JoeMama's Movie Reviews

Hagazussa Starring Aleksandra Cwen, Claudia Martini, Celina Peter, Tanja Petrovsky Directed by Lukas Feigelfeld The Story: Young Albrun (Celina Peter) lives with her mother Mutter (Claudia Martini) in the Alps mountains in the 15th century, and they live in total isolation from the rest of the town, deemed as witches by society and shunned from civilization.  Mutter eventually contracts a sickness and slowly succumbs to madness and death, all the while tormenting young Albrun. Fifteen years later, Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) is still living in the one-room shack, and is with child.  She's still seen as a witch, but is befriended by Swinda (Tanja Petrovsky), yet their friendship is short-lived.  Doomed to live alone, Albrun begins to experience her own psychotic break that her mother endured, and threatens to destroy both herself and her baby. The Synopsis: In 2016, first-time director Robert Eggers delivered the spellbinding horror film "The Witch," resultin...

Jojo Rabbit Starring Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson Directed by Taika Waititi The Nazis are nothing to laugh about, and World War II will forever be one of the darkest moments in world history, and the idea of turning the Nazis into bumbling fools and portraying their fuhrer Adolf Hitler as a child's imaginary friend seems outrageous and downright insensitive - but it's now been done, and the result is anything but insensitive.  Playing itself off as a satire, "Jojo Rabbit" will have you laughing your butt off one minute and reaching for the tissues the next, as it brilliantly blends the true horror of what happened with a lighthearted tone that never comes off as hardhearted - but coming from someone who never experienced it, I can see why some people would shy away from it. In the waning years of the war, ten-year-old Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is a devout Nazi, and his imaginary friend is an aloof Adolf Hitl...

Black and Blue Starring Naomie Harris, Tyrese Gibson, Frank Grillo, Mike Colter Directed by Deon Taylor The Story: Alicia West (Naomie Harris) grew up in New Orleans, but left the city to join the military and spent two tours in Afghanistan before returning to her hometown and working as a police officer in hopes of making the town a better place.  Three weeks into the job and she volunteers to take a double shift and ends up at an abandoned factory, where she witnesses narcotics detective Terry Malone (Frank Grillo) kill three drug dealers in cold blood.  She's shocked, but also catches the event on her body cam, which leads to Terry's partner shooting her several times, but all connecting with her bulletproof vest. She manages to escape, and Terry sets out to find her - and the body cam - at any cost.  Alone in the town she once grew up in and not being able to trust her fellow police officers nor the town's residents who despise her for being a cop, she t...

Amazing Grace Starring Aretha Franklin When The Queen of Soul visits a local Baptist church, you can expect some Holy Ghost fireworks - and that's exactly what happened when Aretha Franklin attended the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles in 1972 for two days to record her gospel album "Amazing Grace," which would go on to earn the legend another Grammy, become her highest selling album ever, and also the highest-selling Gospel album of all time.  With the aid of the Southern California Community Choir under the direction of Alexander Hamilton and featuring her band - along with legendary gospel artist James Cleveland - "Amazing Grace" transcended other gospel recordings because she recorded it live in a church in front of its church-going audience. The recording was filmed and meant to be released with the album, but due to audio synchronization problems it was never rendered, and sat on a shelf at Warner Bros. for 35 years - until n...

The Friday Five:  Emma Thompson Emma Thompson is one of those eternally graceful actresses who always offer class and sophistication to any role she takes on.  With the arrival of "Last Christmas" (which she also co-wrote), I made a list of my five favorite Emma Thompson films. **THERE WILL BE NO SPOILERS** #5  Nanny McPhee Taking her cue from another famous nanny, Emma Thompson's passion project comes to light with "Nanny McPhee," based off Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda stories.  She plays a magical nanny who's tasked with taking care of a gang of unruly kids who live with their father (played by Colin Firth), who tries to teach them good manners but ends up having to help rescue them from their evil relative, played with delicious brilliance by Angela Lansbury.  While not as fantastic as "Mary Poppins," Nanny McPhee will still find a way into your heart due to Thompson's transformative performanc...

Tolkien Starring Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi Directed by Dome Karukoski For me, movies fall into three broad categories - memorable because they're good, memorable because they're bad, and wholly unmemorable.  Those that are memorable because they're good are the upper echelon of cinema for me, movies that I can remember whole scenes from even after watching it one time.  Conversely, those that are memorable because they're bad are the lower criterion, movies that I can also remember whole scenes from even after watching it one time - but not in a good way.  Yet I'd rather have films be memorable because they're either good or bad than the third - wholly unmemorable.  Those are the films that fall in the middle, who offer nothing more than just a waste of time, and ones that I can't even remember seeing.  You'd expect a biopic about one of the world's most famous and intellectual fantasy writers would fall on th...

Harriet Starring Cynthia Erivo, Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, Janelle Monae Directed by Kasi Lemmons The superhero origin movie has forever changed the landscape of cinema, opening doors for the superhero movies to crowd the market, and they're filled with tremendous action, pulse-pounding suspense, and memorable characters who always do the right thing.  Yet these superheroes are made up - they never existed, and never will.  Yet there are real superheroes among us: ordinary people who have done the extraordinary to change the world forever, and more often than not, these stories don't get the glitzy, glamorous big-screen treatment.  Thankfully, after decades of being ignored on the big screen, the superhero origin story of Harriet Tubman - the "Moses" of slavery who brought her fellow African American slaves to freedom - has been told on the biggest screens possible, for the whole world to fully recognize what a powerful, real-life superhero is like.  Wh...