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Reviews
Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
High rating for 5 seconds of Babs Gonzalez
I gave this far better than average private detective noir two stars more than I might otherwise have done for the marvelous, evocative '50s design/cinematography but even more so for the startlingly high level of Edward Norton's musical integrity in portraying real jazz (hard bop no less) played in a realistic setting by real jazz musicians (on the soundtrack) playing Clifford Brown (!). More to the point, at low level could be heard about 5 seconds of a rare recording of Babs Gonzalez singing his great lyrics to 'Round Midnight. Even if the film were otherwise terrible (but given this level of taste and integrity how could it have been?), I might have given it the same rating out of sheer ecstatic gratitude. The main problem with the film is its puzzling insistence on portraying Norton's character as suffering from Tourette's Syndrome. It is only a distraction and everything would have worked better without it. If Norton felt (rightly) that this was a condition that needed to be understood by a wider public, it would have been better to have produced a documentary. I can't believe he just wanted to show off his chops--he's such a good actor, why would he need to? Anyway, well worth the length as a noir, and an admirable expose of actual (as opposed to invented) systemic racism and poor peopleism.
I Called Him Morgan (2016)
The Best Documentary about "Black Classical Music" and a Long-Ago New York City
If you love and understand real jazz--and especially if you love the long-ago New York City that gave birth to bebop and hard bop--there is nothing out there like this film. It is also fitting that a non-American made it, given that the United States has so turned its back on its greatest artistic creation and the musicians who created it. (Just compare this film with the shameful recent American documentary about Trane--with its pandering casting of Denzel Washington as narrator and utterly stupid and irrelevant choices of people to interview (Bill Clinton? Carlos Santana? Common? Cornell West? John Densmore?). From the late-night Larry Thomas jazz radio program and New York City snowfall and that opens I Called Him Morgan(and hey, whatever happened to that snow? It seems to have disappeared along with the jazz scene),the interviews with jazz musicians of Lee Morgan's time (one of whom who objects to the term "jazz," aptly preferring "black classical music"), and with it's beautifully paced rendering of acompelling American story of love and pain...for someone like me, who lived through all of that, it just could not have been better.