jazz, a list by Davide de rose

7.8

/57573/

77

/2870/

76

/1291/

4.0

/121560/

96

/224/

87

/750/

85

/41/

4.0

age 16+

A documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse, the immensely talented yet doomed songstress. We see her from her teen years, where she already showed her singing abilities, to her finding success and then her downward spiral into alcoholism and drugs.

83

7.4

/6338/

74

/120/

71

/102/

3.8

/6177/

100

/25/

89

/95/

4.0

Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.

83

7.6

/5083/

75

/141/

69

/80/

3.6

/4477/

100

/32/

85

/305/

93

/11/

4.0

Utilizing the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, the epic Indian tale of exiled prince Ramayana and his bride Sita is mirrored by a spurned woman's contemporary personal life, and light-hearted but knowledgeable discussion of historical background by a trio of Indian shadow puppets.

83

8.0

/746842/

77

/29542/

78

/17731/

4.1

/4132111/

91

/469/

82

/5129/

94

/54/

3.5

age 13+

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

82

7.3

/21701/

71

/494/

69

/509/

3.7

/35328/

100

/32/

85

/453/

90

/16/

4.0

Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati’s masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom.

82

8.0

/440019/

79

/21614/

81

/11103/

3.9

/2119530/

95

/361/

88

/2039/

83

/55/

3.0

age 8+

Joe Gardner is a middle school teacher with a love for jazz music. After a successful audition at the Half Note Club, he suddenly gets into an accident that separates his soul from his body and is transported to the You Seminar, a center in which souls develop and gain passions before being transported to a newborn child. Joe must enlist help from the other souls-in-training, like 22, a soul who has spent eons in the You Seminar, in order to get back to Earth.

82

7.4

/16896/

73

/303/

70

/250/

4.0

/18027/

98

/42/

80

/548/

81

/15/

4.0

In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.

81

7.3

/24650/

72

/572/

69

/258/

3.9

/33903/

96

/57/

84

/506/

80

/23/

4.0

age 16+

Primo and Secondo, two immigrant brothers, pin their hopes on a banquet honoring Louis Prima to save their struggling restaurant.

81

7.7

/103090/

78

/2898/

77

/1909/

3.9

/130816/

73

/126/

94

/7799/

78

/7/

4.0

age 14+

An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she can. She perseveres, holding on to her dream of one day being reunited with her sister in Africa.

81

7.5

/11516/

70

/263/

70

/205/

3.8

/12864/

94

/18/

86

/173/

4.0

age 18+

This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.

80

7.7

/164006/

77

/3779/

74

/2126/

3.8

/90368/

79

/204/

87

/7334/

73

/40/

4.0

age 15+

Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.

79

7.3

/2038/

73

/104/

72

/49/

3.7

/2674/

96

/55/

82

/15/

90

/20/

3.0

Part jazz history, part true-crime tale, Kasper Collin’s new documentary employs extensive archival footage and new interviews to tell the tragic story of the magnificently talented trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen, who murdered him in a New York bar in 1972.

83

77

7.8

/3353/

80

/253/

77

/76/

4.2

/25540/

100

/15/

98

/30/

71

/4/

MAL

8.3

/16650/

age 10+

High school student Dai Miyamoto has his life is turned upside down the day he discovers jazz. Picking up a saxophone and leaving his sleepy hometown for the bustling nightclubs of Tokyo, Dai will find that the life of a professional musician isn’t for the faint of heart, as he must confront what it truly means to be great.

78

77

7.4

/21730/

72

/363/

71

/427/

3.8

/36958/

90

/30/

88

/381/

Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.

77

7.0

/1556/

75

/27/

68

/21/

3.5

/720/

100

/7/

84

/97/

3.0

A naive Canadian barber who knows US popular culture inside and out meets a flamboyant roadie who needs someone to drive her and her "brother's" corpse from Thunder Bay, Ontario to New Orleans. Chaos ensues after the barber agrees to drive her, the corpse, and the drugs stashed within all the way.

76

7.2

/9991/

72

/316/

71

/246/

3.6

/11184/

88

/72/

77

/293/

76

/27/

3.5

age 16+

Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unites them, but their journey - in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the bolero - brings heartache and torment.

76

7.9

/227215/

79

/8322/

77

/4454/

4.0

/270326/

71

/91/

92

/10454/

60

/12/

3.0

age 16+

Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back together to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.

82

76

7.6

/5850/

79

/226/

78

/139/

4.3

/51225/

91

/218/

A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the school's brass band.

79

75

7.2

/13415/

71

/251/

69

/263/

3.7

/33323/

100

/24/

81

/253/

86

/11/

The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.

75

7.1

/14258/

70

/266/

68

/342/

3.6

/10286/

81

/26/

79

/232/

78

/14/

3.5

age 15+

Saxophone player Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker comes to New York in 1940 and is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him.

74

7.3

/2599/

71

/129/

72

/64/

3.5

/3326/

74

/43/

77

/10/

69

/13/

3.5

age 14+

An account of the life of the brilliant jazz musician John Coltrane (1926-67), a gifted saxophonist, an extraordinarily talented thinker whose original, avant-garde work has impacted and influenced people all over the world. A story about music's ability to entertain, inspire and transform.

74

7.2

/37995/

69

/511/

67

/537/

3.6

/19497/

77

/60/

81

/510/

70

/33/

3.5

In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.

73

7.2

/76154/

71

/1053/

68

/801/

3.5

/45627/

85

/110/

84

/9941/

66

/27/

age 17+

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

76

72

7.3

/10466/

75

/243/

69

/156/

3.5

/5362/

89

/9/

80

/203/

A vibrant tribute to one of America's legendary bandleaders, charting Glenn Miller's rise from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth in the early 1940s.

