TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

GazerRise Fantastic!

ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

LCShackley Damien Chazelle must have had a horrible time with music lessons growing up; at least that's my guess after seeing his screenplays for WHIPLASH and GRAND PIANO. The plot is a mix of SPEED, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, and PHONE BOOTH. Who is the mystery man who threatens a concert pianist unless he plays a flawless performance? That portion of the plot unravels fairly well, with a few "aha" moments. But the movie's riddled with errors, from the bizarre drive through Chicago (up and down several fairly close streets, but lasting from day until night), to the concert which starts at 9:30 (what?), to the talky conductor who's more like a game show host, to the concerto that conveniently has piano-free moments allowing the star to vanish offstage for long stretches at a time, to the "impromptu" song by a soprano in a box seat which somehow the orchestra has parts for. The music itself is laughable: a symphonic mess of various styles, none of which is terribly difficult for the pianist. Some of the cinematography is nicely executed, but overall it's a pretty silly exercise that would have made a fun TV episode. As others have noted, it's a short film extended by 12 minutes of credits. Elijah Wood and the camera operator do a good job of "faking" the piano parts. It's harmless fun, not to be taken seriously.

inforaza Grand Piano is supposed to be a psychological thriller – but it falls flat! This 1 hr 20 minutes film looked like a Showreel for some students of film-making. I suspect Eugenio Mira made this (test) film to hone his own skills to make something better in future. LOL! In the film, there is an embedded lock in the piano which if released would yield a key to a safe deposit box containing the late pianist Patrick Godureaux's disappeared fortune. The villain himself is the locksmith who worked with Godureaux to construct the mechanism.This is truly a convoluted idea! Why'd Patrick construct this mechanism, in the first place? What is the benefit of this hopelessly contrived technique to hide the key to the safe deposit box? When he dies who is supposed to find the key? One who can play "La Cinquette" perfectly (like Elijah Wood, a student of Patrick)? Does this mean whoever plays La Cinquette well becomes the rightful owner of the fortune? How hilarious! It'd have been credible had Patrick willed away the fortune to Elijah Wood through that key and no one is aware of this (not even Elijah) except a few trustworthy people. But the villain somehow becomes aware of this secret key.Coming back the film, it is well-paced & well-cinematographed no doubt - but DOES NOT offer any tangible thrill and suspense at all. You can easily ignore it without feeling an iota of guilt, unless you sincerely want to check things out for yourself.By the way, the movie ends in a very strange way! Elijah plays the damaged Piano and the key falls out of the Piano and then the credits starts scrolling.How am I supposed to react to this? Fall out of my chair? If ever you want to see an UNCONVINCING ending then watch Grand Piano.

Wizard-8 My father alerted me to this movie, which he found to be quite ridiculous. After some searching, I found a copy and watched it for myself. And I did find it to indeed be quite silly for the most part. It starts off okay, the first twenty-five minutes or so being a little dull and padded out but otherwise competent. Then when Wood first discovers on stage in front of an audience that he and his wife are in trouble, the movie starts to be quite unbelievable. What the Cusack character has planned and is executing is quite outlandish - there had to be easier ways to get to what he was wanting! As for what he wants, the explanation for it is somewhat garbled and short - I had to do some research after watching the movie to confirm the theory I eventually had in my mind. The movie is never dull, and it has some skillful direction (some great camera movements here), but ultimately it becomes quite unbelievable. Cusack fans might want to be warned that you mostly just hear and not see him in the movie. And the fact the closing credits last a whopping twelve minutes suggest the filmmakers themselves realized they had a thin story here and had to pad things out even further.

jimbo-53-186511 Having been in retirement for the past 5 years, stage-fright suffering pianist Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) decides to return to the stage to perform a few recitals as part of a comeback. However, he soon learns that there is an assassin in the auditorium who will shoot him if he misses a note.I generally watch a lot of films blind now and tend to only look at the rating after I've watched a film. I do consider myself a bit of a cynic and I usually find that my own rating comes in lower than the average user IMDb rating, but man I was wrong with this film. I expected it to be at least 7.0, but was shocked that it only has an IMDb rating of 5.9. Really?? Yes if we're totally honest the plot line isn't entirely original - it reminded me a lot of Phone Booth, but I'm prepared to look past that and just judge this film on how much it entertained me and it did that in bucket loads. Elijah Wood is part of the success here as he's already jittery and nervous before he even enters the Auditorium (which isn't helped by him possibly receiving the worst pep talk ever prior to arriving at the Auditorium). Once Tom arrives at the Auditorium the suspense rarely lets up and we're immediately plunged into a psychological battle of wits between Tom and the would be assassin. I've never been a huge fan of Elijah Wood, but he was excellent here and is really convincing in his respective role and rarely puts a foot wrong. In terms of plotting, I think what gives this film a slight edge over Phone Booth is that the assassins motivations are kept from the audience for most of the running time and this is just one hook that makes it very easy to get involved in the story. The assassins motives do become clear and are perhaps more simplistic than you may think.There are a couple of minor blots with this film and the first obvious problem is unoriginality (but when a film is this intense and involving that really doesn't bother me that much). Character development is perhaps a little sparse, but again who really cares when a film is this entertaining? Other than that though, I'm struggling to find anything else that I didn't like about this film.Having watched Whiplash recently and not liking it very much I was pleasantly surprised that the same person who penned this film penned Whiplash a year later. Whereas Whiplash was a rather repetitive, obnoxious, overrated film with a totally ridiculous premise. Grand Piano is a massively underrated thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining film with a more believable premise. It's rare that I side with the critics, but I think they're right in mostly praising this film as it is a very entertaining film. Ignore the 5.9 rating - it's a much better film than that rating suggests.