September 2023 – Page 2 – Movie Meister Reviews

September 15, 2023 leebutler Crime, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Marlowe (2023) – Mar-no

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th April
Seen: 11th September

Philip Marlowe started life as a character created in the 1920s, created by Raymond Chandler for a series of short stories that appeared in assorted magazines at the time. Before Raymond’s death in 1959 he would end up writing over half a dozen books about Philip Marlowe’s adventures, along with several short stories that would make up a few anthologies. The character was so popular that even after Raymond’s death there were books written by other authors, more and more detective stories about Marlowe have filled bookshelves over the years.

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September 13, 2023 leebutler Documentary, Review

Scouts Honor: The Secret Files Of The Boy Scouts Of America (2023) – Important

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th September
Seen: 9th September

Scouts Honor: The Secret Files Of The Boy Scouts Of America Info

The Boy Scouts Of America was founded in 1910 with the intention of teaching the young men of the US skills that they might need to survive. From knot tying to starting a fire to first aid lessons, being a Boy Scout was a sign that you wanted to be a contributing member of your community and its leaders were in positions of trust that gave them some form of societal power. Sadly, it should not be a shock that when this much power is placed in the hands of a group of adults who have access to children without anyone around them, it’s almost inevitable that this would lead to some serious issues and the movie Scouts Honor: The Secret Files Of The Boy Scouts Of America details one of the worst cover-ups in history, one that should’ve probably destroyed the Scouts.

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September 12, 2023 leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Netflix, Review

The Monkey King (2023) – Royalty

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 9th September

Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese story that follows the adventures of four major characters, Tripitaka, Pigsy, Sandy and The Monkey King. This story is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese novels of all time, has been translated into an abridged English language version, is the subject of multiple adaptations in every medium you could think of and is a truly important piece of work that I haven’t read or even heard about before doing background research for this review of the Netflix animated film The Monkey King, which adapts that characters specific story from the original text. It’s important to tell you that I have not read the original text because I cannot tell you if this is a faithful adaptation of it (though based on the Wikipedia description, it seems to get the core beats of the story correctly) but I can tell you if it’s a good kids movie… which it is.

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September 11, 2023 leebutler Crime, Mystery, Thriller

The Ritual Killer (2023) – Dead Boring

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 19th April
Seen: 9th September

I think it’s time to ask a very serious question… does Morgan Freeman owe someone money? Does the legendary five-time Oscar-nominated (and only one-time winner, somehow) who starred in such monster hits as The Shawshank Redemption and Bruce Almighty have a huge tax bill that he needs to pay off? It’s a question that feels like it needs to be asked because lately, it seems that every time he’s being seen on screen it’s in some low-budget piece of shit that shouldn’t exist, a piece of shit selling itself almost entirely on the fact that it stars Morgan Freeman. This is a man who deserves to only have to work when he wants to, when a project is good enough to be worthy of him… he shouldn’t have to take up a supporting role in The Ritual Killer to pay the bills!

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September 6, 2023 leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Jagged Mind (2023) – Loopy

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 15th June
Seen: 3rd September

Before we begin, a warning that this film deals with the very heavy subject of spousal abuse, in particular gaslighting and abuse of those with a medical condition which might be a triggering topic for some. If that applies to you then you might want to skip this movie entirely, though you also might’ve skipped it already, because it seemed to get very little promotion which makes a depressing amount of sense when you realise it’s a queer horror film about spousal abuse which doesn’t tend to be a marketable film. If that isn’t a trigger for you though, keep going on (also if you got viscerally angry at the idea of being given a trigger warning… grass, go find some and touch it)

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September 5, 2023 leebutler Biography, Drama, History, Review

Flamin’ Hot (2023) – Heart-Warming

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 9th June
Seen: 3rd September

In the episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend titled “Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Crazy” there’s a song titled The End Of The Movie where noted songperson Josh Groban reminds us of a universal truth… “Life doesn’t make narrative sense”. This reality creates a problem when someone becomes famous enough to warrant a portion of their life being turned into a biopic, a strange series of events has to be somewhat retrofitted into a three-act film structure in a way that might not be completely accurate but still tells a satisfying story.

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September 4, 2023 leebutler Documentary, Review

The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker (2023) – Suh-mash

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 10th January
Seen: 2nd September

In February of 2013, Caleb Lawrence McGillvary was hitchhiking. One of the people who gave him a ride turned out to be Jett Simmons McBride who, with Caleb in his passenger seat, drove his car into a utility truck and pinned a worker between his vehicle and the truck. When a woman came over to help, Jett tried to pull her away while proclaiming himself to be Jesus Christ and shouting racial slurs about the man who he had just hit with his vehicle. This is when Caleb sprung into action with a hatchet he had in his bag, hitting Jett 3 times in the head which got him to release the young woman and incapacitated him until the police came. When interviewed about this, Caleb would insist on being called Kai and described his moment of defense with the onomatopoeic phrase “Smash, Smash, Suh-mash” which would go on to become a meme and earn Kai the label “Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker”.

By May of that same year, Kai would be arrested for the murder of New Jersey attorney Joseph Galfy and eventually be sentenced to over 5 decades in prison.

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September 3, 2023 leebutler Horror, Review

Skinamarink (2023) – Night Night

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 2nd September

Fun fact about me, I didn’t see Psycho for YEARS after I started watching horror movies. Years, like I maybe saw it in full for the first time last year. Now the reasoning for this is one that might actually make sense to some of you reading this, I didn’t see it because the film is so widely regarded as one of the best of all time that I didn’t want to risk not liking it so I just kept pushing back seeing it. This is a thing that I’m sure many people do with some classic films, A kind of hype sets in around the film and seeing it becomes a landmine because you might not like it as much as everyone else which can be kind of awkward. This can also happen a lot with modern films, a film gets so many rave reviews to the point of it becoming a meme that it pushes some people away from it. This is what happened when Skinamarink first came out, due to a combo of a general slowness that took up the early half of 2022 and just a general concern that it might not be as good as everyone proclaimed it this film was avoided by me for quite some time.

…so anyway, Skinamarink is bad and you all owe me an explanation of what the fuck happened when it came out to make everyone claim it was so great.

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September 2, 2023 leebutler Horror, Review

Perpetrator (2023) – School’s Out!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 1st September
Seen: 2nd September

Horror as a genre is an ever-evolving beast but one thing it’s always great at is metaphor, using the story of the film to touch on heavy topics that might be harder to do in other genres. Sometimes it can work well, the problem of racism, specifically the more insidious subtle racism done by people who believe they aren’t racists, was handled wonderfully in Get Out. Sometimes it fails pretty spectacularly, like the gallant attempt to explore sexism and specifically the crisis of rape on college campuses which was the focus of the last Black Christmas film and ended up just not working (because it was a bad film, not because it was doing politics). Perpetrator is more on the upper end of that spectrum in terms of quality and idea, but its execution is just a little underdone.

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September 1, 2023 leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review

Vacation Friends 2 (2023) – Vacation Acquaintances

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 25th August
Seen: 31st August

In 2021 there was a half-decent little comedy called Vacation Friends, it was fun enough but also pretty average. Mostly it was a showcase for a quartet of comedic actors who managed to make for a pretty enjoyable time. Indeed that main quartet of actors is so objectively great that I may have said that I wanted a dozen more films with that exact set of actors because they had such great chemistry… and then a finger of the monkey’s paw curled slowly and my wish was granted. Stupid me forgetting to add “but not another film in this specific franchise” when I was wording that wish.

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