Whiplash (2014)

This movie is about a battle of will between teacher and student that is intense and emotional to the point where it is painful to watch at times, and the ending is not self evident.  Which you have to admit is a bit unusual for a film that is not billed as a thriller.

JK Simmons plays an infamous teacher at a well respected music school.  He is demonic in his obsession with quality and abusive in his treatment of his students.  He is convinced that his way is not just the right way but the only way to produce a musician who is of exceptional quality, and he has almost no interest in producing anything else.  It is the opposite of training musicians to make their living with their art.  He humiliates everyone in his path, and the more talented you are the worse the abuse.  He takes on Andrew, a talented and obsessed young drummer played by Miles Teller.  Andrew is  socially awkward, a kid who bluntly tells his would be girlfriend that she is going to get in the way of his practicing and that if they continue to see each other he will just end up resenting her.  Oops.  That did not go over well.  But the thing is that Andrew has the ability to fight back and that ends up making the battle so tense.  Well worth watching but not what I would call light entertainment.