Grand Piano (2014)

The greatest movie ever!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The plot in a sentence: a piano player has to play an 'impossible' piece perfectly or a bunch of people are gonna get whacked.Now put that in your pocket and forget about it. I'm serious; if I hear one more person whining about the silly plot, I'm going to strangle someone with a low A string.To make a point, let me throw a different plot-in-a-sentence at you: two strangers agree that they'll each commit murder for the other guy. I'm sure the silly-o-meter is lighting up, but cinephiles will recognize that plot from the classic Hitchcock masterpiece "Strangers on a Train". Hitchcock himself joked how insignificant a plot can be, introducing the concept "mcguffin", something that doesn't necessarily exist but is the motivation behind all the characters' actions. Like a box that everyone's killing each other over.Why am I harping on Hitchcock? Because "Grand Piano" is perhaps the most loving tribute to Hitchcock that I've seen in my life. This means it's a throwback to the days when thrillers didn't need 29 plot twists, 54 explosions and 3.75 sex scenes to keep audiences awake. The audience's enjoyment came via the filmmaker's technique at telling a story. If you've ever been at a campfire when your spooky uncle Greg tells the story of "the claw" for the millionth time, to the delight of everyone present, you know what I mean.So now let's talk about the storytelling presentation. I'm trying hard not to slip into film dweeb mode, because the technical points of this film are so stunning I could ramble for hours. Camera shots are carefully planned and orchestrated without distracting edits, meaning the camera often follows the action for several minutes before jumping to another angle. This is reminiscent of the famous Orson Welles "Touch of Evil" opening where the camera runs for nearly 4 minutes through city streets and dialogue closeups before a cut. Or how about Hitchcock's own "Rope", a 2 hour suspense thriller with only 10 camera cuts. Here in "Grand Piano" such scenes are prevalent, and the best one has to be the "Wayne" scene which follows the character Wayne frantically running through the theater for help while the action on the stage remains in the background. No cuts. If you're wondering how the eff they managed to do that, check out the movie.Another piece of technical WOWery which you might not consider at first is that actor Elijah Wood is really playing the piano. In real life Elijah is a casual pianist who had to take a 3 week crash course in how to play the parts in his scenes, which often involve dialogue and physical action while staying right in time with the music he's playing with his hands. If you're one of those people who hates it when actors can't fake their instruments, rest assured this is very convincing. The director himself is a musician so you can bet he insisted on getting things right.Which leads me to my overall feeling about this film. It is extremely precise. Not a scene is wasted, and every element is carefully orchestrated like, well, like an orchestra. Basically the entire film unfolds in real time, as Elijah ("Tom") tries to make it through 3 movements of a classical performance without too many bodies piling up. The movie's "soundtrack" is actually the music that's being played by the orchestra as the story unfolds. That itself is an original and very impressive feat, if you consider every scene has to by synchronized with the mood of the performance piece.What makes "Grand Piano" extra fun is that the movie is not afraid to make fun of itself a bit. There's some nice humor and a sort of lighthearted cheekiness to it, even though there might be a few brutal killings going on. You could almost call this a "dark comedy" except that all the classic thrillers were dark comedies, so such a label would be redundant. It should be noted that Hitchcock himself had a wonderfully morbid sense of humor, and here the director upholds that spirit as well the classic storytelling style. Anyone taking this plot too seriously should be hung from the rafters with rusty bolts and dangled over an orchestra pit playing fortissimo. Oh wait, that might've happened in the movie.The acting. I won't dwell on Elijah Wood's amazing performance except to note that prior to this film I hadn't seen much of his work, and this movie made me an instant fan. John Cusack is... well, John Cusack. He's one of those actors like Christopher Walken who can sneeze and make it an Oscar winning performance. Although he doesn't get a ton of screen time here, he scenes were gripping. Another actor who deserves major kudos for bringing to life the terrifying/hilarious/lovable henchman character is Alex Winter (wait for it... wait for it... BILL from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"!) Omg he gets my vote for best bad guy sidekick since Jaws in James Bond Moonraker. And finally I have to tip my hat to "Wayne" (Allen Leech) and his barbie-doll manipulative girlfriend "Ashley" (Tamsin Egerton) who are a real treat to watch.This movie has so many fun things going on, you forget how technically masterful it is. Like the old thrillers of the 40s & 50s, that's the way it's supposed to be. It's a funny irony that a Spanish production does the best justice to the golden age of Hollywood.

If you like funky piano music then the opening credits are worth the admission fee, but from thereon this film heads downhill fast. The film is murdered by its many clumsy plot movements, until you are left hoping there is a punchline to make it all worthwhile. But there isn't. Indeed the end is the clumsiest part of the film, and it is not as if the actors make anymore sense of anything than we do.Okay there is some nice music to listen too, but, for the rest, it isn't that good to look at, and it tries to be clever with plot distractions that fail miserably.I will not be watching it again to see what I may have missed.

This is my first review and at the same time the first time i reached the state of complete numbness or something opposite of nirvana. The movie starts of kinda dull, you've just met some kind of eccentric pianist who is not well adjusted to XXI century, don't know about you but it just goes in "it's kinda cliché" direction, and it is a writer's and director's job to prove us wrong, but they didn't. Story's not unique, and protagonist is this young fella who's some kind of genius or something, the only person alive who can play what is known as the hardest piece ever to be played. He starts playing and realizes that he's on gunpoint of a guy who doesn't want him to miss a note or he'll die, or his lovely wife. That strange lunatic man does that just because he and musician who owned that piano put a key in a piano, and the only way to get the key is to play the last 4 tablatures right, is this a joke or what? I was laughing, i'm not kidding. Well the whole story is annoying and boring, and i was in shock how lame it was, he didn't even use those piano pedals but you hear it in music he produces. That's all just an average bad movie, but what struck me the most in this piece of garbage was ending, when he goes in the truck to play the last four tablatures of that piece on broken piano and goddamn as you can predict he played it and as he disappointedly turned around and tried to get out, he hears lock and key falling. And there goes 10 minutes or so of credits, i mean what the hell?If you want to see an enlightening movie, don't watch this, but if you want to torture yourself just go ahead, this is a movie for you.

Now I am a classical music lover and also play piano. I also like John and Elijah as actors so naturally, after seeing this trailer, I was rather excited about it! I mean, what could be better than combining one of the lead character from one of my all-time movie trilogies (Lord of the Rings) with a great talent such as Johns and classical music? Boy I was wrong...The plot was so terribly weak even from the get-go. You didn't understand what the hell was going on, whether or not the characters had any idea what was going on (which was even worse) and whether you're going to witness a huge fail on the main character's part or a huge success. Some of these things got clear at about the middle of the movie but everything else was just such a pain!Honestly, I don't go to movies expecting realism, especially not those made in Hollywood of course, however, when touching a subject like "classical music" with clear references to ACTUAL composers (like Rachmaninoff - which is mentioned once in the movie), you'd expect to see some degree of realism, right? I mean, take a look at awesome movies like Le Concert or Shine. They tackled the subject of classical music extremely well and I enjoyed them - a lot! However the bad depiction of what a difficult piece should even sound like and the actual charade which the whole concert represented was painful to watch (and hear). Seeing Elijah walk on and off that stage and seeing the presumably 'educated' crowd not giving almost a single s*it about it, and the so called conductor - oh yea, don't let me get started on that - being at complete ease when seeing the soloist walk off the stage for 3 minutes mid-concert *SIGH, taking a deep breath* ... is not something I'd expect from such a movie.In the end, I was happy it only lasted about 1 hour and 10 minutes, even though they seemed painful, I think this was the only good thing about the movie. Pity, it could have been better.