Above Average Joe Blogs

Sometimes I end up seeing a couple of films in quick succession, which just happen to have a tentative connecting thread between them. In the case of The Lighthouse and 1917 it is their emphasis on truly using the medium of cinema to tell their stories. One by creating the feeling of cinema of old, enshrouded in claustrophobic darkness, and stark black and white, the other dragging you kicking and screaming through the mud and blood of war, using the illusion of a single take. The Lighthouse  The Lighthouse is the second film by director Robert Eggers, his first being what I think is probably my favourite horror film of recent years, The Witch. That too righteously indulged in cinematic flourishes, with a refusal to use an sources of artificial light whilst filming, and reliance on period appropriate dialogue to lose you in a forest of unseen, and a times very seen dangers, driving a puritanical family to madness. It culminated in what I found to be the most terrifying scene ...

I love cats. Hopefully you will note that that is "cats" with a small "c" not to be confused with Cats, the nightmarish musical fever dream from man that most closely resembles a "what if the kiss from Princess and the Frog only worked halfway leaving a frog-human monster, Andrew Lloyd Webber. (Fun fact - Estimated at having wealth in excess of $650 million, Lord Webber, Member of British House of Lords in 2015, despite having only exercised his House of Lords voting rights 30 times whilst having 1,898 opportunities to do so, rushed from America to England to vote for tax credit cuts, that if passed would have negatively affected the most impoverished members of society) Normally with these reviews, I like to think I am somewhat impartial, although more often than not I am reviewing films that I have an interest in. I can't think of any that I've forced myself to watch against self-interest, or in this case self-preservation. Here however is the outl...