leebutler - Movie Meister Reviews

September 16, 2020 leebutler Action, Drama, Horror, Thriller

Becky (2020) – Oh My God

Released: 10th September
Seen: 15th September

Home invasion movies are a staple of many genres, have been for years but I think we can all agree that they really hit their pinnacle with a little comedy film called Home Alone (sidebar, you know there’s 4 sequels to that movie? AND a reboot that was filming until *gestures at the apocalypse*) that showed us the fun side of what would happen if a pair of criminals broke into the house of a kid who just discovered who Rube Goldberg was. Of course this idea is a big staple of the Horror genre, films like Hush and You’re Next pit a home invader against an intelligent home owner who will defend themselves to the death… and now someone has gone “OK, let’s take the young kid from Home Alone and blend him with the badass women from Hush and You’re Next” and turns out you can get something kind of interesting out of that.

Continue reading →

September 15, 2020 leebutler Romance, Comedy

Love, Guaranteed (2020) – Promises Promises

Released: 3rd September
Seen: 14th September

Sometimes, you just want to watch a film where you know the ending before the movie even starts. You just want something that’s safe and digestible, something that you can call the ending absolutely perfectly from the second that you hear the basic setup. In this turbulent world where every day feels like a month and every one of those day-months feels like a free flowing fountain of frenetic feelings, sometimes you just want stability. You want a film you can set your watch to, pop it on and know every step on the way and know that it’s going to be a fun ride. You want a guarantee… Love, Guaranteed.

Continue reading →

September 14, 2020 leebutler Musical, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy

Trolls World Tour (2020) – All Over The World

Released: 17th September
Seen: 13th September (Advance Screening)

When we look back on 2020 in film (through the spaces between our fingers like one might watch a particularly gory horror movie) there will be one film that stands out as having changed cinema forever. That film will be Trolls World Tour, one of the first films to make the leap from a cinematic release to a VOD release that created a stand off between AMC theatres and Universal that ended with Universal getting to put their films on VOD a lot sooner than they ever had been able to before and AMC gets to maybe show James Bond movies if we ever put big blockbusters out again. This film hit VOD in April… oh wait, I’m sorry, it hit VOD in the USA back in April but because of reasons, I had to wait until it came out in an Australian cinema in the middle of September in order to see it. Seriously, this kind of gap is dumb at the best of times but during a pandemic? ANYWAY

Continue reading →

September 13, 2020 leebutler Comedy, Horror

The Babysitter: Killer Queen (2020) – The Cult Is Back

Released: 10th September
Seen: 11th September

In 2017, Netflix released the horror-comedy film The Babysitter and it did pretty well. It wasn’t exactly exceptional but it was a serviceable slasher that had moments of creativity but was mostly just kind of inconsistent in what it was trying to do. It was kind of halfway towards where it was trying to go, hence why I gave it a halfway positive score in my review. Of course the funny thing about that movie is that it kind of ends with everyone being dead and that’s really hard to sequelize… I’m just kidding, this is a slasher movie, death is meaningless and nothing has any actual consequences.

Continue reading →

September 12, 2020 leebutler Romance, Drama

After We Collided (2020) – Complete Car Crash

Released: 10th September
Seen: 11th September

2019 brought the hit series After to cinemas and… it was awful. A bland flavourless movie that only exists because the One Direction fanfiction it’s based on did well online. It made about $12 million on a $14 million budget and in a fair world that would mean the series died there… of course, that’s just the domestic total. Worldwide, After made (I swear I’m not joking here) $69 million and therefore it was going to get a sequel. Now, the first film was spectacularly bland so surely the second film is going to be just as bland right? Right?

…So, this is somehow less original than 50 Shades of Grey and a lot less interesting.

Continue reading →

September 11, 2020September 11, 2020 leebutler Comedy, Action, Adventure, Family

The Sleepover (2020) – I’m So Extremely Tired

Released: 21st August
Seen: 9th September

In 2001 the movie Spy Kids was released to an unsuspecting public. The story of the Cortez family became something of a major hit, in part because it had such a fun and simplistic story. A pair of kids found out that their uncool parents were actually spies and when those parents were kidnapped it was up to the children to learn how to be spies themselves and rescue their parents. When I say it was a hit, I mean it, the film raked in over $140 million worldwide and was one of the 20 highest grossing films of the year. It led to a bunch of sequels and, naturally, some rip offs… including The Sleepover which is clearly copying so many ideas that Spy Kids had roughly 2 decades later which means it isn’t dated in the slightest.

Continue reading →

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020 leebutler Animation, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi

Fearless (2020) – I Fear Nothing

Released: 14th August
Seen: 8th September

In this, the year of impending doom and sadness, a lot of great animated films are either shunted off to the land of digital downloads or postponed until we feel like it’s safe to let a large number of children share an enclosed space again. Of course, this plague makes things like Netflix turn into a go to source for children’s entertainment which means that films like Fearless might seem like a great idea to entertain the small ones who are in desperate need for something to distract them but despite its bright colors and simplistic fart jokes, this film is not good enough to properly entertain your kids.

Continue reading →

September 9, 2020September 9, 2020 leebutler Horror

Random Acts Of Violence (2020) – OMGZ SO RANDOM

Released: 20th August
Seen: 7th September

One of the longest held ideas that people have around violent media is the idea that violent media, be it film or video games, has the power to inspire real world violence in those who partake in it. No matter how many studies say “Yeah, that’s not a thing” (and there are so many studies that completely debunk this notion of violent media inspiring real world violence), people will look at random acts of violence and associate them with some film that has a similar act. A lot of Horror films get blamed for either actually inspiring violence or potentially inspiring violence and sometimes the genre wants to comment on that. In this case a film called Random Acts of Violence would really like to talk about the relationship between art and real world violence and I’d like to say it does a good job at that, as a commentary it’s just so-so but as a violent horror film, it’s kind of fun.

Continue reading →

September 8, 2020 leebutler Drama, Biography, Crime

Just Mercy (2020) – Mercy Mercy Me

Released: 23rd January
Seen: 6th September

Racial injustice is a topic that never ever makes anything controversial or hard to talk about. Never, I never ever go “oh how do I open this review” when I watch any film about racial justice because surely it is a non-controversial topic that I can never say anything wrong about, right? Of course not, that’s impossible but yes today I’m reviewing a movie, specifically Just Mercy, that does that thing where it tries to remind people “Hey, the justice system as it currently exists has a horrific problem regarding race that disproportionately affects people of colour and it would be great if someone would do something about that” because apparently that’s a thing we still need to be reminded of in the year 2020 because some mouthbreathers don’t seem to realise that there’s this big horrific problem so maybe they’ll pay attention if they hear it from Jamie Foxx, Michael B Jordan and Brie Larson in a legal drama… and a really good legal drama, like one of the best I’ve seen in a while.

Continue reading →

September 7, 2020 leebutler Horror, Action, Sci-Fi

The New Mutants (2020) – Old and Boring

Released: 3rd September
Seen: 6th September

The story behind the making of The New Mutants would make for a fascinating documentary, because this film is actually goddamn cursed and has had the wildest ride. It started with a pitch way back in 2015 (back in the days when we had hope) for a potential trilogy of films in this New Mutants universe. The film actually finished its first round of filming in September of 2017 and planned for a release in April of 2018… in case you haven’t noticed, they missed that deadline.

Continue reading →