Above Average Joe Blogs

I had a bit of a bumper week for films the past week, knocking off Darren Aronofsky's Mother! (! is part of the title for reasons unknown) and then Matthew Vaughn's sequel to Kingsman, subtitled The Golden Circle. Before diving into these reviews I'd like to talk a bit about the problems with trailers. Both the trailer for Mother! and The Golden Circle raise two different problems with modern trailers which are almost impossible to avoid if you are seeing movies in the cinema and therefore having to watch trailers before the actual film. Mother! and a Misleading Trailer First, Mother!'s (this is never going to be an easy film to properly punctuate) problem relates to the potential for miss-selling the movie in question. The trailers for Mother! suggested that the film was going to be a psychological horror movie that was going to go further than any other movie before in terms of shock value. That isn't me hyperbolising, one trailer for the films come replete w...

Cannily enough, the last time Stephen King's mammoth sized horror epic It got an adaptation it was 1990. Then It was adapted into a tv-movie starring the inimitable, sinister voiced, Tim Curry. Now 27 years later, just like the titular monster's feeding cycle, It is back, and ready to feast on the fears of children. And unfortunately, that's about the only peer group I suspect will find this, whilst wonderfully made bit of 80s retro kids on bikes adventuring throwback, scary. But before we dive deep into that tautologically turgid claim a few side notes. First, I'm not a mega Stephen King fan. That isn't saying I dislike him but I've only read a handful of his books, although considering how vast his body of work is maybe that isn't too bad. The first King book I read was Cell, which I read in high school. That was a twist on the zombie apocalypse genre, where all the mobile phones in the world suddenly let out a phone call which, if answered, turns th...