Do current events have me too blue for the movies, or is this just a so-so batch? Today’s selections include respected films by big-name moviemakers, but mostly I shrugged. Half of Julia is pretty good, and the entire seven minutes of Jump.

Judge Priest (1934)
Judgement (1999)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Jules and Jim (1962)
Julia (1977)
Jumbo (2024)
Jump (2020)

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

Judge Priest (1934)

John Ford directs and Will Rogers stars, playing a judge “typical of the tolerance of that day,” in Kentucky shortly after the Civil War. The judge is so tolerant, he calls a black defendant “boy” in court, repeatedly, then goes fishing with him. The “boy” is literally Stepin Fetchit, playing his famously offensive lazy & incoherent stereotype.

“My Old Kentucky Home” is the first song on the soundtrack. Testimony under oath clarifies that a veteran did not fight in “the War of the Rebellion,” but in “the War for the Southern Confederacy” — an important distinction, apparently, in 1890s Kentucky or 1930s Hollywood. In the courtroom, the response is huzzahs and yessirees.

Judge Priest offers sage advice to his young nephew, who’s pitching woo at a neighbor lady, and there’s a trial after the nephew punches someone who’d questioned that neighbor lady’s pristine virtue.

Settling into the story is difficult, though, because racism keeps distracting from the plot. Happy black folks literally refer to themselves as “darkies,” all of whom sing a chorus of “Dixie,” another aw-shucks white character waxes nostalgic for the Confederacy, etc…

Without the racism, this would be a short instead of a feature.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Judgement (1999)

A department store has collapsed in an earthquake, and a sizable payout is available to the families of the dead. One victim is stored at the morgue, unidentified, because she had no identification on her when the building went boom. Two families claim she’s their daughter, but are the grieving, or only after the payout?

This 26-minute short is perhaps waylaid by the translation from the original Korean, but I never got a grip on it. If it’s intended as comedy it’s dark indeed, and not funny enough. If it’s intended as drama, the unexpected development toward the end seems too absurd. Written and directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Snowpiercer).

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Nazis are bad, m’kay? So here’s a 3-hour recreation of one of the Nuremberg trials, held after the fall of fascist Germany.

Standing before the court are four German judges who enforced Nazi law by sentencing to death people they knew were innocent. Three American judges will decide the German judges’ fate, but really it’s just Spencer Tracy.

This was made by Stanley Kramer, a lefty who made lefty films, and they’re always good (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Inherit the Wind, On the Beach). He tended to be a bit bombastic, though, so he finds ways to ratchet up the drama even when the drama is the Holocaust.

The movie is an overstarched shirt, but it’s very watchable, even with the world’s most obvious Point To Be Made.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jules and Jim (1962)

Jules and Jim have their names in the title, but the film is really about three buddies — Jules, Jim, and Catherine. At first they’re all laughs and beer and intellectual allusions, but soon both boys are in love with Catherine, and Jules makes his move so those two become a couple.

Then comes World War I, which briefly complicates things, because Jules is Austrian and Jim is French. “Separated by their uniforms,” they report to their respective armies and fight the war, accompanied by highbrow narration.

When there’s peace again, Jim comes to visit Jules and Catherine, who are now married with a young daughter. The three adults are again best buddies (“Jules, I’d like to read Goethe tonight. May I have it?” “I lent it to Jim.”) but Catherine is a free spirit who enjoys numerous affairs, and Jim is about to be one of them.

Catherine sings a song, all four verses, as Jim strums along on a guitar and Jules listens, and then more stuff happens, except that nothing much really happens at all.

This is François Truffaut’s breakthrough, the film that launched cinema’s French New Wave. Every critic from Roger Ebert to Joe Bob Briggs agrees that Jules and Jim is one of the finest films ever made, but it’s not.

It doesn’t suck or anything. It’s a good movie, more modern and lifelike than many, maybe most films of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, and every scene works. It only adds up to a soap opera, though — the love lives of three very college-educated characters, none of whom I’d want to spend an hour and a half with, but I just did.

Verdict: YES, just don’t come in believing the hype.

♦ ♦ ♦

Julia (1977)

As adolescent childhood friends, Lillian admires Julia for her boldness, willingness to say what she believes, and because she does believe in things, in a world where most people don’t. Then comes the awfulness of growing up, and Julia is gone from Lillian’s life, but never forgotten.

Lillian wants to be a writer, struggles with her first play, and it turns out she’s Lillian Hellman. She’s shacked up with Dashiell Hammett, who knows a thing or three about writing, and tough-love coaches her when she needs it. So these are real people in a true story, as told by Ms Hellman.

Julia, headstrong and spunky as a girl, is now an anti-fascist living in Berlin during Nazi times. Through cryptic messages, she asks Lillian to ferry a wad of cash to her, funds that’ll help the resistance. That’s a hell of an ask, since the two friends haven’t seen each other in many years, plus Lillian’s Jewish, and Berlin was not known for its warm welcome of Jews during World War II.

She does it, though, and the intrigue is white knuckle stuff. Lillian is never briefed on the bigger picture beyond “Be at this place at this time,” which seems true to the way espionage might actually work. Cant remember a thriller that better conveyed the vibe of “small cog in a vital machine.” Lillian (and the audience) only vaguely know what’s going on, can’t be sure who’s to be trusted and who shouldn’t be.

There’s an especially tense scene that memorably illustrates one of the difficulties of being a dame in a man’s world: Lillian says good night to a gentleman friend, because she needs to hurry to the train station to meet a subversive contact, but saying good night doesn’t shake the gentleman. He’s such a gentleman, he can’t allow her to go to the station alone, no matter how much she insists. So she’s stuck having this obtuse gentleman beside her, even as a dangerous and clandestine moment approaches. Men are such inconvenient dicks!

Off-screen, the story’s alleged truthfulness is a matter of dispute, but I don’t care about that. All I ask is, is the story well told?

Considering the topic and Hellman connection, this slick flick should’ve been better than it is. The espionage is splendid, but that’s only about half of the film. The rest is sorta wishy-washy, filmed in gauzy soft-focus, with sets and settings opulent and leathery, and Nazis more subdued than your typical movie fascists. And the ephemeral Julia, whose greatness motivates Lillian and the plot, is rarely seen, and comes across not quite so special as Lillian thinks she is.

Jane Fonda stars, with Vanessa Redgrave, Jason Robards as Hammett, Maximilian Schell, Hal Holbrook as the gentleman, and introducing Meryl Streep.

Verdict: YEAH.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jumbo (2024)

Set to jarring pinball-style music, this is the odyssey of a bug, or possibly a very small space alien, making its way across a restaurant’s kitchen and dining area.

The music kills it, in a bad way, at least for me. Most of the film’s 4-minute run time was spent adjusting the volume, lower and lower, squinting in discomfort, and turning the volume further down.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jump (2020)

Two strangers meet on their building’s roof, both intending to leap to their deaths, in this clever 7-minute light comedy.

Verdict: YES.

1/29/2026

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