Grand Piano

Phone Booth by way of 80s Dario Argento complete with wicked stylistic flourishes (neat colorgrading, great use of camera angles, pulsating score etc.) is taut, tense and thrilling.

Bugshit absurd premise with disappointingly little payoff. I had some fun reading too far into the 'performance anxiety' angle, with the sniper representing premature ejaculation and the player ultimately having to finger a C correctly. Props to Elijah Wood for actually playing the instrument, he's actually decent. My prediction: Damien Chazelle's next movie will be about the best jazz bass player in the whole world.

If the bus from Speed was a piano and the toilet from Lethal Weapon 2 was a piano bench and the kid from Harry Potter was the kid from Lord of the Rings, well, you'd have this. The smooth voice of John Cusack, like a terroristic Casey Kasem, makes this a fun ride throughout even though I never truly believed that Elijah Wood was over 5'2".

Have things gotten so shitty that I now feel nostalgic for stuff that wasn't really all that good in the fist place? Ooooof course they have. So, here's this Argento-esque thriller that smacks of iffy filmschool-machinations but even so, it's an enjoyable, inoffensively mediocre watch. Which is a somewhat douchy way of saying that it ain't half bad.

Pretty solid Argento homage. The number of people comparing this unfavorably to the movie Phone Booth makes me think no one's actually watched Phone Booth.

Slick Dario Argento style thriller, back when Argento was actually any good.

A poor payoff but an entertaining build. (Also, well done on the keys, Elijah Wood; only, it's a shame your feet never moved).

It's pretty terrible. It's mostly fine technically, but it's so stupid. Phone Booth and Buried are masterpieces compared to this. The bullshit excuse they come up with to give the film its plot is absolutely ludicrous and utterly uninspired. The dialogue's pretty bad, and all the actors struggle with it. The direction comes off as amateurish and desperate. The non-diegetic music was melodramatic. The ending sucked, too. I don't really have anything good to say about it. Avoid.

Elijah Wood is great at playing the piano and acting terrified at the same time. It's a good length, but the extra scene could have been cut at the very end. I enjoyed the setting and music, but there was something off in the sound mixing (I think that's what it's called) the whole movie.

Cinematically well done with decent acting, but the script is just way too stupid when it all unravels.

I think this is really underrated. While other reviewers have pointed out the overabundance of style, I was surprised by the substance that accompanied it. Mira managed to create a thriller that begins as an exploration of performance and perfectionism before morphing into an interesting (if predictable) heist film. It's not perfect but it's quite good.

Admittedly the plot behind Grand Piano is both farfetched and silly, but the combination of orchestral music, the tension and pacing, and Wood's persistent panic make this film entertaining. Wood shines, Cusack is alright but the rest of the cast felt out of place. The film did evoke my pet peeve of introducing annoying characters to simply kill them off. At 90 minutes (10 of which are credits) the film is the length it needed to be, a rarity these days.

Pretty good little thriller set in one location. It wouldn't surprise me if there were some plot holes and inconsistencies here and there, but it stayed engaging the whole time and the runtime flew quickly. Very gripping and some unexpected twists and turns. Nicely shot, solid performances, and cool to see some of Damien Chazelle's early writing abilities. Overall, a nice simple fun concept of a film that doesn't outstay its welcome.

Phone Booth meets Hitchcock/Jim Stewart's The Man Who Knew Too Much, with ostensive, showy tracking shots. It's truly thriiling, but also beautiful and vapid like an average piano concert.

Jokes on them I can only play Chopsticks and not with any proper sense of scale or Gonna be a long night baby.

Stylish, inspired lensing, but it just feels gimmicky and vacuous.

its competantly done. Its completely convoluted and the plot is stupid when you really think about it but for entertainment value, it hits its mark even if John Cusack is a boring turd. Its a generally bad movie though.

I think it's totally fair to compare the basic setup of this picture to Phone Booth, but it takes it in a more compelling direction, with less moralising, and a richer, if a little annoyingly on-the-nose, subtext about the pressure of expectation and self-doubt. Cusack often acts as a stand-in for the writer's worst expressions of himself and it grates after a while. Spends no more time than is required to take the audience on an occasionally silly, but fun little thrill ride.

There seems to be some strange connection between Catalunya and utterly ridiculous movies about pianists--see (or, rather, don't see) Ventura Pons's "Food of Love". If you know anything about classical music--and, clearly, no one involved with this flick did--much of this is hilarious. Presumably this was unintentional, but god knows.

very good concept very poorly executed... grand fail

Kind of a guilty pleasure. Full of grade-a "dumbness" stemming from the over the top premise, but it is highly entertaining. There are times when you laugh both with it and at it.

Hitchcockian. Or rather De Palmaesque. Not as good as De Palma, of course, but still impressive. Slow zooms, visually clever cuts, even a split-screen shot. And fluent editing. Elijah Wood perfectly expresses the character's anxiety, which makes the movie a little more realistic. Grand Piano has no dull moments. It keeps the viewer's attention throughout. It even manages to say a few words about stage fright and confidence, in one tiny line of dialogue, which impressed me.

High-concept fluff, slick looking and fun enough for a rainy day. A groaner in the story and dialogue departments, but how could it not have been? Most impressive is the music that, though not remotely resembling the current and/or "notoriously difficult" classical music that might actually be played at an event like this, manages double duty as diegetic music and a conventional score.

Cool concept, but anyone who tells you that the music is a convincing facsimile of a piano concerto is full of shit.

Phone booth at the opera? Incredibly cheap, easy to watch fluff. Best is the score, working both as a proper thriller score and as diegetic soundtrack.

I like the musicality of the direction--it was very artful and well-executed. Unfortunately the script does not match the quality of the direction. Still, worth your time if you like "man whose will is hijacked" thrill scenario.

This little thriller did most things right. The camerawork and editing is stylized and deliciously pompous, it's well-paced and most importantly it keeps the close quarter tension fresh throughout, despite the ridiculousness of the premise.

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Elijah Wood's typically panicked face conducts us through an exciting plot that is imaginatively filmed, though it builds so well that it completely forgets to have a middle between its beginning and end.