Damien Chezelle's tale of a boy, his drums, and a teacher that speaks ever so loudly, and carries the biggest stick of badass this side of the Academy Awards, in one of the most heart pounding cardiac arrest breathtaking intense movies I've ever seen. The opening beat. The opening shot. The first time J.K. Simmons speaks. Groovy funky jazzy music makes all movies better. RIFIFI is the shit. Carter Burke? I knew Miles Teller was going to be special after watching Footloose. If you play the drums long enough, you might start sweating like a pig. Could you imagine J.K. Simmons at band camp? Hot ladies that tell jokes are the best. Alarm clocks can be the motherfucker. Milk the…

Before my parents married, my father was studying to be a concert pianist at the Canadian Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto; the upper echelon of musical academies up here in the Great White North. Before that, while still at home in New Brunswick, he would spend his weekends playing in a swing dance band; This is where he met my mum. He spent his weekday evenings practicing at home.

My grandfather, a colonel in the Canadian army, advocated his 7 children play instruments; violin or piano strongly encouraged. A well rounded individual required musical training. A proper career, in his view, consisted of military, medicine, or theology tracts. My Uncles Paul, Emery, and Ernie became Medical Doctors. My Aunt…

"Not my tempo."

A rapid, unforgettable, and absolutely stupefying work of romanticism, invigoration, and exquisite character development; Whiplash is a prodigious study of the quest of greatness. Anchored by two marvelous and dueling performances by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, the film starts by taking your breath away and holding it just out of arms reach until the credits roll. The piercing flow of the editing, the knockout quality of the dialogue, the tinged and textural flavor of the cinematography, the fucking direction; Goddamn this was good. I really can't overpraise Whiplash enough, It's a triumph of vitalization, both visually and dynamically.

Let's start with Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, both of which give some of the best performances of…

This is it! This is where the search for the best picture of 2014 ends. And although there are few films from last year that I still need to check out, I highly doubt that watching them is going to make any major difference because after sitting through what is undeniably a goosebumps-inducing cinematic experience from start to finish, I can say with absolute certainty that Whiplash is my Movie of the Year.

Whiplash tells the story of Andrew Neiman; a 19-year-old Jazz drummer who aspires to become one of the great drummers like Buddy Rich & finds himself under the wing of the school's most respected but fearsome teacher, Terence Fletcher. Determined to impress the instructor after getting the grilling…

This film is one of those that I can't believe it took me so long to get around to watching. And as someone who quit drumming partially due to how much they hated their instructor, this was quite a cathartic experience. But any drummer will tell you that long after you've stopped playing, the passion never really dies.

And certainly part of the reason I love this film is because of my passion for drumming, but I'm also wholly impressed by the filmmaking itself. Damien Chazelle hits so many of the right notes. In fact, I'd argue that the film really was structured like a drum piece.

Andrew's quest to become one of the greats is like the constant beat…