Music – TARYN UP THE MOVIES

I Still Believe is a true life story of Jeremy Camp, a Christian singer. The story highlights his love story once he gets to college. It is created by the creators of the hit Christian movie “I Can Only Imagine” which tells the life story of the band MercyMe. This film will hit theaters on February 13th.

This movie is based on a Christian singer’s life and a story of faith and the love of God. So if you are religious, this will be a great movie for you. But on the other side, this movie is not a religious movie that “shoves Christianity down your throat,” so if you’re not religious, I still recommend this movie. It is a great love story even diregarding the religious aspect. Age-wise, this movie is rated PG and I truly believe this is a good movie for any age, 10-100. Viewers interested in love stories, faith movies or movies about people who become sick, this is a movie for you.

PLOT: This movie is similar to the movies I Can Only Imagine and The Fault In Our Stars if the two movies had a child together. Jeremy Camp goes to college with his guitar in hand with aspirations of becoming a signer. He snuck backstage to a John Loo concert and met John himself. John took Jeremy under his wing as a new artist. Jeremy takes a glance into the crowd and sees Melissa in the crowd and instantly falls in love. Melissa happens to be one of John’s good friends and also his love interest. When Jeremy and Melissa meet and start to enjoy each other’s company, the situation is sticky as they don’t want to hurt John. The relationship is very up and down until Melissa becomes sick. Melissa gets diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. Jeremy’s life is instantly changed as he must decide if he wants Melissa to be the number one priority of his life. The rest of the story is their journey through Melissa’s illness and their relationship along with Jeremy’s music career and their faith for God through it all.

CAST: I Still Believe is set-up for success with the two stars playing Jeremy Camp and his love-interest, Melissa Hennings. Jeremy is played by the Riverdale star, KJ Apa and Melissa is played by the For the People Star, Britt Robertson. KJ did an extremely good job of playing the college-kid and rising star along with the emotional side of the “family-man.” He also had a great voice to star as the breakout Christian singer. Britt did a great job acting as a college student, but being nearly 30 years old, it was very clear that she was not college age. It was much less evident of her age once she became sick, and she did an incredible job in every other aspect of playing Melissa Hennings. She made you love her very quickly and made everyone in the theater root for her the first second she was on screen.

Other notable names in the movie: Melissa Roxburgh had a very minor part playing Melissa Hennings’ sister. Her role was very similar to her leading role in the TV show Manifest, so the role was a very good fit for her. Shania Twain played the role of Jeremy’s mom, she also had a minor role. Stranger Things and Sabrina star Abigail Cowen was featured at the very end of the movie as another musician following Jeremy’s act. And Forest Gump’s Gary Sinise played the supporting role of Jeremy’s dad.

I will repeat myself as I said, I think this a good movie for all ages, religions, and all different types of movie lovers. You can see I Still Believe in theaters March 13th. You can check out the trailer here.

RATING: 77%

I didn’t have very high hopes for this movie. I thought it would be just another band movie with Queen slapped on it. I was entirely wrong.

This was one of the best movies I saw in 2018.

First off. The cast. Absolutely incredible. The casting of this movie was spot on. Each member of queen in the movie looked exactly like the true members. They sounded just like them, and this movie was not like watching a “remake” of a band story. It was genuinely like watching the band in real time.

I have always been a Queen fan, but I never knew any specific facts about their story outside of their music or any specifics about Freddie Mercury. Even if you think you know everything about Freddie Mercury and Queen, I bet a lot of the movie will still come to a surprise to you.

I loved how much variety this movie had from a drama, to having a movie full of classic Queen songs, to even a lot of comedy. This movie is fantastic in all of these areas!

PLOT (only slight spoiler not really) : The movie starts with Freddie Mercury about to go to his last concert with Queen, then the rest of the movie is a flashback to how Queen was started and goes through the timeline all the way to catch up with the concert from the beginning of the movie. Freddie Mercury had been following a band for a long time in hopes of writing songs for them or maybe even joining their band. When he finally meets the band, their lead singer had just quit, so they reluctantly let Freddie join the band and become the lead singer. From then on the movie is about how Freddie becomes THE Freddie Mercury and how Queen becomes the legendary band they are today! From all of the ups and downs that their band went through in the music business and in their own personal lives.

I honestly had no clue how rough the lives of the Queen band members (especially Freddie Mercury). This movie jumps right to the point instead of giving unnecessary back story like many movies- especially documentary-like stories- do. I was never bored during this movie at all, it wasn’t even the slightest bit slow during any point! I was extremely interested the whole movie, and it was always fast paced with something going on every second

If you’re a Queen fan, you CANNOT miss this movie!! They play ALL of their top hits and give the backstory of how they were all created and it is absolutely incredible to watch!

VOCALS: I was baffled by how incredible the vocals were spot on to Queen as I have mentioned already. But I was saddened to see that the cast was lip-syncing to vocals created by other vocalists. Rami Malek, Freddie Mercury, came out in an interview and said all of his lip-syncing was to a “amalgamation of a few voices.” It was a mix between his own voice along with Mark Matel’s voice, and Matel has won multiple plautids for his Queen vocal impressions that he has posted on Youtube. So although I was disappointed when I read that it was not the cast’s voices, I guess that is what they had to do to have the perfect Queen vocals.

THE SHOW STOPPER: Like I said, this cast is insanely perfect. If someone cloned Queen, the cast of Bohemian Rhapsody would have been it, mixed-voices and all.

Starting with the show stopper, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury: He was absolutely unstoppable. His over the top, diva personality was spot on. After the movie I even did some research to see some of the real facts about Freddie Mercury and his personality. From what I read and my prior knowledge, Rami could have been the re-incarnated Freddie Mercury, he was that incredible. Although it was not his vocals, he was still nothing less than incredible

Honorable Mention to honestly the rest of the cast, but the whole band of Queen: Ben Hardy as the drummer Rodger, Gwilym Lee as the lead guitarist Brian, and Joseph Mazzello as the bass player John Deacon were all incredible completely believable and lovable. The whole cast was absolutely unreal as I have said multiple times!

I was so incredibly impressed with this movie, sorry for my repetitive nature, it was just THAT GOOD. This was honestly one of my favorite movies of the year, it makes you want to laugh, cry, sing along, and everything in between! It is very appropriate for any movie goer over 13 as it is PG-13. I highly reccomend it for any music fan, especially any rock or Queen fan.

But even if you aren’t a hug fan of Queen or rock, or even music for that matter, still go see it. It’s just that good.

RATING: 96%