Above Average Joe Blogs

My Top 10 Films of 2018  Well the blog scene for me died a little bit in these last few months. It hasn't been for want of things to write about having seen a range of flicks from Roma to Suspiria (neither of which will feature in this list). The reason I started to write the blog was to keep myself in a writing mood and to reignite my passion (bleugh I hate using that word in this context, so cliche) for creative writing. To that end I've made great headway in some short stories and a book I've been trying to write since 2010 which had previously languished in writer's block land after seeing a lot of the concepts crop up in a variety of different things (primarily Bioshock: Infinite and Black Mirror). Anyway, in order to now get back into the blogging game here is a list of the flicks that grabbed my attention the most in 2018. 10. Avengers: Infinity War  As noted in my actual review for this film, I'm not a huge MCU fan (when people say MCU I act

Mission Impossible: Fallout Review Historically I have avoided the last few Mission Impossible films (for the sake of my sanity, henceforth "M:I") as I've always seen them as the poor man's Bond flick (plus it starred the unpalatable Cruise, so so in most films unless he thinks outside the box like Collateral or Edge of Tomorrow). However, Fallout has been getting rave reviews, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, talk of it being "one of the greatest action movies ever made" (see the film's Wiki where that quote manages to survive Wiki's violent moderators looking for false statements) which piqued my interest. So last weekend, I binged the previous 2 films in the series - Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation which I would summarise as achingly average for the first one and much better but derivative for the second. Ghost Protocol featured some interestingly staged action - a chase in a sandstorm, a fight in a multistorey carpark with cars being shuffled around

It had been a busy week of movies for me - three in a week, namely Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, and The Incredibles 2. So let's try cram them all into one blog post. Enjoy! Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom  First on the list was the latest Jurassic Park film, classily subtitled Fallen Kingdom. Full disclosure, I really wasn't much of a fan of Jurassic World. I found the characters dull, Chris Pratt is well a prat, the major hook for the film (a fully functioned park overrun by dinos) is completely underused and plays such a minor role, and the fear factor present in the original was all but absent for the majority. In preparation for seeing Fallen Kingdom, I rewatched Jurassic World and I admit my initial criticisms on first viewing were a bit much but I still left it thinking it lacked bite. Thankfully, Fallen Kingdom brings back some of that horror that I felt was missing. The film opens with a brilliantly shot, rain slicked, horror tinged

From my limited exposure to social media trends and groups regarding movies and reviews, it would seem that Hereditary is either "the worst film of the past 10 to 12 years" (an actual quote, the person said worse than Birdemic...) or "the most terrifying film since The Exorcist" (the boring, go to comparison that gets slapped on any new film out). If you want to cut to the chase on this review, it is neither of these things (particularly nothing like the former, and I don't think The Exorcist is all that jazz so I can't quite compare it to that) but it is a pretty great chiller that plays on classic tropes but delivers them in unusual ways. Hereditary focuses on the escalating woes and horrors suffered by Toni Collette's minitures maker and her family, following the death of her slightly estranged, slightly strange mother. The family group is made up of a stoic, and somewhat playing to type disbelieving dad (Gabriel Byrne), teenager boiling over with a

Solo stumbles into cinema with a whole lot of prejudice riding its flamboyant Lando Calrissian coattails. Directors being booted out (a recurrent symptom of the new Star Wars regime), extensive reshoots, the hyperbolic backlash against The Last Jedi (seriously, calm your farm about how much you "hate" the film - if that is the worst film you've ever seen then you've lived a sheltered life), a competitive blockbuster market to fight against (Infinity War and Deadpool 2) and a relatively unknown actor stepping into the space cowboy boots of an iconic character. I almost wouldn't hold it against you if you didn't have a bad feeling about this before going to see it. But I'd say you are wrong, for save from a few clunky nudge wink moments this is an exciting, propulsive, heist movie, set in the less explored corners of the Star Wars universe. Central to the success has to be the casting of Alden Ehrenreich as the young Han Solo. Ehrenreich doesn't

So here we are 10 years after the original Iron Man movie and my initial response from that film: "That was pretty average, it won't catch on." Well colour me very very wrong, at least on the second part of that sentence. We've had 17 other Marvel films of varying quality since then and now they all culminate in the 19th film - Infinity War, with a plot that has had its various threads slowly (and not always deftly) woven into the preceding 18 films. Full disclosure (although you may have already gathered from the above paragraph) I'm not a massive Marvel movies fan. I've enjoyed quite a few of them (The first two Captain America movies, the original Thor, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming) but I've also seen a fair few I just have not liked or have thought are blisteringly average (Iron Man 2, Guardian of the Galaxy, Civil War, Black Panther). Why I list these movies for you is to give you a basis for this subjective criticism as I imagine that f

Much like the subject matter of the film, director Alex Garland's film Annihilation has come to us in various different forms around the world. In the US it was deemed that the average American could handle its topics from the comfort of a plush cinema seat, whereas us plebs in other countries were deemed too dense to delve into its depravities outside the comfort of our beds and sofas, binging the film on Netflix. By way of an introductory rant, whilst I applaud Netflix for picking up this gem of a film, it is a worrying trend that big studios were not willing to front up and back a brave, unique, twisted, and weird sci-fi film, and stick it on the big screen. Although the film is great irregardless of its confines on your laptop, tv, tablet, phone (select applicable Netflix providing gadget) I can't help but feel the impact of the film would have only been heightened seeing it on a big screen. But anyway, I digress...Annihilation is Alex Garland's second feature fil

The Oscars, for me a normally highly stuffy affair full of self-congratulatory nominations for dry as poorly made porridge films about Hollywood, or the golden age of cinema, or an autobiographical film about some war hero, has suddenly had a bit of a shot in the arm this year. On a normal year, I would count myself very lucky to have watched one film nominated in the best picture category but here I am having seen the horror-comedy Get Out, realist-fantasy The Shape of Water, the war movie by way of Mad Max film, Dunkirk, and the bleak dark comedy drama, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (henceforth Three Billboards) [it's a shame what I think would've been my favourite movie of 2017, Blade Runner 2049 didn't get best picture nomination]. Get Out is probably the biggest surprise nomination out of the bunch as I thought it was a perfectly good film, great even, but in terms of really knocking it out of the park with directorial flare it isn't super. Howeve