The list of truly great jazz movies — dramas, I mean, not documentaries — is surprisingly short. Most movies about jazz kinda suck, in fact, and in recent years, there have been some really bad ones, like La La Land, Whiplash, Miles Ahead, and Bolden. (At least the soundtracks to the latter two were worth listening to … once.) Things weren’t much better in the past, either; the only two older jazz-related movies I really like are Paris Blues, with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, and The Man With The Golden Arm, which is a noir movie that’s about illegal gambling as much as jazz. (Frank Sinatra plays a junkie ex-con card dealer who wants to be a big band drummer.) One of the supporting characters in Sweet Smell Of Success, which is an incredible movie that you should absolutely see if you never have, is a jazz guitarist, seen performing with Chico Hamilton’s band (the quintet’s real guitarist, John Pisano, recorded the music for the soundtrack), but the movie’s not really about that. Similarly, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club is better than you may have heard, but it’s half about music and half about gangsterism, and its horrible musical-fantasy ending blows any goodwill earned.