A movie about a college jazz drummer from an unknown director, starring Miles Teller and J K Simmons doesn’t exactly scream mainstream hit.

But take our word for it, Whiplash , which picked up both the Grand Jury and Audience awards for best picture at the Sundance Film ♉festival this year🔯 is surprising, intoxicating, euphoric and will undoubtedly be the greatest jazz drumming movie you see all year.

Teller plays Andrew, a promising drummer at a prest🐎igious music college, Simmons is the notorious hard-ass conductor of the in-ho🤪use band.

Structured like a sports movie Whiplash conforms to and messes with the genre audaciously. The plucky underdog who desperately wants to make the team (band) is a semi-sociopathic cocky little asshole, the coach (conductor) who becomes his mentor is a relentl🏅essly cruel bully responsible for the psychological destruction of at least one student.

Punctuꦿated with violent,orgiastic scenes of Andrew practicing so hard his hands bleed, it’s a study of the cost of excellence – whethe🐬r it’s ok to destroy every other part of your life if you’re good enough at one thing.

Developed from a short that screened at last year’s Sundance,♛ director Damien Chazelle makes th🍰e the frenzied drumming scenes immediate and impossibly cool for even the least rhythmic audience member.

Teller, who performed a good chunk 𒊎of the drumming himself, is excellent, neve🍸r quite likable but so single minded and determined it’s impossible not to root for him.

Simmons is a revelation, increasingly demonised, looming in yellows and greys as the film progresses. Despites some delici⛄ously caustic put downs (‘limp-dick, no-notes, flatter than their girlfriends, flexible-tempo dipshits’) he’s never more﷽ terrifying when he’s feigning composure, offering only a slight frown and the repeated mantra ‘not my tempo’.

Sure, the ending, joyful, glorious, as it is, might not be entirely psychologically satisfying; Whiplash is a triumph none the less, which will either make you want to listen to Charlie Parker records, or screw over your friends and family and die drunk and♈ alone in your '40s just to know you were the absolute best.