January (2022)
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
The Jaywalker (1955)
Jazz Dance (1954)
The Jazz Singer (1927)
J.D.’s Revenge (1976)
Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile (2025)
The Magic Christian (1969)
Survivors (2nd season, 1976)

January (2022)

Marty is the volunteer wedding coordinator at a Wisconsin church, and she is cranky and no-nonsense. Today’s wedding party is running late, the bride is incredibly pregnant, and Marty does not approve.

Anyone who’s gone to church knows a church lady like Marty, and the actress playing her, Becky Brown, is perfection. So’s Rene Leech as the bride, and so’s the whole 22 minutes. It’s not quite a comedy, but it’s funny and sure of itself, and sweet without saccharin or sacrilege.

Written and directed by Nathan Deming, who hopes to make 11 more shorts, one for each month. The best news is, February is already finished and coming soon.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

When I was a kid, this was THE movie all the other kids talked about at recess, even several years after it came out. Even teachers talked about how great this movie is! Jason and the Argonauts was, without doubt, the #1 movie of all time at Brickhouse Elementary.

I wasn’t a fan. To little-kid me, the stop-motion animation was fantastic, but the story was a bore. Sixty years later, let’s see if I missed something special…

Greek gods watch over us humans from the heights of Mount Olympus, while the mortals below swear they’re following orders from Zeus. One of the mortals stabs and kills a young woman, and says “It is the will of Zeus,” but a godly intermediary instantly appears, and tells him, “It is not the will of Zeus. It is your will.”

I’m thinking, cool, we’re going to debunk this religious hogwash, but no, the intermediary then explain that the killer misunderstood Zeus’s instructions, and then provides new and improved warnings and revelations from Almighty Zeus.

Jason, meanwhile, is a youngish dude who captains a ship called Argo, which makes his sailors ‘Argonauts’. They’re on a quest for a mystical golden fleece. All through the movie, Jason and the rest of the mortals turn to the gods for advice, and the gods are always yakity with clues and counsel.

The proceedings are certainly colorful, but every plot element derives from supernatural intervention, or people trying to placate the gods. Humans have little control over their lives and affairs. Even Jesus movies aren’t this wrapped up with religion. Maybe pre-adolescent me smelled the horsehit.

Oh, and remember that woman who was stabbed and killed by mistake, by a true Zeus believer? Then you’re ahead of the movie, where she’s immediately forgotten, no regrets expressed, and never mentioned again. Oh, well.

After a while I powered down my brain, and watched with only eyes and ears, which makes the movie cartoonish fun. Ray Harryhausen delivers fabulous visuals — a statue that comes to life, mischievous man-size flying bats, a seven-headed serpent, and an army of armed skeletons primed for battle.

Movies about Greek gods usually deliver sweaty men with chiseled biceps and mountainous arms, but everyone here is surprisingly un-muscled. Even Hercules looks like a graying 45-year-old who hangs out in a pub, not a gym.

Supporting roles for Honor Blackman (The Avengers) and Patrick Troughton (Doctor Who).

Verdict: YES, just shift your mind into neutral.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Jaywalker (1955)

Milton Muffet is addicted to jaywalking, and he doesn’t wait for a clearing in the traffic. He simply crosses the street any time, any place, never looking both ways or even one way, and says to drivers, “I dare you to hit me.”

Cool 1950s animation, snappy jazz score, but it’s unnerving to see the risk of death in traffic as manic entertainment, without even the expected scolding of, “Don’t do this, kids.”

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jazz Dance (1954)

Integrated band, all-white audience, hyperkinetic black dancers as part of the paid entertainment. White folks jump around like it’s their first dose of methamphetamine, as they listen to adequate jazz, while we watch Robert Tilton’s stupid-ass camerawork that’s more interested in the dancing and cocktails than the music.

Great view of the subway on the ride to the bar, though.

Verdict: Guess it’s a YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Jazz Singer (1927)

All I knew before clicking ‘play’ is that this is the first feature-length talkie, and the titular jazz singer is a white guy wearing blackface. My expectations were low, but…

Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson) is a fifth-generation cantor who plays snappy piano and sings with a flourish — he’s a little bit rock’n’roll, and has a show on Broadway. His father, the fourth-generation cantor, does not approve, and wants Jakie to give up show biz and sing only about God.

The word ‘cantor’ wasn’t in my vocabulary, but the internet tells me, “In formal Jewish worship, a cantor is a person who sings solo verses or passages to which the choir or congregation responds.” Numerous scenes show Jakie’s father doing this cantor shtick, belting out extremely earnest zemirot (Jewish hymns), while congregants (is that the right word?) wear devoutly pained religious faces.

The dreaded blackface begins about 2/3 of the way through the movie, as Jakie wrestles with the moral dilemma of whether to sing non-religious songs or return to synagogue and perform the sacred tunes, as his father demands. “The songs of Israel are tearing at my heart,” he says, angsting out over being true to his heritage while wearing black paint, white lips, and a fake afro.

OK, but disregarding the blackface, campy singing style, and heavy religiousness of the story, is it an interesting flick? Actually, yeah. The melodrama is kooky entertaining, and when Jolson wears his own face he’s slightly but enjoyably over the top. And of course, you’re hearing history — a movie with sound. Without The Jazz Singer, there could be no Deep Throat.

