The MoFo Top 100 of the 2010s Countdown

I guess Yoda is an IMDb migrator then.

These things effect the subconscious of the viewer. Like the colour yellow in Jaws before every kill. It shows depth, nous and understanding in film-making, and by the end of Whiplash, the viewer is left looking at the 'battle' between teacher and student, knowing that there is deeper meaning to the on screen relationship via the subtleties that the Director has indirectly driven in to us. At least it was for me,.

I guess my reading of the shirt changing colors is that

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IMDb
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Whiplash was great. Really enjoyed the film and performances. Checking now I had it in my top 10 for the year, squeaked in at #10, which is quite prestigious if I might say so. But yeah it didn't make my list.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

At least we finally had a decent jump in points and ballots. I mean it took until number four, fer cripe's sake, but at least it went from 18 ballots to 26 and sixty-six more points. I was seriously beginning to worry that the top choice might not even be on thirty ballots. It should at least crack that barrier.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Yeah, I had to deal with so many ties throughout the countdown. I'm blaming all of you for that!

And the award for Best Dressed Host goes to......

(can't speak for anybody else but I just wore a faded t-shirt and shorts when I hosted )

When I watched Whiplash, it seemed like the type of movie and worldview a young man would have. I was no longer young enough to care about it that much. Watching JK Simmons just be a dick for about 100 minutes was at least entertaining though.

The two have reached their peak (character arc point I guess) in the film (Fletcher - ultimate sabotage tactics and Andrew - performance of his life) and are therefore on the same level. I think Fletcher knows in the end that the kid IS actually good enough to make it. The begrudging respect flows from both.

Nick Offerman is a person who was not on my radar really because I (almost) never watch TV shows (I did watch an episode of The Superfriends from 1980 where they fought The Voodoo Vampire) so I was never exposed to his work. I sort of became aware that he existed because he was memed all over the place and then I saw that he made what seemed like a couple of interesting choices and I was a bit intrigued but not enough to watch a TV show. So I never saw him work.
Then came the lightning-in-a-bottle The Last Of Us episode and I have now read about him and watched some interviews with him and am very interested in seeing more.
This looks like exactly the kind of thing.

I have not seen this one yet but, by reputation, assumed this was gonna be on the list and probably in the top-50.

Not a fan of these kinds of articles. Fletcher is very obviously portrayed as a villain, and even when Andrew reaches his goal at the end we are not necessarily supposed to think all the psychological torment was worth it. It makes the same mistake as many other media essays in thinking obviously morally objectionable actions and statements are the thoughts of the filmmaker himself. The whole criticism about "Good job" is redundant since the audience is supposed to think Fletcher's advice is ridiculous and cruel. It seems like this person went into this movie too much like a professor and not as someone who cares about film as an artform.

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I liked High Life, and I'm a bug Denis fan, but for some reason it didn't really stay with me. It's nowhere near her best.

For what it's worth, I'm a musician, I listen to Jazz every single day, and I've read these sorts of responses to Whiplash many times (I just read all of this one too) and I think they are totally bogus and that Whiplash is a fantastic film.
The one thing Brody gets right is, "this movie is not about Jazz, it's about abuse of power". And all the people who come around trying to say, "Well, that's not how it happens" seem to miss the point that it is not normally how it happens, this is a unique story worth telling because it stands out from the norm and that is why it's a movie and not a documentary about how people learn Jazz in conservatory.

That's a fair reading of the ending

It is, indeed. I mean his Ron Swanson on "Parks & Recreation" is rightfully iconic and wonderful and they grafted so much of Nick's actual personality and his interests into the character over time. Hearts Beat Loud is the only real starring role he has had in a film to date and he is wonderful. Other good supporting parts can be found in The Hero by the same director (with a terrific starring turn for Sam Elliott), as one of the McDonald brothers contending with Michael Keaton's The Founder, and as the father in Kings of Summer. And "Summer of 69: No Apostrophe" with his wife Megan Mullally where they very amusingly discuss their sex life is a must see. I saw it as a live stage show but it was recorded for posterity.

One of my favorite films ever. Had it at #5.

Whiplash was my No.4 of the decade.
Partly because of how incredibly well-directed I felt the film was, where I felt I was living in each of these moments, watching them from inside the room, feeling and breathing the same air as the characters; partly because of J.K. Simmons astonishing performance, which I have as one of my top-3 of the decade (off the top of my head, with Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Toni Collette in Hereditary); partly because the backdrop of the film (not the subject, misguided reviewers, the backdrop) is Music and specifically Jazz, which are an extremely important part of my life; and finally because when I was studying guitar, it was not unlike Andrew's experience, outside of Fletcher's abuse, so it felt very real to me. I gave up my social life completely to practice from the time I got home from work til the time I went to bed every night, I quit exercising so I wouldn't be too tired to practice that long, I did have a very mean-spirited professor who nearly always told me my work was terrible and that he didn't even understand how I could be having this much trouble, and I would even send him pictures of my blistered and sometimes split fingertips to prove that I was working as hard as he was pushing. And in the end, I got to another level because of it. So, I identify very strongly with the film too and I do reject the criticism from many sources that "that's not what it's really like". Well, it's not exactly like that or it wouldn't be interesting enough to make a movie out of, but it's not totally unlike that.
Still, at the end of the day, I just thought it was a great movie. Just amazingly executed. And that's one of my biggest things for movies is not "what story are you telling" but "how well are you telling your story".

Here.

Elaborating a bit now that I have a moment:

I saw Whiplash and loved it immediately. No big surprise there. Years pass and I, of course, have to ask myself if it holds up. A film that kinetic, where the outcome is genuinely in doubt so many times, tend to land better the first time and fade a little with time and/or repeat viewings. My father-in-law visited us last year and we were going to watch a movie, so I grabbed a bunch of the ones we have physical copies of and laid them out. Whiplash was one of them. We watched it and I was surprised to see it held up almost completely. I enjoyed it nearly as much the second time, years later, as I did the first.

It would've made my ballot even if I hadn't seen it again and been so impressed all over again, but it probably would've been 10 spots lower, or something. At least a few spots lower. But it snuck into the top five because of that extra viewing and how unsuspected my response to it was.