Anne Hathaway – Movie Meister Reviews

November 6, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Locked Down (2021) – Lock It Up

Released: 14th January
Seen: 5th November

Covid has had an interesting effect on the world of cinema, not only have people had to postpone some pretty major films or change how they film them but some have decided that they’re going to use this hellish time as inspiration. This has led to some genuinely incredible films like Host but it’s also led to absolute drek like Songbird. One of the films that I remember being advertised very early on in this pandemic was a little comedy heist film called Locked Down and the memory was that the trailer promised a good time… the trailer lied, this film is shit and I’m going to complain about its shitness.

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January 3, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Best Performances of 2020

2020 has been the year of never ending badness, that would be the mildest statement one could make about this year. In general, it’s been a total shitshow with very few moments of happiness… so this year seems like a perfect time to start a new tradition on this blog, because why the hell not? It means I have fresh New Year’s content and that’s always nice to have fresh content so this is me saying what I felt the best performances of the year were.

Well, I say “Best” but much like with the best films of the year list, ‘BEST” in this context really means “Performances that I liked the most”. Maybe they weren’t in the best films, some of them might actually be in pretty bad films, but they’re the kind of performances that make you want to watch any film… and this is a top 20, because it’s my blog and I can do that sort of thing!

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December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 leebutler Uncategorized

The Witches (2020) Witches Get Stitches

Released: 10th December
Seen: 20th December

In 1983, Roald Dahl released his 14th novel The Witches and his story of a boy and his grandma going up against a coven of witches has always been somewhat polarizing. On the one hand, it’s a best selling novel that recently appeared on the BBC’s list of Top 100 most influential novels and on the other it’s been accused of being a misogynistic text ever since it released (and considering that the main villain is, essentially, every woman who isn’t a kindly old grandma and it was written by Roald Dahl… yeah, yeah that’s definitely there).

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September 1, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Dark Waters (2020) – Drink It Up

Released: 5th March
Seen: 30th August

In 2005, chemical company DuPont was fined $16.5 million by the EPA for, essentially, poisoning the water supply of a town with Perfluorooctanoic Acid, a chemical used to create teflon. They were forced to pay this, along with several other settlements with people who they poisoned, thanks to a civil suit filed by Robert Bilott way back in 1999. The full scope of the poisoning and what it did to the people affected by it wouldn’t be known for years and the entire story is one of negligence and capitalism run rampant in a story we’ve heard time and time again, told in the film Dark Waters with a passion that cannot be denied.

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May 6, 2020 leebutler Uncategorized

The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) – No One Wanted This

Released: 27th January
Seen: 5th May

So, while I’m still learning how to effectively write these reviews, I have slowly developed a system that works for me. After I do the first paragraph (usually designed to be just eye-catching enough that if you were to scroll through my main page that it might make you want to know more) I will then stop and think about how to describe the plot. I might have IMDB open to remind me of character and actor names but I can usually come up with a decent enough plot synopsis that doesn’t give away more than I need to in order to get you to know just what kind of movie I’m talking about. The plot synopsis is always a quick thing for me, I try to keep it short and sweet because if you want a proper plot synopsis then Wikipedia is in the next tab over. I add it for context and little more than that… this time? I’m tempted to skip it because the plot is so poorly constructed that even just adding it for context feels pointless but it’s my structure now so I feel obligated to try.

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May 17, 2019July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Hustle (2019) – Don’t Do It!

Released: 9th May
Seen:17th May

In December of 1988, Frank Oz released his first film to not include a puppet. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, based on the 1964 film Bedtime Story, followed two conmen who make a bet to see who can get fifty thousand dollars out of a wealthy heiress. It starred Steve Martin and Michael Caine, the latter of which would go on to be nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance (which he would lose to Tom Hanks for Big). The film was a rousing success, netting $42 million at the box office, letting it land in the top 25 grossing films of that year. To put that in perspective, if you adjust for inflation that comes to $94 million… which is a box office total that I highly doubt The Hustle would achieve even if they weren’t releasing it when Avengers, Detective Pikachu and other good movies were owning the box office.

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March 23, 2019 leebutler Uncategorized

Serenity (2019) – How’s the serenity?

Released: 20th February
Seen: 23rd March

In 2005, Joss Whedon was given the chance to adapt his cult hit series Firefly into a feature-length film. The film, Serenity, was an intense action sci-fi film where the crew of a spaceship tried to find out why one of them is being chased by an operative who is tasked with killing them. It’s a fascinating film that’s gloriously shot and wonderfully written with some really great action set pieces and its criminally underrated… so it really upsets me that now when you Google that film’s title, you’re going to first have to come across the 2019 movie of the same name that’s so hilariously bad that it’s almost art.

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