Damien Chazelle's Whiplash is one of the best-reviewed movies of 2014—whoops! Also in this week's issue, Ben Sachs reviews Nightcrawler, starring a skinny Jake Gyllenhaal as an LA sociopath who finds his true calling as a videographer recording crime and accident scenes for the ten o'clock news. And we've got recommended reviews for CitizenFour, Laura Poitras's fly-on-the-wall portrait of Edward Snowden in the run-up to his earth-shaking revelations about domestic surveillance of American citizens; Hellaware, a satire of New York artsy-fartsies who embrace a down-at-heels horror-rap act; and J'Accuse, Abel Gance's 1919 silent epic about love, death, and World War I.
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