FETCHING CODY (2005)Take time (travel) to help someone you love

This is a classic “what-if” time travel, romantic love story in the tradition of BUTTERFLY EFFECT. A young street hustler seeks to save his drug addicted-girlfriend from an overdose by visiting key moments in her past (his time machine is a La-Z-Boy recliner festooned with Christmas tree lights). After a number of failed rescue missions, he realizes the only way to fix her life is for them never to meet. FETCHING CODY is an inventive and emotionally engaging little film that I highly recommend, especially if you’re into tales about time travel.

TAP (1989)

Want to watch some real dancing? Skip Michael Jackson videos and catch TAP, a lovely homage to the world of traditional tap starring such aging but still then-energetic legends as Jimmy Slyde, Sandman Sims, Henry LeTang, and Harold Nicholas (one half of the incredible team, the Nicholas Brothers), plus three contemporary tappers: Gergory Hines, Sammy Davis, Jr. and a young Savion Glover. The movie centers on an oft-recycled plot, “Will the hero (Hines) go straight or stay crooked” and is packed with sometimes totally illogical excuses to dance. But who cares? Once these pros start tapping, logic be damned. Sadly, most of the cast is now gone, including Davis and Hines, but a grown-up Savion Glover carries on the tradition, and thank goodness for celluloid.

PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE (1944)

A follow-up to the enormously successful CASABLANCA (1943), PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE capitalizes on the considerable talents of many of the same cast (Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet) and crew. Told in a flashbacks-within-flashback structure, the story centers on Matrac (Bogart), a freedom-loving French journalist who sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny. The film opens as a French liaison officer (Rains) tells Mantrac’s story to a British reporter. Years earlier, Mantrac was married and deliriously happy, but he was framed by pro-fascists and sentenced to Devil’s Island. After escaping to sea with several others, the group was picked up by a French vessel that was then commandeered by one of its passengers, a pro-fascist (Greenstreet). With the help of the prisoners, the ship’s patriotic captain defeated the mutiny, enabling Mantrac to enlist in the R.A. F. and battle against Nazism. (Sounds confusing, but it’s really not.) Okay, so by modern standards, PASSAGE is over-produced, over-directed, over-acted and over-scored (by Max Steiner); but overall, it’s a pretty good film and darned fun to watch with popcorn. Incidentally, Bogart makes absolutely no attempt to speak with a French accent. But who cares – it’s Bogart.