Jesus Is King

Jesus is King's success for you will solely depend on your honest views of Kanye West himself as the film leans on both sides of praise as well as criticism.

If you like Kanye for his visual presentation, Jesus is King will satisfy that need. There are some stunning wide shots of the Sunday Service group within the art installation Rodden Crater. The choir as well sound amazing together and the IMAX format makes you feel the echoes of the acoustics of where they recorded.

If you don't like Kanye and find his work pretentious with no reason behind it, Jesus is King won't change your mind either. The film lacks any real backstory of Kanye's train of thought in the film, which is severely needed in this era of his. There are many shots that feel like it's leading to a larger narrative, but ultimately don't go anywhere.

Whichever way you may swing with Kanye, it's still worth a watch in IMAX. Maybe you will feel the praise or maybe you won't. It's all open to you as the viewer.

Third is just a short film featuring gospel music and some visual effects of random things.

The music is nice enough of you like gospel and the effects inoffensive, if a bit baflling at times.

Not this isn't a documentary it anything like it if you are expecting that.

Imagine an Imax screen that's 4 stories high. Now imagine seeing a blurry photo of some thistles while choir music plays. It's jarring and at times nauseating. A lot of this video is shot with bad camera angles and very little movement of the camera. In fact it looks like the Heaven's Gate cult got back together to sing Gospel.

The good news is that the performance by the Sunday Service Choir is excellent. This music video disappointingly fails to showcase them as the vocal force they should be.

I don't know why they shot in this art installation. It makes the whole thing claustrophobic with its extreme close-ups. An audience doesn't need to see Kanye West's meter long chest hairs. An audience doesn't need to be made to feel cramped when IMAX is made to exude space.

Speaking of which, Kanye's barely on screen for 5 minutes. A lot of it, covered in shadow.

I recommend renting this one and enjoying it on your own TV with a promotion credit or something. It's really half an hour. The people in the audience that bought the large popcorn tubs and sodas didn't even have a chance to get started with their munching before the credits came up.

Jesus Is King was what I believe to be one of those hyped up films but when you actually go to see it, you are not given as advertised. The film itself (if it was even a film) felt very rushed as it was only 35 minutes long and for an promised "concert experience" combined with the IMAX experience which in this case, was the only good thing to come out of this, it felt like you sat through a 35 minute, never-ending music video where you had no clue what was going on.

I do respect Kanye West for trying to promote his new album with this IMAX movie experience but if you ask me, I think that he should have taken this "experience" and brought it to YouTube or something as a 35 minute live event or an music video and leave it at that because with all the IMAX films that were out that weekend, this was sure not worth having it take up so many theatres as it did.

It definitely wasn't what I expected of Kanye but I loved the abstract cinematography and the choir was really nice. I think it's pretty neat how the film wasn't focused on Kanye as much and was instead focused solely on Jesus and His gospel. To see Kanye not sucking up all the attention and being self centered is pretty refreshing. I definitely was shocked when the end credits came up so early haha. I was hoping to see some more visuals and songs from his album but I guess he wanted it to be more raw and artistic. Overall I'm glad I saw it for the experience.