Above Average Joe Blogs

So the blog posts kinda got a bit quiet in the last 2 months. I think I'd only seen two movies in that time and they weren't particularly interesting, or easily bloggable movies. The first was Thor: Ragnarok, the second The Disaster Artist. For Thor, my thoughts amounted to "eh, its another Marvel movie, too long, too much humour, lacklustre villain." My review would have been, do you like Marvel movies? You'll like this. If not, this won't win you over. The Disaster Artist on the other hand, was a trickier film for me to blog about through its subject matter: a film about the making of the the best worst film ever made, The Room. I'm not a huge comedy movie fan but this film had me in stitches time and time again. Plus, I'm no Francophile (great pun, google it), but he gave a spot on performance of the alien-like Tommy Wiseau. If I had to give any critiques it is that it would not work for anyone who has not seen The Room but really, why haven...

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...

A Shared (Collapsing) Universe  One happy family A "shared universe" is the hip new cool thing to have. Everyone's got one, from the Avengers and the Justice League, to Godzilla and King Kong, and now Universal is banking on The Mummy being the tentpole film for their Dark Universe. The Dark Universe is set to comprise of resurrecting the vintage Universal monsters of the black and white period. This means, pending good box office returns (not so much critics, sorry The Mummy) we are set to see Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Invisible Man, and The Creature of the Black Lagoon return to the silver screen.  But doesn't this beg the question: aren't we a bit fatigued by this whole shared universe idea though? Can't a film just stand on its own two feet, propelling its own narrative forward without having to make concessions to another 6 potential movies, some that many years off too? Whilst Marvel's cinematic universe has proven fertile gro...

But for the fact that I have seen Alien: Covenant and Get Out within the space of a few weeks I don't think I could find another excuse to cram review of both films into one blog post. The closest other link I can get to is the strange paradox I put in the title. Get Out tackles racism, albeit in a way that isn't the norm for film, whilst Alien: Covenant continues the cycle of fear in relation to its titular antagonist, formally named Xenomorphs, thus it is a film about xenophobia but not racism. Clear as mud, yes? Alien: Covenant - No Spoilers Review I will try to avoid spoilers for the majority of this part of the review. Unfortunately a combination of trailers and some stupid reviews have already given away a few key aspects.  High Alien Art Alien: Covenant is a sequel to the seemingly divisive at the time Prometheus (I rather liked it back then, like it a lot more now), which itself is a prequel to Alien. Director Ridley Scott plans two more Alien films which w...

Loving Lovecraft So life gets in the way every so often and the again planned review of Under the Shadow has fallen by the wayside again (I will not promise to make it the next blog entry's topic as I can't seem to keep it!) but in its place is something I hope you will find equally entertaining.  He looks friendly... When I was around 14 or 15 a video game for Xbox came out call Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I was instantly intrigued a) by the fact that this was touted as a horror game without zombies or ghosts and goblins but instead about unknowable horrors for the depths of space and the ocean, and b) how on earth to pronounce its title (try Cu-thu-lu). Good luck When I finally got my hands on the game I was not disappointed. The game was set in the early 1900s, following a private investigator investigating (as private investigators a want to do) the disappearance of a boy in the seaside town of Innsmouth. Naturally when he goes looking for the...