The film has potential, but ultimately there's more bark than bite.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 1, 2017

Revealing both the dangers and payoffs of artistic ambition, Whiplash is sure to establish Chazelle as a directorial force to be reckoned with.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 16, 2016

It's a thorny, thoughtful movie that asks provocative questions and isn't cocky enough to boast of knowing the answers.

| Jun 18, 2016

For all its overripe contrivance, you'll leave the cinema with a spring in your step and a thump in your chest, eager to bang the drum for what deserves to be one of the year's real word-of-mouth hits.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2015

Chazelle, training a keen eye on the proceedings, seems to delight in the spectacle of relentless punishment.

| Jan 16, 2015

What gives the film such a kick, in spite of its improbabilities, is its raw and brutal but also very subtle portrayal of the shifting, attritional relations between teacher and student, sorcerer and apprentice.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 16, 2015

I suggest you take a defibrillator to Whiplash, since the chances of a heart attack or spontaneous combustion during viewing are high.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 16, 2015

Whiplash moves at a whipcrack pace that takes its rhythmic cues from drumming (some of the cuts are as fast as the beats in a Buddy Rich solo).

| Jan 16, 2015

Few relationships in recent cinema have been quite so compelling. Bring a welder's mask to ward off sparks.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 16, 2015

Whiplash is an extraordinarily taut, accomplished piece of work for a debut feature. It's also unusual in having such a definite point to make - albeit perhaps a pretty objectionable one.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 16, 2015

The film offers dark, ripsnorting fun if not, necessarily, an accurate portrait of life and times at premium music colleges.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2015

If Facebook's Marc Zuckerberg took jazz drumming lessons from Dr Hannibal Lecter, the result might look like this.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 15, 2015

It's the work of an accomplished talent.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 4, 2015

"I push people beyond what's expected of them," Simmons tells Teller. "I believe that's an absolute necessity." You might say the same about the film.

| Jan 4, 2015

If Chazelle's primary objective was simply to present two grossly exaggerated and unsympathetic characters, then he's succeeded in some style.

| Jan 4, 2015

The movie swings - physically, musically, psychologically, racially.

| Jan 4, 2015

It would be an insult to call Chazelle a "promising" filmmaker, as this movie doesn't indicate mere potential - it is evidence of authentic, sometimes blazing talent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 4, 2015

Such a cooked-up piece of claptrap that I half expected Darth Vader to pick up the baton.

| Original Score: C | Jan 4, 2015

'Whiplash' is electric from beginning to end, a musical story of obsession, frustration and outright cruelty built on two knockout performances.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 4, 2015

Director Damien Chazelle, who based the story on his own experience as a student jazz drummer in the thrall of an Alpha task-master, has created a remarkably economical and claustrophobic piece of storytelling.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 4, 2015