Romance – Page 3 – Movie Meister Reviews

August 29, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

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: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

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August 15, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

What’s Love Got To Do With It (2023) – Fine

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: 26th January
Seen: 11th August

Sometimes a film title is so strongly tied to the content of the film that the title enters a list of titles that probably should never be used again. Some titles just draw certain images to your mind, for example, a film could never reasonably be called “Philadelphia” again because everyone’s going to make a horrific AIDS joke about it. Some titles just have a link to a topic to them that can’t be ignored… this was the thought process I had when I heard that a film was coming out called What’s Love Got To Do With It? because that is the title of the legendary 1993 Tina Turner biopic and using that title for a silly little romcom felt like an insane choice. Having seen the film, it turns out that it’s not a big deal because something tells me that no one’s going to really remember that this one exists in a few years so there shouldn’t be any confusion happening.

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December 1, 2022 leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Falling For Christmas (2022) – Snowed In

Released: 10th November
Seen: 27th November

In 1998 the world was introduced to Lindsay Lohan in a little film called The Parent Trap, a film that would instantly turn her into one of the biggest child stars on the planet. She followed it up with the beloved 2003 Freaky Friday, then the cult classic, Mean Girls. That trilogy of films turned her into an absolute superstar, one who could carry a film just on her name alone which she did for a while until she fell into some serious personal problems that derailed her career severely, her last lead role being in The Canyons back in 2013. Fortunately, Lindsay seems to have gotten through her troubles stronger than ever and has returned to the screen with the Netflix Christmas romcom Falling for Christmas which might not be great, but it’s certainly charming enough and a reminder of just how special Lindsay is as a performer.

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November 16, 2022 leebutler Comedy, Romance

Bros (2022) – Duuuude

Released: 27th October
Seen: 15th November

In 1894 there was a film released that is known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film”, the first film produced for the Kinetoscope which was one of the progenitors of the modern-day projector. This film would be very culturally significant as it is the first known sound film to exist and while the technology wasn’t perfect it was an important step in developing the ability to combine sound with image… that film featured a man with a violin playing a tune from the opera Les Cloches de Corneville and two other men dancing together to it. As far as we know, this is the earliest gay imagery captured on film and it lasts for about 17 seconds.

Since then we’ve made leaps and bounds in terms of progress, gay stories are getting told more often in media and there are more roles for gay actors – and now, thanks to Bros, we finally have a gay romantic comedy that was written by and stars predominantly LGBTQ people that was released by a major studio… a thing that it’s apparently taken until 2022 for us to get around to doing, so that’s fun.

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November 6, 2022 leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

My Policeman (2022) – All Cops Are Boring

Released: 4th November
Seen: 5th November

In 1952, Alan Turing began a relationship with a man named Arnold Murray who he met outside a cinema. On the 23rd of January, an acquaintance of Murray’s broke into Turing’s home and performed a burglary, a crime that Turing naturally reported to the police. However, during the course of that investigation, the relationship between Murray and Turing (which was notably sexual in nature) came to light and soon both Murray and Turing were arrested as acts of homosexual sex violated laws surrounding Gross Indecency.

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September 30, 2022 leebutler Biography, Drama, Romance

Blonde (2022) – Some Like It Not

Released: 28th September
Seen: 28th September

When you think about pop culture for long enough, inevitably you think about Marilyn Monroe. Her image, the perfect blonde hair and baby doll voice are iconic on a level that is practically impossible to describe. Her image is so well known that every female celebrity will, at some point, try to emulate it for a photoshoot. She’s a Halloween costume, a glossy image that has become a shorthand for fame and glamour… she’s also a woman who lived a life that was full of tragic moments that the public never knew about, or maybe they didn’t want to know. Slowly as time goes on, we’ve looked back on the life of Norma Jeane and learned more and more about the pain that hid behind the glamour. For years people have tried again and again to tell her story in many assorted ways, which leads us to Blonde… possibly the most exploitative version of the story ever told.

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September 13, 2022 leebutler Drama, Romance

After Ever Happy (2022) – No Happiness Here

Released: 8th September
Seen: 8th September

As much as one might try to go into a film as impartially as possible, it’s not always possible to do so. We are but humans and thus we will inevitably create biases without even thinking about it. A film’s marketing can set up expectations that a film might never meet, a film could have a dramatic history behind the scenes that leaks out into the public eye and makes you wary of what’s to come (Anyone else excited to find out what the hell is going on with that Don’t Worry Darling movie?) and sometimes you have to go see a film in a franchise that you have lovingly referred to as your nemesis so you go in fully prepared to hate it… So, my nemesis finally released the new entry, After Ever Happy and the film is just as awful as every other one but they finally added a twist that is undeniably fascinating.

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September 6, 2022September 6, 2022 leebutler Review, Romance

First Love (2022) – Break Up, Bye Bye

Released: 19th August
Seen: 4th September

The film series After has been a regular plaything on this blog, every new film that comes out is an exercise in absolute detestable agony largely due to the lead character Hardin Scott, played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin. The sad thing is that Hero seems like a nice enough person but every time he pops up, he plays someone so contemptible that it honestly feels like cruelty every time he’s brought up, so when his newest film First Love popped up on Prime that presented an opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, this will prove why Hero has been hired as a romantic lead and will explain the appeal he seemingly possesses. So, I decided to watch First Love and was hopeful that maybe I would get it… and OK, he’s charming enough, can he pick a good project now?

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September 5, 2022 leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Review, Romance

Three Thousand Years Of Longing (2022) – Longing For More

Released: 1st September
Seen: 4th September

George Miller is one of those directors who came on the scene with a film that changed cinema and has almost constantly delivered truly fascinating work. His film Mad Max is, without hyperbole, one of the most important features to come out during the Australian New Wave period that lasted from the start of the 70s to the end of the 80s. He has the distinction of being one of a handful of directors to handle every entry into a long-running franchise, and then we go outside that to see his work on such legendary films as Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet and the absolutely perfect Babe 2: Pig In The City. He’s the kind of director who you can completely trust to give you a good time in the cinema… usually. With Three Thousand Years of Longing he delivered something else.

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September 4, 2022 leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Anything’s Possible (2022) – Charming

Released: 22nd July
Seen: 2nd September

Right now we are going through a bit of a golden era for representation in TV and movies, particularly for members of the LGBTQIA+ community. While the numbers still aren’t fantastic, there’s a noted increase in films that feature characters who are from that community actually played by actors from that community, trans actors playing trans characters are a thing that’s happening more frequently and it’s a glorious thing to see.

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