NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#437
every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the J’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Jackrabbit (2023)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Jam Session (1942)
Jammin’ the Blues (1944)
Jasenovac (1945)
Caged Heat (1973)
Survivors (1st season, 1975)
Jackie Brown (1997)
Some movies are so friggin’ good everyone knows they’re good, and this is one of them. Nobody needs a review of Jackie Brown, which won’t stop me from writing one, but I’ll keep it brief.
Pam Grier, refugee from 1970s blaxploitation, plays Jackie Brown, a mid-40s stewardess who sometimes smuggles cash up from Cabo for low-level arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L Jackson). But uh-oh, she’s busted by LAPD and DEA agents, who pressure her to reveal what she knows about Ordell, and she’s also pressured by Ordell to keep quiet. When DEA threats make it clear that keeping quiet isn’t an option, she improvises a plan to play all the players like billiards balls.
Jackson’s cool-guy act is relentless and almost excessive, nicely counterbalanced by Robert De Niro’s very slow burn as his buddy and sidekick, Louis. Robert Forster is perfection as bail bondsman Max Cherry, and Bridget Fonda is pretty good at being pretty and blonde.
No faulting the performances, but the star here is Tarantino’s writing. Day before yesterday, I reviewed a couple of ‘poetry shorts’, movies built around poetry, but neither was half as poetic as Jackie Brown‘s two-and-a-half hours of tough talk.
Based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, this is one of Quentin Tarantino’s best. It takes a while to go from zero to fifty-five, but then it never slows down.
And I’ll close with a glimpse inside my psyche, and a spoiler — skip ahead, if you haven’t seen the movie. I’ve seen it several times, most recently ten years or so ago, and would’ve wagered money that I remembered every moment and every word of dialogue from the last scene, where Max finally makes a pass at Jackie, and she cooly turns him down, says she wants to go to Spain alone. Except that’s not the way it happened. She asks him to come with her, and he turns her down.
Freaky that I’d remember it so clearly, but so opposite. Must mean I’m subconsciously in love with Pam Grier or Jackie Brown, but know they’d both reject me with a Tarantino burn.
Anyway, verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jackrabbit (2023)
In this eerie Aussie horror short, you pull your car into a remote rural gas station, thinking you’ll buy a tank of petrol (that’s what they call gas, down under), but the guy won’t sell it to you until you grapple against the local wrestling champ. Guy who wants gas says, “But I’m not a wrestler.”
Gas station guy explains, “Every man is a wrestler.” And the match is underway.
Written and directed by Alex Feggans. Kinda loved by Doug Holland.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Jacob (Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam veteran who’s come home to a divorce and a job as a mailman. Like a lot of people who survive war, especially that stupid war, he’s a little screwy in the head, uncomfortable with civilized life.
Jacob has it worse than most, though. He’s having more and worse visions or delusions, seeing things he can’t understand. And several of his buddies from the war are having the same inexplicable experiences.
I saw this 35 years ago in a theater, and thought it was intense, powerful, maybe even had a point. Watching it again tonight, it holds up. It’s a big budget, slam-bang, goose-bumper-car ride full of jolts and genuine emotion, and it works.
The cast includes Elizabeth Pena, Matt Craven, Jason Alexander, Danny Aiello, and Macaulay Culkin (before Home Alone), with hints of Ving Rhames and Lewis Black.
Adrian Lyne directs, and he’s usually a slick, kinda trashy schlockmeister — Fatal Attraction, Flashdance, Indecent Proposal, 9½ Weeks. Jacob’s Ladder is slick but not trashy, and rolls right up to the edge of schlock but it doesn’t cross that line. It’s undoubtedly Lyne’s finest film.
Here’s a question, though: When Jacob’s burning with a 106° fever, his girlfriend shoves him into a bathtub filled with ice cubes, which breaks the fever and sorta makes sense, but do people do that and does it work?
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jam Session (1942)
This is an 80-year-old music video, with Duke Ellington and His Band playing a single number in a small but pleasant bar.
Ray Nance on fiddle, Rex Stewart on cornet, Ben Webster on saxophone, Joe Nanton on trombone, Barney Biggard on clarinet, and Sonny Greer on drums.