71

6.7

/967/

64

/75/

64

/37/

3.4

/5906/

79

/48/

71

/5/

74

/12/

3.5

age 13+

New York, 2010. Jeff Harris, a music journalist, sets out to uncover the truth about Francisco Tenório Júnior, a young Brazilian samba-jazz pianist who disappeared in Buenos Aires on March 18, 1976.

71

6.8

/9724/

70

/403/

65

/218/

3.5

/10522/

88

/119/

73

/89/

64

/32/

3.0

Jazz legend Chet Baker finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.

73

70

7.3

/13228/

71

/231/

71

/241/

3.7

/12655/

81

/58/

83

/237/

63

/10/

When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.

70

6.9

/2323/

63

/22/

66

/30/

3.5

/1134/

86

/37/

66

/28/

3.0

Wild Man Blues is a 1998 documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple, about the musical avocation of actor/director/comic Woody Allen. The film takes its name from a jazz composition sometimes attributed to Jelly Roll Morton and sometimes to Louis Armstrong and recorded by both (among others). Allen's love of early 20th century New Orleans music is depicted through his 1996 tour of Europe with his New Orleans Jazz Band. Allen has played clarinet with this band for over 25 years. Although Allen's European tour is the film's primary focus, it was also notable as the first major public showcase for Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.

81

70

7.7

/2549/

75

/70/

70

/47/

4.0

/4996/

97

/31/

87

/95/

85

/15/

Documentary about jazz great Chet Baker that intercuts footage from the 1950s, when he was part of West Coast Cool, and from his last years. We see the young Baker, he of the beautiful face, in California and in Italy, where he appeared in at least one movie and at least one jail cell (for drug possession). And, we see the aged Baker, detached, indifferent, his face a ruin. Includes interviews with his children and ex-wife, women companions, and musicians.

70

6.6

/20939/

66

/432/

65

/428/

3.4

/16295/

76

/33/

57

/198/

68

/14/

4.0

Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.

69

6.9

/10590/

72

/213/

68

/350/

3.6

/8779/

73

/82/

68

/312/

58

/26/

3.0

A glimpse at the life of French singer Serge Gainsbourg, from growing up in 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris through his successful song-writing years in the 1960s to his death in 1991 at the age of 62.

67

6.4

/10949/

66

/601/

64

/231/

3.2

/8327/

74

/184/

57

/178/

64

/39/

3.5

age 16+

An exploration of the life and music of Miles Davis.

66

6.3

/7219/

65

/200/

61

/110/

3.2

/4292/

83

/23/

64

/102/

58

/10/

3.0

Police officer Tom Sharky gets busted back to working vice, where he happens upon a scandalous conspiracy involving a local politician. Sharky's new 'machine' gathers evidence while Sharky falls in love with a woman he has never met.

77

65

7.3

/3083/

76

/72/

69

/41/

3.7

/4954/

95

/42/

80

/78/

The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s.

65

6.2

/4840/

63

/102/

57

/86/

3.2

/2964/

78

/18/

49

/36/

3.5

When a corrupt American businessman tries to strong arm his way into businesses in Newcastle, England, he is thwarted by a club attendant and his waitress girlfriend.

70

65

7.2

/5993/

71

/169/

68

/116/

3.8

/8867/

68

/19/

80

/223/

57

/8/

The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.

65

6.6

/23460/

67

/378/

66

/489/

3.4

/31046/

57

/49/

58

/386/

64

/11/

3.0

An egotistical saxophone player and a young singer meet on V-J Day and embark upon a strained and rocky romance, even as their careers begin a long uphill climb.

61

6.3

/5846/

62

/87/

60

/91/

3.4

/5567/

59

/41/

43

/61/

58

/23/

3.0

A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.

67

60

6.7

/4449/

67

/92/

65

/69/

3.6

/9167/

71

/14/

68

/46/

61

/7/

During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love.

71

60

7.2

/4182/

68

/57/

64

/55/

3.5

/2556/

86

/7/

72

/29/

69

/8/

Taken in by the musical world as a young orphan, Rick Martin grows up with a desire to play pure jazz instead of the commercial gigs he lands, whilst also coping with the problems caused by his tempestuous marriage to an aloof heiress.

60

6.1

/2316/

60

/82/

55

/60/

3.1

/1299/

50

/50/

49

/21/

58

/21/

3.5

age 17+

The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany witnesses her beloved father's struggle -- and failure -- to kick his heroin habit.

73

59

7.5

/1693/

75

/194/

71

/93/

3.7

/11253/

Popcorn

71

An immersive look at the eventful life and brilliant artistic career of visionary American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991).

59

6.1

/781/

62

/35/

51

/22/

3.1

/2377/

40

/30/

100

51

/10/

2.0

In the wake of his father’s suicide, young record collector Ollie Sway returns to the family lake house with his friend Nikolai in tow to lay claim to an invaluable jazz recording. An unexpected visit from Ollie’s estranged grandmother and a chance encounter with a girl from across the lake derail their search, forcing them to confront the Sway family history and a suffering that has resounded through generations.

58

6.4

/22357/

67

/507/

62

/359/

3.2

/9477/

36

/28/

65

/524/

49

/22/

2.5

Zed is an American vault-cracker who travels to Paris to meet up with his old friend Eric. Eric and his gang have planned to raid the only bank in the city which is open on Bastille day. After offering his services, Zed soon finds himself trapped in a situation beyond his control when heroin abuse, poor planning and a call-girl named Zoe all conspire to turn the robbery into a very bloody siege.

71

57

6.9

/4225/

62

/216/

65

/134/

3.3

/3142/

80

/5/

84

/12/

Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.

56

5.6

/644/

68

/49/

42

/17/

3.1

/304/

70

/10/

42

/20/

50

/6/