Billie Taylor Movies

While there are more than a few jazz groups who specialize in the classic sounds of the music's first Golden Era, before the rise of the major swing bands in the 1940s, the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band is one combo with a difference -- it's comprised of veteran musicians who didn't learn the style from records, but were actually playing it before it fell out of favor. Ranging in age from their seventies to their nineties, the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band includes sidemen who performed with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and many others. Despite the advanced age of the musicians, the group set toes tapping while holding down a celebrated residency at New York's Louisiana Bar and Grill for six years before mounting a triumphant tour of Europe. The Last of the First is a documentary that celebrates this unique group of jazz men, featuring archival footage of many of the players in their younger days as well as contemporary interviews and performances from these living legends. The Last of the First was screened as part of the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The feverishly deranged minds at Troma Films endeavor to top their original cinematic stink-bomb Class of Nuke 'Em High with this excruciatingly awful mess -- which takes place at the newly-built Tromaville Institute of Technology (TIT), built after the nuclear disaster that mutated and destroyed most of the students and faculty of the Tromaville High School. It seems something gloopy is amiss once again, as certain members of the teaching staff are plotting to turn the students into hideous mutants (a negligible difference, to be sure). When Nuke 'Em High Junior College's ace reporter (Brick Bronsky) starts poking around, he soon finds himself nose-deep in a toxic quagmire of hideously bad music, sweaty youth gangs, bouncing naked ladies, sophomoric movie and TV in-jokes, bizarre food products, and (last but not least) "Tromie," the atomic squirrel. Finding this film a somewhat slicker effort than its predecessor is comparable to discovering a higher grade of plastic vomit, but the Tromites have certainly managed to pack this one to overflowing with sick humor (be sure to catch the closing credits), and cuddly Tromie is even more adorable than The Toxic Avenger (who puts in a cameo appearance). ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Born in 1895, Alberta Hunter first rose to fame as a blues singer in the early '20s; Louis Armstrong, Eubie Blake, and Sidney Bechet all played on her records, she headlined nightclubs in the United States and Europe, and starred with Paul Robeson in the British production of Showboat in 1928. In 1956, after almost 35 years in show business, Hunter decided to retire from performing, and took a job as a nurse. In 1977, the hospital where she worked, believing her to be 65 years old (they were off by 17 years), gave her mandatory retirement. With little to do, Hunter began performing at a night spot in New York's Greenwich Village called the Cookery; singing with even greater force and personality than she had in her youth, Hunter's shows wowed jazz critics, and she went on to record three successful albums for Columbia Records and score the film Remember My Name before she passed on in 1984. Alberta Hunter: My Castle's Rockin' is a warm and fascinating portrait of Hunter's personal and professional lives, featuring plenty of footage of the ageless diva performing for an enthusiastic audience. Billy Taylor narrates. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this actioner, a Coast Guard ensign must investigate a yacht suspected of smuggling alcohol. While aboard, he falls for a lovely young woman. The woman disobeys her mother and begins seeing the ensign who soon discovers that the brains behind the operation is the man the woman's mother wanted her to marry. Songs include: "My Man Is On The Make," "A Ship Without A Sail," and "If I Knew You Better." ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi