leebutler

October 17, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony (2021) – Refried Leftovers

Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

This year’s Oscars ceremony might go down as having one of the most insane endings ever, and I’m including that time La La Land won for about 17 seconds. If you recall the ceremony ended up switching the categories around in order to put Best Actor at the end of the show in a move that was clearly anticipating Chadwick Boseman winning for his stellar performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Everyone on social media at the time could see this coming, the ending felt obvious and we all waited with bated breath to see Chadwick’s widow walk up and emotionally destroy us… and then Anthony Hopkins won, wasn’t allowed to give a speech over Zoom because the people producing the show are idiots, and then the ceremony just ended. It was a catastrophe that was, rightly so, the lowest viewed Oscars ceremony in history.

That being said, it did give Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar which puts him in a league of legendary actors who have more than one Oscar to their name, so now seems like a great time to release a documentary about him… It’s such a pity that it feels like this one started production just after he won the Oscar in April and was ready to be presented a month later in May.

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October 16, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Cry Of The Forests (2020) – They Speak For The Trees

Cry Of The Forests was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

So have you noticed how our planet is all kinds of screwed thanks to big industries deciding to put quarterly profits over the concept of humanity living on this planet? I have, it keeps me up at night which is not a thing I needed help doing! Do you know who else has noticed this big problem? The protestors that make up many of the subjects for the film Cry of the Forests and to put this in modern-movie terms, this documentary turns them into environmental Avengers doing their best to defeat the logging company destroying a precious resource… it’s heartbreakingly important.

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October 15, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021) – Nobody Home

Released: 6th October
Seen: 12th October

The slasher genre seems to be enjoying another big resurgence lately. With the monster hit Halloween, the upcoming Halloween Kills and the Scream reboot (along with Candyman, The Fear Street franchise, Wrong Turn and Spiral to name a few) all getting a ton of attention it seems as though everyone wants to revive the darling of 80s horror that was the slasher movie. The trick with slasher movies is you need to have a good villain to work with, an interesting array of victims and hopefully a lot of creative gore to excite the fanbase… There’s Someone Inside Your House certainly has some of those and an interesting idea, but that’s about it.

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October 14, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Finding Creativity (2021) – Found It

Finding Creativity was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Trying to describe creativity is not an easy thing, it feels like one of those topics that can only be described with the famous phrase used by the United States Supreme Court in relation to pornography “I know it when I see it”. Putting the concept of creativity into words, describing what it means to be creative and how one develops a creative mind is not an easy thing to do… but the documentary Finding Creativity somehow pulls it off in under an hour which is upsettingly brilliant.

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October 13, 2021October 13, 2021 leebutler Review

Black Summer (2020) – Essential Aussie Documentary

Black Summer was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

From the end of 2019 until the start of 2020, a large portion of my home state was on fire. The fires were mostly in country areas and so intense that the smoke made it over the ocean to New Zealand, where the sky turned an angry orange and the air became so toxic that people in NSW were wearing masks long before it was cool to do so. It was truly a devastating fire, destroying nearly 10,000 buildings and killing 34 people directly and 445 people from smoke inhalation.

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October 12, 2021 leebutler Review

Do Nothing And Do It Well (2020) – Out Of The Cabinet, Into The Streets

Do Nothing And Do It Well was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

The history of anti-Asian racism in Australia is much like the history of all racism in Australia… it goes back to the Federation of this country and the white people try to pretend we’ve gotten better when we really haven’t. Sure, every country born from colonialism contains some history of racism that still impacts people today but today’s film, Do Nothing and Do It Well, really does whatever it can to make it clear to its audience just how intense this history is for one community.

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October 11, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021) – Get Me Out Of Here

Released: 1st July
Seen: 10th October

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions Info

Over the last few years, it appears that one of the big things in horror movies is “What if escape rooms were actually deadly?”. No, not like in the Saw films where you have deadly traps in rooms you need to escape, but literal escape rooms with puzzles to solve and if you don’t solve them fast enough you will die somehow.

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October 10, 2021 leebutler Review

Kid 90 (2021) – What’s The Matter With Kids Today?

Released: 12th March
Seen: 27th September

Throughout the history of Hollywood, often those who have had it roughest going through the industry has been children and teenagers. There’s not just a long and disturbing history of abuse, but there’s also just kids who never got to see the money they earned or kids who had to grow up in front of a camera and lost their entire childhoods.

Some of these kids didn’t get to grow up fairly and ended up having serious problems that followed them throughout their lives, and some have made it out the other side with some horrifying and fascinating stories to tell. Kid 90 is the story of one of those kids, even though it promises to be about several of them.

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October 9, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Diana: A True Musical Story (2021) – A Royal Mess

Released: 1st October
Seen: 7th October

Princess Diana, also known as the people’s princess, died in August of 1997 after a group of paparazzi chased her through a tunnel. The crash also took the lives of Diana’s partner Dodi Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul. This was in 1997 and the obsession with Princess Diana has not abated for even a moment since that day, I would dare to say that there isn’t a week that goes by when she isn’t on the cover of a magazine that probably paid the very paparazzi that contributed to the events that led to her death. Her life was fascinating and full of truly great highs and lows… and is the subject of possibly the worst musical I’ve seen in my life and keep in mind that the Cats movie still exists so that’s a low bar.

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October 8, 2021October 8, 2021 leebutler Review

Mental As Everything (2021) – Musical Health

Mental As Everything was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

The subject of mental health has never been easy to talk about, no matter how serious it might end up being to those who suffer from it. This is kind of strange when you realise how many people have some form of mental health issue, I’m going to wager that everyone reading this either has some form of mental health issue or knows someone who does. Hell, the person writing this knows several people with serious mental health issues. The reason it’s not talked about as much as it probably should be is because of social stigma… something that the brilliant minds behind Mental As Everything are trying to help with.

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