Whiplash (15, 106 mins)

Director: Damien Chazelle

5 stars

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The answer, according to the old joke, is practice. But practice alone isn't enough to cut it in the world of Whiplash, where the fact that its protagonist is prepared to bleed for his art is only a fraction of the commitment his mentor expects him to show.

That protagonist is first year student Andrew (Miles Teller) and his teacher and nemesis is Fletcher (JK Simmons), a feared and revered professor at a prestigious New York music school.

Fletcher has seen the potential in Andrew's drumming abilities and plucks him from class to join his band, which is the starting point for many extended scenes of rehearsal as the band prepares for competitions.

On paper that set-up sounds like it offers minimal opportunity for dramatic endeavour, but in execution it's utterly electrifying. Key to that is a pair of expert performances, with Teller showing far more range and appeal than he ever has before, and making Andrew completely believable in his subsequent actions.

The movie though belongs to Simmons, who roars and rampages his way through it on his way to an Oscar next month as he delivers torrents of bile and abuse at Andrew and his fellow band members.

Fletcher is more of a drill sergeant than a music teacher, looking for military precision in his orchestration and pushing Andrew to drum until his hands bleed.

It's basically Full Metal Jacket with music and, like R. Lee Ermey's gunnery sarge in Kubrick's anti-war masterpiece, you could argue the toss about whether his actions constitute mistreatment or are in fact for the person's own good.

That's what Whiplash is about above all, about pushing people to and beyond their limits, and the lengths to which they may just have to go to achieve true excellence.

It's far less about a student being able to impress his hard-nosed teacher as it is a study of a character's growing drive and ambition and willingness to make sacrifices. Andrew begins the film preferring to go to the cinema with his amiable father (Paul Reiser) than partying with fellow students, but Fletcher is determined to beat this level of comfortable under-achievement out of him.

Writer and director Damien Chazelle, a one-time music student himself, has crafted something extraordinary, not taking you down the paths you may have expected, always with one more fork to be negotiated just when you think you know where it's headed.

Propelled by the jazz score, big band sound and minimal modern references, it reeks of the 1970s and the great American films of that period. In editing, camerawork, sound and performance, Whiplash achieves a power and intensity that few thrillers or horrors can dream of matching, building in ferocity towards a third act that will surely pass into cinema legend.

See it if you liked: Fame, Full Metal Jacket, The Color of Money

Wild (15, 115 mins)

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

4 stars

Though superficially very similar to last year's Tracks, there's much that fresh to take from this powerful dramatisation of Cheryl Strayed's autobiographical account of her 1995 attempt to walk the length of the Pacific Crest Trail alone.

To find out why she undertook the journey, we join Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) on her 2600-mile trek from Mexico to Canada, with wistful flashes of memory inserted as a way of getting us up to speed with her backstory.

She's got the gear but not necessarily the skills or any idea what she's in for, but this is far more than just a walking adventure. Since there's only so much walking you can watch, only half the film is on the trail, with meatier flashbacks showing us what Cheryl is trying to run from.

Peppered with the sad debris of broken lives, this makes for a hugely compelling and affecting portrait of sorrow and grief, driven by a never-better Witherspoon.

See it if you liked: Tracks, Into the Wild, 127 Hours

Testament of Youth (12A, 130 mins)

Director: James Kent

2 stars

The 1933 memoirs of Vera Brittain make for a rather dreary film following a 1970s TV version. It's 1914 and Vera is intent on studying at Oxford while her brother and a pair of potential suitors head off to war as part of what at first looks like it's going to be a drippy First World War romance.

While Brittain's book is an important one, and a war story told from a woman's perspective is to be welcomed, this adaptation struggles to escape a televisual feel.

It's packed with distracting close-ups and lots of trains and sun-dappled trees yet is very spare on any actual drama and skimps on the war stuff, making it inadequate when its big emotional waves are supposed to hit.

A perfectly decent central performance from Alicia Vikander as Vera carries us through, though only really her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) makes an impression among the men in her life. Though it grows in impact as it progresses, only a small handful of moments are effective, mostly to do with the madness and waste of war, in among what's otherwise a bit of a slog.

See it you liked: Atonement, War Horse, Summer in February

American Sniper (15, 132 mins)

Director: Clint Eastwood

3 stars

Real life navy SEAL Chris Kyle is the subject of Clint Eastwood's sturdy and technically accomplished, if slightly unsavoury, war drama.

With over 150 confirmed kills, Kyle was a celebrated hero of a number of Iraq tours, and we're introduced to him here as he faces a decision on whether to open fire on an Iraqi woman and child who may pose a lethal threat to the soldiers he's providing support for.

It's this question of the people he kills stacked up against the lives he saves that provides a counterpoint to what could easily be perceived as a flag-waving exercise.

While it largely avoids displays of military celebration, there is a tendency for Kyle to be lionised, though Bradley Cooper is very impressive in the lead, as flashbacks take us back to SEAL training and meeting his wife (Sienna Miller).

Digging deeper to expose the effect on him of all this killing provides some insight, while tightly controlled combat sequences and a well judged balance of war zone and home life keeps the pacing steady.

See it if you liked: Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker, Lone Survivor