stress Fletcher inflicts on his students, or is this what is needed if you want to be truly excellent?

There are few films where when the end credits roll it’s difficult to imagine anyone else having played the central roles. While Miles Teller has the quieter part, he treats it with great subtlety and skill, bringing to life a young man who is absolutely, single-mindedly devoted to being a great jazz drummer, to the exclusion of all else. In less steady hands, the character may have seemed ridiculous, especially during moments where Andrew pushes himself past all reason in order to try and succeed. It could have felt utterly OTT and silly, but Miles allows you to believe that this is what that character really would do.

His contribution has perhaps been unfairly ignored due to JK Simmons much showier role, playing the venom spewing Fletcher, who treats insults almost as much as an artform as he does jazz. While it would have been easy for both the film and Simmons to paint Fletcher as a one-dimensional monster, they ensure there’s great humanity in him. In fact, you get the impression the reason he’s such a tyrant is because he’s almost got too much humanity, alongside a take-no-prisoners personality.

Writer/director Damien Chazelle has said huge chunks of film are based on his own life – as he is a jazz musician turned filmmaker himself. Hopefully though in real-life the jazz world isn’t quite the competition to be the biggest asshole imaginable it seems to be here, although as getting to the top probably does involve stepping on more than a few toes, perhaps it is.

Partway through I couldn’t help thinking of 50 Shades Of Grey. There’s nothing sexual in Whiplash, but there is undoubtedly a large dollop of both sadism and masochism, and a far more complex dissection of such relationships and what they might offer than the soft-filtered fantasy of Anastasia and Christian, whether they happen in the bedroom or not.

Overall Verdict: You may not think any movie about a jazz drummer would be to your taste, but Whiplash may surprise you, as it’s tense, brilliantly acted and a lot more fun than you’d think it could be.

Special Features:
Trailer
Commentary with Writer/Director Damien Chazelle and J.K. Simmons
An Evening at the Toronto International Film Festival with Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons and Damien Chazelle

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Often when an actor has a passion project it turns out to be something that should never have been attempted and ends up as a very expensive way to massage their ego. However, while Bradley Cooper was one of the major driving forces behind American Sniper, it was always clear he was onto something interesting. Indeed, at one point Steven Spielberg even signed on to direct, before the gig went to Clint Eastwood.

While Clint may be known as a bit of a hard man actor, he really brings the emotion out of what could have been a rather stereotypical war story in other hands.

The film is about Chris Kyle (Cooper), who found ‘fame’ of sorts when he became the Navy SEAL sniper with the most verified kills in US history. However, the movie isn’t just about his time on the battlefield but also its effects – both how he deals with what he’s doing while on tour (which for a sniper is oddly personal, as it involves very deliberately finding a single person and snuffing out their life) and also when he arrives back home and is suddenly supposed to jump into ‘normal’ life again.

This proves difficult for Chris, putting strains on his marriage to Taya (Sienna Miller), with the two of them loving one another but finding it increasing difficult to connect, as Chris deals with PTSD and a seeming inability to find peace.

American Sniper is an oddly fascinating film, particularly in regards to how people have reacted to it. Many, particularly on the right-wing in the US, have cheered it on as a pro-military, pro-shooting Muslims, jingoistic paean to how awesome war is, while others on the left have decried it for exactly the same reasons. However, it strikes me you can only fully take it like that if you ignore what it actually tries to do, which is to give the soldiers’ eye view of war, while being apolitical about the merits of the conflict itself.

That does mean there is an aspect of ra-ra-America, and an us vs. them mentality that tends to present the Arabs as a mass of possible/probable killers. However, the movie does point out that this is how it becomes for the soldiers almost by necessity, in order for them to do what they are asked to do. In the heat of the field they cannot weigh up the morality of everything they do, and so it all gets rather simplified – something which comes back to haunt many of them afterwards, and which the movie does suggest is extremely problematic even while at war.

And while I’m generally quite a liberal fellow, I think some of my brethren ought to take a deep breath with American Sniper, as after a decade and a half of saying you can support the troops without supporting the war, there’s been an almost obtuse effort not to see it that way with this movie. Perhaps that’s a little unfair, but it does seem to be a case of both the rabidly pro-war and anti-war wanting their preconceptions to be fulfilled and then deciding the movie fulfils them by latching onto the aspects that might support that viewpoint, and then ignoring what the movie is really trying to do. Indeed, for a movie that is about how for many soldiers being on the battlefield is less complicated than dealing with the aftermath, it’s not a particularly pro-war film at all.

It is a very effective one though, with Cooper putting in sterling work in the lead role (although he is becoming the master of performances where it’s easy to see both why he deserved an Oscar nomination and also why he didn’t win), and Eastwood bringing his usual subtle touch behind the camera. It’s Clint’s great skill that he makes films that seem so simple, as if he simply turned up one day, put a camera somewhere and then told the actors to do whatever they fancied in front of it. However, in reality it’s far more controlled and delicate than that, so that when he does decide to deliver a sucker-punch, it really hits home.

He does that several times here, and indeed it’s arguable that the film wouldn’t have had the adulation, Oscar noms and record-breaking box office run (including an astonishing $350 million in America – which is more that Guardians Of The Galaxy or Mockingjay) it had, if it weren’t for its masterfully impactful ending. It’s a brilliant way of doing something which hammers what the film has been about, while ensuring it will stick in the audience’s head long after the credits run.

Without giving too much away in case you don’t know what happened, the movie wouldn’t have even had this ending when it first went into development, but then real life intervened. It could have been done in a horrifically melodramatic way, but instead the movie finds a way to deal with it that pulls the whole thing movie together to be more than the sum its part.

In fact, I half wonder whether those who’ve taken it to be massively pro-war are more reacting to its emotional impact than to what that impact is really about, and what it says about war, irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the actual battle.

Overall Verdict: The conversation about American Sniper has been rather hijacked by pro and anti-war/military factions, both of whom seem determined to undermine what the film actually is – an extremely effective look at war for the soldier, both on and off the battlefield, who has to find ways to deal with the reality of it all, rather than just the politics.

Special Features:
‘One Soldier’s Journey: The Story Of American Sniper’ Featurette

Reviewer: Tim Isaac