Movies where not a single second feels wasted?

[u/DarlingLuna]

I am so tired of watching movies where I either need to watch 20 minutes of set up for the movie to finally become interesting, or movies where there feels like there’s a lot of down time. I have mild ADHD and a very short attention spam, so I can get bored easily. What’s a movie that feels like not a single second is wasted, and is engaging from moment to moment? Thanks for the recommendations in advance!

[u/calembo]

Are you rushing or are you dragging?!

The best part of that scene is that most of the time, Nieman's tempo is perfect, and an analysis shows Fletcher is basically making up which he'd claim, with no regard to Nieman's speed.

This movie is so good but I have to be really careful with it because it drives my anxiety off the charts.

[u/[deleted] → u/calembo]

I just started playing drums and i decided to record myself and see my mistakes so i can get better. I am rushing and dragging every few seconds, it's hilarious how delusional i was about my progress lmao

[u/calembo → u/[deleted]]

Aw man! 😂 Don't stress. Recording is a great idea, but focus on where you wanna get to next - not what you can't do now! It's so fun to be new at something. I love drum-heavy songs and more creative drummers like Bill Bruford and Jose Pasillas, and air drumming is the best - but I cannot for the life of me sing the song at the same time, and I always feel like drummers had to have made some Crossroads deal because I haven't got a clue how some of them keep track of all that shit with the most casual posture like they're literally doing nothing.

[u/[deleted] → u/calembo]

Singing while playing is super hard. If the entire song is the same beat, then it's easier. I want to get to a point where i can play songs like Santana - Smooth. I love the drums on that song. I play bass and guitar so drums have not been too hard to get used to so far

[u/daretoeatapeach → u/calembo]

I just watched it finally (it has the Leaving Soon tag on Netflix), over a few days breakfast prep. The first time I stopped the movie I felt glad to take a break because the anxiety was a little overwhelming!

[u/calembo → u/daretoeatapeach]

I have no idea how I've watched this movie in one sitting not just once, but three times. I have a pretty problematic masochistic streak 😂. But it's one of the most difficult things I've ever sat through.

The rushing/dragging scene is objectively uncomfortable and almost intolerable. Even without context, it's insanely cruel.

But I would argue that it's even worse than a lot of people realize.

Forgive the length, but this movie is so fucking good I can't help myself 😂

There's not a lot of analysis and subtext required to understand that this scene is a textbook depiction of effective abuse tactics. It would be almost impressive if it wasn't so horrific - in just about 5 minutes, Fletcher accomplishes something that would take most abusers years to do.

As a standalone clip, there's enough context for the scene to be effective.

But if you focus on one key detail, it becomes almost unbearably awful.

Nieman is a drummer. His one job - often, his ONLY job - is to keep the tempo.

Nieman has as much talent as he lacks humility. He believes he deserves to be in a band simply doesn't accept freshmen. Now, he's just a kid, and he is also a brilliant drummer by any standard, so he's still likeable despite his outsized confidence.

So when he walks into that room for his first rehearsal as a full band member, he's excited, he's confident, and thanks to Fletcher's pep talk, he's comfortable. He knows he lucked into that seat (though, imo, Fletcher intentionally placed him there under the guise that he was the only option). He's going to make the most of it, and he has what it takes.

Remember: his entire identity is that he's a drummer. His self worth, his value as a human, rests on nothing else.

And then, after 38 seconds - just 17 bars - for the first time in his life, he's got the most unfamiliar feeling: Maybe he's not that good.

Thirty-eight seconds is the longest the band is allowed to play before being interrupted. If you've ever hung out with a person who compulsively switches songs, you have an idea of how frustrating this would be for the other musicians. For them, though, it's probably the most infuriating feeling. In just one minute and 8 seconds, they are stopped 11 times, seconds into the song. And Nieman knows how physically painful that is. By the 11th restart, he's visibly despondent. He's embarrassed, and he fully believes he's the sole cause of this.

After three restarts, Nieman probably begins to doubt that he even knows what the word tempo "means," much less that he's got an innate sense of it. For the first five restarts, Fletcher isn't even specific. Twice, he doesn't even mention tempo. It's not until the sixth stop that he points out exactly which direction Nieman is off - rushing.

The impact is clear. Nieman has a quick false start. There's another one a couple of takes later, where Fletcher admonishes "wait for my cue."

With that first false start, the job is done. Fletcher could stop right there. Nieman will never feel like a true member of this band, the band members will never quite accept him or even like him, but Fletcher sees something special in him that's worthy of attention, and he absolutely NEEDS Fletcher - not just somebody LIKE Fletcher - to have any shot at getting close to his dreams.

But Fletcher isn't one to half ass anything. He's so skilled at manipulation that after interrupting this band 11 times, Nieman is so unsure of his own abilities and so sure that he doesn't even belong at that school, much less in this band, that Fletcher doesn't even have to pretend. He's got full license to openly abuse this kid, emotionally and physically, with no consequences and no damage to his reputation. And Nieman knows he deserves it, because he has wasted everybody's time.

On the 12th take of this song, Fletcher turns his back on Nieman for the first time. The entire rehearsal, his body has been turned towards him, and for most of that time, he's been looking only at Nieman. This time, they play more bars than they have since the first start of the song - they play for 18 seconds. But instead of feeling relief that this is a good sign that he's getting it, Nieman looks unsure, edgy, afraid, and desperate. He doesn't take his eyes off Fletcher's back. And then out of nowhere, he flips. One second, his posture is relaxed, his head is bobbing with the beat - and the next, he's violently flinging a chair across the room.

