every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the J’s, with anti-alphabetical cheats)

Jerrycan (2008)
Jesse James (1939)
Jessica Jones (2015, debut episode)
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)
Jet Storm (1959)
Jettison Your Loved Ones (2009)
Fortress (1985)
Take Shelter (2011)

Jerrycan (2008)

This is a 13-minute short, following a small-town teenage boy who’s pressured by friends and enemies to “blow something up,” so he stuffs a burning wad of newspaper into a jerrycan of gasoline. You’ll never guess what happens after that.

Watching this brought back memories of the stupidity of adolescence, which is the same as the stupidity of adulthood but with more stupidity. The film is well-made, but feels like the opening scene of a feature film. By itself, it’s sorta flimsy.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jesse James (1939)

The real Jesse James was a virulent racist who joined Quantrill’s Raiders at 15, to terrorize and murder blacks and abolitionists during the Civil War, and then went on to head the James–Younger Gang, robbing and killing and mostly getting away with it until a member of his gang shot him in the back.

Here, though, Jesse is a sweet kid whose mother is killed by swindlers from the railroad company, so he swears vengeance and starts robbing trains.

Other than being full-on fiction and fakery, the film is in Technicolor and looks great, the dialogue crackles from the pen of Nunnally Johnson (The Dirty Dozen, The Grapes of Wrath, How to Marry a Millionaire), and you just can’t help rooting for Jesse (Tyrone Power) and his older, wiser, more cool-headed brother Frank (Henry Fonda). It’s engrossing, good clean Hollywood fun, directed by Henry King (The Gunfighter, Twelve O’Clock High).

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jessica Jones (2015, debut episode)

Jessica Jones is a big city private eye who spits cynicism and insults, and has superpowers, though her special abilities are used for only seconds and not explained, in the premier episode of this Netflix series.

Superheroes have been done to death, and I’m not really in the market for a new one, but Krysten Ritter stars, and I liked her in Breaking Bad and her sit-com a few years back. David Tennant is rumored to play the bad guy, Kilgrave, though he’s barely a whisper in this first episode.

Jones has all the genre’s required street smarts and troubled past, and everything is rainy, dank, noiry atmospherics. The story teases the return of Kilgrave, who’d been killed a year earlier but now he’s back, and has possessed the mind and soul of a young woman from Omaha, whose parents have hired Jones to find her…

That’s a lot, but there’s a lot more, including a mysterious blonde with a radio show, a bartender with a heart of gold, a neighbor who knows no boundaries, a rich dame in a skyscraper office who seems to both despise Jones and be her benefactor and boss, and doubtless more to come.

To me, this debut episode seems overstuffed with mood but hesitant to reveal anything beyond the mood. A dozen riddles are introduced, to be unraveled or forgotten over the rest of the show, but the clue-dropping instead of story-telling tested my patience, and my patience barely passed. With its slick, dark imagery and dour attitude, Jessica Jones seems designed to be unpleasant, which left me undecided about enduring a second ep.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)

D T Gagano is a CIA agent investigating a Soviet computer virus that’s been injected into a floppy-disc-era video game. Much of the film takes place inside the game and virus’s virtual reality, wherein the actors wear movie-star masks, and Gagano becomes Richard Pryor, his boss Robert Redford.

Outside the virtual reality, Gagano is a black dwarf who’s addicted to pizza, and hopes to open a kickboxing academy with his wife, a sexy plump woman with a British accent, though this film was made in Estonia for, I’d guess, about one day’s lunch budget for a Hollywood movie.

With 1980s-style video game music and dial-up sound effects, Stalin as sales manager, Batman snorting cocaine, and some none-too-subtle nods to Philip K Dick, this is either awful or it’s frickin’ brilliant, and I’m going with brilliant.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jet Storm (1959)

Ernest Tilley (Richard Attenborough) has been driven mad by the hit-and-run death of his young daughter a few years earlier. The man he believes was driving the car is now flying to America on a passenger jet, so Tilley books a ticket on the same flight, and plans to blow it up. He wants revenge on the driver, yes, but also wants to hurt as many others as he can, to share his pain and anger.

What keeps this story simmering is that Tilley announces his intent during the flight. After that, some passengers stay calm and pragmatic, while others are eager to form a posse, and tie up and torture Tilley until he tells them where’s the bomb and how to disarm it. The result is a flick at least as political and philosophical as it is a thriller, and it’s a pretty good thriller.

Brit pop star Marty Wilde plays a fictional Brit pop star, and sings the movie’s theme song, which is oddly “Jet Stream,” not “Jet Storm.”

I have flown on passenger jets, but never seen luxury like the jet in this flick — let’s wander down the spiral staircase to the in-flight cocktail lounge, and after a martini, I’ll light your cigarette upstairs in the passenger cabin. And they’re not even flying First Class.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jettison Your Loved Ones (2009)

Sam is dissatisfied with his life and marriage, so he fakes his own death and runs away, then creates a new identity and life. Soon, however, he grows tired of that life, too, so he disappears again, and becomes someone else. In his third identity, he’s a decorated soldier in World War III, but eventually that becomes wearisome, too, so he moves along… again and again, in this light-hearted but smart six-minute short.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Fortress (1985)

Miss Jones (Rachel Ward) is a teacher, with nine students of varying ages in a present-day one-room schoolhouse near a small Australian town. The setting seems serene, but ominous music warns that something’s not quite right, and soon four armed and masked men burst in and kidnap the ten of them, figuring on a rich ransom for the bunch.

What they haven’t figured is, Miss Jones is a spunky fount of good sense in a crisis. She’s not a movie-style tough chick, no chop socky here, but she’s absolutely the adult you’d want for your kids in a situation like this.

With fluttery fearful music, the first hour of Fortress is breathtaking, dang near literally — it is thrilling, frightfully plausible, with all aspects of filmmaking firing extraordinarily. In the last half hour, the film collapses to being merely very good, but in the last few minutes it’s astounding again.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Take Shelter (2011)

Ominous clouds are closing in, but Curtis is the only person who sees them. He’s also having strange nightmares, and he’s heckbent on expanding the storm shelter, making it fully livable in case of the worst. The worst seems to be what Curtis thinks is coming, but it’s unclear whether he’s slipping toward a mental breakdown or having accurate glimpses of a horrific future.

3/4 of the way through, you’re still not sure whether Curtis is slowly losing his mind, or whether this is science fiction and he’s somehow in contact with space aliens. Maybe it’s an allegory for looming totalitarianism?

And I wondered, would I stand by a friend going this apparently mental? I think I would, and at least I’d listen and ask about his nightmares and premonitions.

Being human is hard, man. Being human and sane is even harder. Take Shelter does a terrific job capturing that challenge.

Verdict: YES.

1/1/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

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