It made me grin from ear to ear when I heard the news.

J.K. Simmons, the longtime working character actor — who is most visible right now as the guy from those Farmers Insurance commercials — is hosting “Saturday Night Live” next weekend.

It is a testament to the power of the $3 million little-indie-movie-that-could “Whiplash” that Simmons — who after three “Spider-Man” movies in the 2000s, continues to voice the part of Peter Parker’s Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson in animated Marvel series and spent 109 episodes in a supporting role on TNT’s “The Closer” — has reached the zenith of pop culture. In addition to hosting “SNL,” the 60-year old perennial “that guy” seems a lock to win a best supporting actor Oscar next month.

After three months of a slow rollout across the country, “Whiplash” (my review here) is finally at Liberty Hall and there shall be much rejoicing. Writer/director Damien Chazelle has crafted an efficient, electrifying film out of a uniquely American theme that everyone can relate to but none have ever dramatized to this effect — the extreme lengths that driven people will go to in order to “be the best” at something.

Ostensibly, “Whiplash” is a movie about a jazz drummer (Miles Teller) at a prestigious music school who gets berated by an overbearing teacher (Simmons). But in its examination of the gray areas surrounding this issue, the insight it offers into a one-track psyche, and its stubborn refusal to draw a conclusion implicitly for the audience, “Whiplash” achieves rare air.

Did I mention that it’s also hands down the most riveting thriller of the year?

There’s another uniquely American film making headlines right now, although it is mostly because of the highly politicized aggro-speak surrounding its enormous box-office success and less because of any deep thinking about the editorial content in the film itself.

Clint Eastwood‘s “American Sniper” adapts the controversial memoir of Navy SEAL and late Iraq War veteran Chris Kyle in unspectacular fashion. But, considering the source material, that’s part of the problem.

One sub-chapter of the book was removed from later editions after a jury found it to be untrue, and Kyle’s ugly attitude toward others — which granted, some would argue is required in order to kill women and children without question — is troubling throughout.

A film about the individual journey of a soldier makes it easier for audiences to ignore the larger context of the situation, and in “American Sniper,” Kyle hunts down a bad guy who literally wears black. In “Unforgiven,” Eastwood gave us a challenging revisionist western that rejected genre norms and reflected on the weight of taking someone’s life, but too often in “Sniper,” he kowtows to our basic need to have clear-cut good guys and bad guys. And when Kyle makes the “impossible shot,” it feels (in the limited context of the film) like we’ve actually won something. We haven’t.

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Don’t get me wrong: There are some brief nuanced moments of reflection about war sprinkled throughout the movie. But they are easy to miss, especially if you’re not looking for them. Going back to the idea that the film doesn’t necessarily encourage deep thinking: Nobody’s mind will be changed either way by watching “American Sniper.”

The disconnect between our military and the U.S. citizenship today is enormous, and even though TV shows like “Hogan’s Heroes” and movies like “MASH” used to satirize military attitudes without seeming “un-American,” few storytellers are comfortable doing that anymore. The only proper thing to do now is “support the troops,” but what does that hollow verbiage really mean?

Perhaps it means that Hollywood shouldn’t simplify our soldiers’ impossible situations and create hollow reasons for audiences to cheer the deaths of the people that Kyle referred to as “savages.” What we don’t need in this era of nontraditional modern warfare and complicated political climate are films that propagate the myth that war is black and white.

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From Ashes to Immortality

“I’m a sucker for a well-crafted story with amazing cinematography,” says Lawrence resident Eric Hyde. “My grandpa Wilbur Hess, used to be the main photographer for the Lawrence Journal-World, so I grew up with a respect for meaningful photography.”

If influences such as the experimental film “Samsara” and the oeuvre of Terrence Malick are any indication, Hyde’s upcoming indie feature “From Ashes to Immortality” will be a feast for the eyes. The movie, to be shot almost entirely in Lawrence, has until Thursday to reach its funding goal on Kickstarter, a necessary step because of equipment costs. Among other complicated set-ups, Hyde has already engineered a zip-line camera system.

When he was 8 years old, Hyde survived a serious car crash on his bicycle that left him in a coma for 17 days. While re-gaining basic motor functions and learning how to speak again, Hyde watched a lot of movies. The narrative is partially inspired by his own life, and he is hoping that this story touches people’s hearts the way Lawrence has touched his.

“Lawrence inspires me because it’s a mecca of artistic talent, and not just art like a painting, a song, or a fine art,” he says. “This whole town is art: our downtown, Bowersock Dam, KU campus, basketball, the Eldridge, the police, fire and medical, architectural progress — everything people do here is an art.”

For more about “From Ashes to Immortality” and to donate, visit http://kck.st/1w1lyst