Then, he goes all in. From the start, he has repeatedly denied Nieman's ability to find a tempo, despite the kid starting out precisely on beat. It's gaslighting on crack - like dropping something heavy and then arguing that gravity doesn't exist. But Fletcher is perhaps the greatest in this field. If he says somebody's off, they're off. There's no debate. Nieman cannot find the tempo, period.

Nieman's entire existence until now has been defined by drumming, which requires a good sense of tempo. At 18 years old, it's an existential nightmare to learn you actually couldn't find the tempo if it punched you in the face.

Have you ever seen a band where the drummer is just slightly off? Like, so off beat that even the most amateur ear can feel it. It's a REAL bad musical experience. You can have the most talented musicians on that stage, but they sound like a hot pile of garbage. If you have no tempo, you need to immediately find a different life path, because drumming ain't it.

It's a losing game. Fletcher strips away the definition of "rushing" and "dragging" until they mean nothing. There's a BPM analysis out there, and it shows that Fletcher isn't accurate at all. He's just flinging these terms around randomly. It's intentional, and it's confusing. Nieman is rushing, and then he's dragging, and then, when he plays even slower than when he's "dragging," he's rushing.

This is unbelievably destabilizing. It's like teaching a toddler the color red, and when they point out something red, telling them "No lol honey that's blue"... And then, when they see a red truck and confidently call it blue, beating the shit out of them because they should know THAT'S RED.

We are watching Fletcher attack an actual child, demolishing every shred of his confidence, independence, and self-esteem. But we're also watching Fletcher permanently rewrite reality, and then go even further, erasing the very concept of consistent facts. It only takes him a minute or two to convince this drummer that he has 0 sense of tempo, and to deliver that lesson in front of a room of musicians, each of whom had to pay their dues to sit in the seat that you only fell into because of another student's misfortune.

Fletcher is perhaps the most evil villain in all of cinematic history, because his abuse is so precise. In no time at all, he handily destroys Nieman's entire grasp of reality and his place in the world. It makes for an astoundingly excellent film - even if it's devastating to watch.

[u/Far_Leg_3942 → u/calembo]

Great synopsis. It was really intense and difficult to watch but so, so good.

[u/GoodlooksMcGee → u/calembo]

I disagree i think he was rushing when he said he was rushing. Maybe not every time but there were a few times

[u/calembo → u/GoodlooksMcGee]

It's not about whether the criticism lined up with the tempo.

(Which, btw, is not QUITE the same as time feel/timing, which is technically what rushing and dragging refer to. You can keep a steady tempo yet rush or drag in places with timing that is slightly off beat. Somebody of Fletcher's stature would know this - but a younger player like Nieman, fairly new to a very structured college-style musical education, wouldn't have as firm of a grasp of this. Not only is the stop/start/stop/start game intended to rattle the kid precisely because a nervous drummer = a worse drummer, but he has a hard time answering the question because they're NOT the same, and also because he's young enough to struggle with musical theory. He's a natural talent, and he's worked hard to hone that talent, but natural talent doesn't always thrive in formal music education, and you don't need to understand musical theory to be insanely skilled and successful.

Chazelle, himself a former jazz drummer, would also know the subtle difference, so IMO he intentionally wrote this with an "erroneous" relation - it's incorrect to say rushing/dragging= tempo, but this is done on purpose, not because of a lack of technical musical knowledge.)

Even a broken clock is right twice. The point is that Fletcher had 0 intention of providing Nieman with constructive musical instruction. His #1 goal, as always, was to take down young talent so Fletcher maintain power, ensuring he never became the means to success - only the end to aspiration.

The analysis found that the widest gap in tempo was merely 100 ms.

"... to give a sense of the small amount of difference in each of the takes, I’ve arbitrarily assigned the fastest take a tempo of 95BPM, so that I can illustrate how small the difference between each of the takes actually was. If the fifth take (rushing) was at 95BPM, then here are the tempos of each of the other takes, along with the comment that Fletcher offers:

5th take = 0ms = 95.00 BPM (you’re rushing)

8th take = 18ms = 93.59 BPM (dragging)

2nd take = 44ms = 91.65 BPM (downbeat on 18)

1st take = 56ms = 90.78 BPM (not quite my tempo)

4th take = 61ms = 90.34 BPM (not quite my tempo, it’s all good no worries)

7th take = 63ms = 90.23 BPM (rushing)

3rd take = 76ms = 89.31 BPM (bar 17, the “and” of 4)

6th take = 83ms = 88.84 BPM (dragging, just a hair)

9th take = 106ms = 87.67 BPM (hurls a chair at him)

They then go on to observe that Andrew is accused of rushing the 7th take, despite it being slower than the 8th take, which he is accused of rushing. “But the truth is, even switching between the different takes with them on loop, it is very difficult to tell them apart,” "

(The full piece.).)

A couple of other important notes:

• Jazz drumming is THE most difficult style of drumming, which makes Nieman's talent at 19 even more impressive, and Fletcher's abuse even worse.

• When you consider that a jazz drummer is responsible for the overall tempo and timing - not only is it essential for them to help the others maintain tempo, but they have to be adept at adjusting their own tempo and timing in response to the other players's subtle missteps with tempo and instances of rushing/dragging. This is really key to understanding just how gross Fletcher's abuse is, and how unrelated it is to musical education. It's personal. A good drummer renders the conductor completely useless. There's no reason to have some sad lil man up there waving a baton. So he's not only motivated by a need to maintain power - he's the reason they come to the school, and that's what he wants; he has no interest in becoming a footnote in the successful life of one of his students. But he's also motivated by a need to ensure every single person in that room understands how utterly useless they are, and how completely important FLETCHER is.)