JoeMama's Movie Reviews

Portrait of a Lady on Fire Starring Noemie Merlant, Adele Haenel, Luana Bairami, Valeria Golino Directed by Celine Sciamma I've never been able to draw or paint anything remotely beautiful, and I've always admired artists who are able to create something out of nothing, and to do more than just that - but capture the sheer essence as well.  Some paintings tend to speak to the observer in deep, personal ways, while others appear bland and almost inconsequential, and it all comes down to the vision of the artist: if it's something out of an abundance of their desire, the painting takes on a life of its own.  Conversely, if an artist is hired by someone to paint something wholly unoriginal and not within the painter's own view, it'll still be pretty to look at, but lacking the depth of soul that an artist intrinsically releases from themselves into the canvas. "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is much more than just about a painting, and much more tha...

I Still Believe Starring KJ Apa, Britt Robertson, Gary Sinise, Shania Twain Directed by Andrew & Jon Erwin The music biopic subgenre has had its fair share of highs ("Straight Outta Compton," "Rocketman") and lows ("All Eyez On Me"), and has exploded on the scene in recent years.  It was only a matter of time before the Christian community got into the game with their own music biopic, a film based off Christian music's biggest mainstream hit, "I Can Only Imagine."  Christian films - to say the least - aren't very good, and don't really appeal to anyone outside the coveted Bible-loving crowd, but to my surprise I was actually quite moved by "I Can Only Imagine" due to its strong performances and emotional depth that didn't make you feel like you were being manipulated into feeling something, but the feelings were genuine due to the characters on screen. So when the Erwin brothers (who directed "Imag...