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Title: A Cinematic Love Letter to Jazz
Review: If you don't love jazz -- I mean LOVE jazz -- you probably won't get much out of this movie. There's not really much of a STORY per se. The cinematography is beautiful and the performances are wonderful to watch, especially jazz legend Dexter Gordon in the lead role (and a small but frenetically funny cameo by Martin Scorsese toward the end). But what this movie is really ABOUT is jazz -- straight-ahead, pre-fusion, bop-heavy, swingin' jazz. And not just the music, although there's plenty of that. The film is also about the romance of jazz, embodied in the tiny, smoky underground club in Paris; the dingy rooms and corridors of a fleabag hotel, the city streets at night, booze, southern cooking, humor, sadness, love, loss. It's required viewing for anyone who loves jazz and/or anyone who's interested in how jazz and jazz musicians have been portrayed on film, from "The Glenn Miller Story" to "Paris Blues" to "Mo' Better Blues" to "Bird."
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