Verdict: YES, of course.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jammin’ the Blues (1944)
More jazz, two songs this time. The first number is a slow, scatty “The Sunny Side of the Street,” sung by Marie Bryant. The second piece is instrumental, unknown to me but hopping, with wild dancing by Archie Savage and Ms Bryant again. Rockin’.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Jasenovac (1945)
This 16-minute documentary is all about the gruesome genocide of Serbs in Croatia during World War II. It’s vivid, awful, nightmare stuff, enough to restore your faith in humanity to always do the most inhumane things.
Lest any doubt remains, it ends with, “The people demand the extermination of all perpetrators and cutthroats in our country… The living seek vengeance for the dead. The people demand it and will not calm down till all the perpetrators have been punished. Glory be to victims! Death to fascist murderers!”
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Caged Heat (1973)
This is a cheap exploitation pic about a jailbreak from a women’s prison, written and directed by Jonathan Demme before he was famous. You want sadistic violence, torture, action, and nudity of course, you got it, plus Barbara Steele as the wicked warden in a wheelchair. Produced by Roger Corman (if you hadn’t guessed).
Nobody could plausibly accuse Caged Heat of being a good film, but it’s certainly a fun film.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Survivors (1st season, 1975)
In this nifty series from 1975 BBC, a global pandemic hits, leaving nearly everyone on Earth dead. When the dying is mostly done, three strangers meet amid the nearly unoccupied British countryside, and decide to build a new civilization together, from scratch. It won’t be easy or tidy, and there won’t be many laughs, but it’s an outstanding show, a brilliant study of the end of everything, with characters being decent and inventive and kind, as you’d hope, as they try to survive and rebuild.
The only goof is that in the first episode, as the plague progresses, none of the doctors, nurses, or general public wear masks. Big oops!
After that, though, no missteps at all. 99.99% of people are dead, but we’re in England, so the survivors’ response to this new normal is British, classy instead of violence and savagery, at least at first.
Survivors is bleak, delightfully so, right from the start. The show ran for three years, so how bleak can it get? I am rooting for infinite bleakness.
Our three primary protagonists are Abby, Greg, and Jenny. Abby had been a housewife before the apocalypse, but given new challenges she’s a natural leader, philosophical but no-nonsense. Greg is an engineer, with a knack for good planning, but also a habit of being in charge. Jenny is younger, but smart, helpful, occasionally spunky. Abby and Greg respect each other but repeatedly clash; Greg and Jenny evolve into a couple.
A few survivors, not part of the commune, imagine themselves carrying on the British government, or use that line as an excuse to take charge. They call themselves agents of the Queen, carry rifles, and enforce whatever laws they choose. They’re a challenge to our three leads, and an unsubtle but striking lesson in authoritarianism.
As new survivors join and the population swells to a dozen, the community finds a rather lovely castle and calls it home, Downton Abbey without class. In various episodes, they encounter a libertarian, a rich fucker who’s slightly insufferable but not awful, and a small band of Christians who seem sincere in their faith, which of course hasn’t protected them from the plague.
As one of the Christians lies weakened and suffering, Abby reads him a Biblical passage often recited in my family’s home as I was growing up. It gave me goose bumps; a small miracle amid the fictional pandemic. And then the Christian dies. Bleak, baby, marvelously bleak!
After the community’s first violent crime, its leadership must dispense distasteful justice. It’s a fascinating, difficult dilemma, and they get it wrong, but the story unfolds exactly as it would. Before and after the collapse, we are savages, all of us, under our button-up shirts and other pretensions.
Survivors is a fascinating, accurate approximation of a near-certain future, presented with style, passion near perfection, and always glorious bleakness.
Terry Nation created the show, and wrote several of the first season’s episodes. He’s known primarily for Doctor Who, a show he didn’t invent, but he invented the Daleks, the show’s first bug-eyed monsters, which pretty much made Doctor Who what it’s been ever since. I love Doctor Who, but Survivors is completely different from that, so you’ll like it even if you think Doctor Who is doo-doo.
Verdict: BIG YES.
The Hayseed (1919)
12/17/2025
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
If you can’t find a movie I’ve mentioned, drop me a note and I’ll hook you up.
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