Above Average Joe Blogs

So I double dipped on duelling, daring, female led films this past weekend and saw both Alita: Battle Angel and Captain Marvel in the space of two days. The reason being for getting them back to back was that there had been a fair bit of comparison between them, particularly in terms of representation of strong female characters. Also hovering over both these movies, and most particularly over Captain Marvel, and threatening to derail any constructive criticism of these films like a fart in a lift or Jacuzzi, is a whole heap of non-controversy drummed up by internet basement dwellers on one side and overly zealous activists on the other. One side is claiming that Captain Marvel is either the worst film ever made, anti-male,  (?!?) and poorly acted and at the other end of the spectrum they are shouting that it is the second coming of the Suffragette movement, here to smash the glass ceiling (spoiler for this review - it is neither). Bar this paragraph I'm going to skip past t...

When people think of superhero movies now it is either the live action banter spectacular of the Marvel films, or the serious, dramatic, grandiose Nolan Bat-flicks (let's not talk of the current state of the DCU barring Wonder-Woman, can't speak for Aquaman yet). Yet both of these superhero visions, for want of a better word, lack the key link to their origins - the style of the comic book. Enter, swinging to win, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, fully embracing its comic book roots to provide you with a true comic book vision. Prior to seeing the film, I hadn't seen a whole lot of it by way of trailers or teasers, only a gathering buzz that this was something special. What made this all the more surprising was that these stellar reviews were about an animated film that wasn't emerging from the established giants in this field: Pixar, Disney, or to a lesser extent, Dreamworks. Instead, this film has the style of an arthouse movie, oozing auteur flare in the vi...

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...