Be forewarned, the film is not entirely a talkie. Much of it is silent, with intertitles when people talk, but when they sing, by golly, you can hear it.

None of the songs are what I’d consider jazz, but some are catchy, and it’s fun when Jolson does a whistle and dance number.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

J.D.’s Revenge (1976)

Isaac (pronounced Eye-zay-ik) is a baby-faced law student who’s possessed by the spirit of a murdered 1940s gangster, in this horror movie that never quite manages to be scary.

After half an hour or so, Lou Gossett pops up as a loud-preaching revival preacher, which almost revives the movie. Then the law student beats up his girlfriend, and his doctor tells him, “I think it’s a good thing to go upside of a woman’s head when she starts giving you lip. Believe it or not, they like that.”

It’s the scariest moment in the movie.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Jeffrey Epstein: Bad Pedophile (2025)

This is a hard-hitting mockumentary about NBA all-star Jeffrey Epstein, known to everyone for his championship seasons with the Chicago Bulls, but who secretly ran a transcontinental pedophile railroad, and sailed on the pedophile cruise ship Hymen’s Majesty.

It’s 21 minutes, it’s from The Onion, and it’s funny.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Magic Christian (1969)

Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) is a billionaire who enjoys playing money pranks, like offering triple the asking price to purchase a Rembrandt painting, and then cutting the nose out of the canvas while a bigwig at Sotheby’s watches in horror.

Dialogue in the movie’s opening scene is drowned out by a pop song, on purpose, which prevents the audience from hearing the chance meeting and first conversation between Grand and a homeless chap named Youngman (Ringo Starr). It must’ve been quite a conversation, as the two men spontaneously decide that Grand will adopt Youngman, so now they’re father & son.

Being unable to hear what’s said left me adrift and wondering, but maybe the producers had no confidence in Ringo’s acting? I dunno. He ain’t Olivier, but he’s adequate for what little he does in the rest of the movie.

Based on Terry Southern’s novel, The Magic Christian is a satirical spoof of 1960s politics and society, class and capitalism, war, religion, and common sense. Highlights include Laurence Harvey’s strip-tease performance of Hamlet, Ringo making faces, and some brief flashes of Monty Python animation. The punchline is the Grand father & son’s ultimate prank — tossing bundles of cash into a huge vat of blood, urine, and animal manure, and offering the money to anyone willing to wade in and grab it.

This was a passion project for Sellers, who changed the novel’s setting from America to Britain, and corralled numerous show biz buddies for cameos. If the movie bores you (and indeed it might), just watch the parade of familiar faces — Richard Attenborough, Patrick Cargill, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Clive Dunn, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Christopher Lee, Spike Milligan, Roman Polanski, Raquel Welch, and Yul Brenner as a transsexual nightclub singer who croons “Mad About the Boy.”

Absurdity is dished out at a lickety-split pace, rarely slowing down enough to figure out WTF is going on. It’s a disaster, but it’s a must-see disaster.

Written by Southern, Sellers, Chapman, Cleese, and the film’s director, Joseph McGrath (Casino Royale ’67). Cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (and the film does look great). Badfinger’s “Come and Get It” is featured in heavy rotation through the movie, though the band is billed as Bad Finger.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Survivors (2nd season, 1976)

I loved the first season of Survivors, the British post-apocalypse show created by Terry Nation. But Wikipedia says Nation “left the show after the first series due to disputes with producer Terence Dudley,” and this second season is an absolute cliff-drop from the first.

Abby, the strong, smart, sometimes argumentative woman who was my favorite character from the first year, is gone. Jenny, who’d always been independent, is first pregnant and waddling, then sickly, then reduced to the stereotyped role of wife and weepy mother. Most of the supporting cast from the first season is killed when a fire brings down the mansion they’d all shared. A new flock of community members is introduced, none as interesting as the dead departed.

Maybe the BBC or the audience wasn’t ready for a strong woman, but without Abby as his occasional foil, Greg is increasingly obnoxious. He’s an alpha male with nobody holding him back, and sometimes seems so brusque and commanding, I wondered if his tilt toward tyranny would become a plot point. It never does.

Far too often, characters act stupidly. One of the new guys is obviously unfit for any community, lacking only a mustache to twirl, but everyone inexplicably puts up with him. A stranger admits a ghastly crime in his earlier life, but everyone’s forgiving and wants him to stay. A woman is accused of witchcraft, and some of these 20th-century survivors don’t laugh it off. Greg tries to build an alliance with other settlements, but he’s hot-headed like fire and brimstone at the meeting. And the guy without a mustache to twirl is always up to something nefarious, and always it’s obvious.

A few second-season episodes are OK, and “Over the Hills” is good — the whole community celebrates a pregnancy, ‘future of the human race’ and all, but the woman who’s preggers wants an abortion. In most episodes, though, it’s so bloody clear where the story’s going that I sometimes fast-forwarded to the end, and yup, it was going exactly where I thought.

The first season was excellent, but this second season is ordinary TV, and I haven’t much interest in watching ordinary TV from fifty years ago.

Verdict: NO.

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.

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