Comedy – Page 6 – Movie Meister Reviews

January 24, 2024 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance, Sci-Fi

Poor Things (2024) – RICH!

Released: 18th January
Seen: 23rd January

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those directors who you can guarantee will deliver a film that’s so different from everything else in the cinema that it’s hard to describe it as anything other than “A Yorgos Lanthimos Film”. Even when he does something close to a regular period piece like in his last film The Favourite there is something just beneath the surface that creates a strange experience. He’s one of those filmmakers that we’re lucky to have because he keeps things interesting and allows the audiences who see his work to experience something truly unique. Once again, with his latest film Poor Things, Yorgos has delivered something truly fascinating to behold.

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January 19, 2024 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

The Holdovers (2024) – Hold On

Released: 11th January
Seen: 17th January

Making an original Christmas film is an art that seems to be lost. Sure every year there’s the requisite retellings of A Christmas Carol that everyone tries to tell but an actual enjoyable film that captures a Christmas spirit is hard to come by. The last truly great one that I can think of might be Violent Night, which falls into that category of “What if we took something wholesome and made it say fuck while it bled out”, it’s just not easy to pull off but when you can make something that captures a very specific element of the Christmas season you get something kind of special, and The Holdovers definitely captures something kind of special.

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January 17, 2024 leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Destroy All Neighbors (2024) – There Goes The Neighborhood

Released: 12th January
Seen: 15th January

At the start of this year, I put up a list of the best films of 2023 and top of that list was something called Cocaine Bear, a film that to this day delights me with its simple direct fun. Honestly half the time I go see a movie that’s what I go for, something that’s just uncomplicated fun that can be enjoyed without much thought at all. Horror comedies tend to be probably the best genre for doing this because often they are so heightened in their stupidity that even the average ones can be good enough for a fun time, especially when they embrace their own insanity and do something unexpected. This is why Destroy All Neighbors is such an enjoyable time, although it probably isn’t going to end up topping this year’s best list.

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January 16, 2024 leebutler Action, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Netflix, Review, Thriller

Lift (2024) – Drop It

Released: 12th January
Seen: 15th January

It’s become something of a joke lately that Netflix keeps producing so many films that they can’t even properly advertise them all, but it’s also probably for the best that they don’t because a lot of them are strangely forgettable garbage that’s just kind of created so that Netflix has a library of films that will never be taken away from them. What’s weird about this is that Netflix spends an absolutely jaw-dropping amount on films that, at best, will spend an eternity sitting in their digital library where they aren’t really designed to turn a profit. These are blockbusters that are made without the intention of getting blockbuster profits, a strange phenomenon that would maybe be OK if it led to fun enjoyable films… but it doesn’t, it leads to content like Lift.

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January 8, 2024 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Good Grief (2024) – Grief, It’s Good

Released: 5th January
Seen: 7th January

Telling gay stories in film is kind of a landmine sometimes. It seems more often than not those stories deal with immense tragedy, loss of family or just having one of the leads getting a specific fatal illness and dying for a dramatic conclusion. It’s rare to see a film about gay joy or even just gay resilience, it feels like more and more films are just kind of depressing in tone and it’s kind of sad… so it takes someone pretty damn talented to take a film about a gay man dying and turn it into a charming, funny and also emotional tale that feels somewhat hopeful by the end. Fortunately, Dan Levy is just that damn talented and has brought us Good Grief, something so charming and sincere that it’s just so soothing to watch.

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December 19, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Horror, Mystery, Review

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) – Season’s Stabbings

Released: 1st December
Seen: 18th December

Without a doubt, the best new trend in horror has been slasher movies taking classic comedies with supernatural elements and twisting them into corny fun slasher movies. This trend started when Happy Death Day took on Groundhog Day, then Freaky repeated it with Freaky Friday and Totally Killer used Back to the Future as its main inspiration. It’s a trend that feels like it’s going to go on for a while, upcoming horror films like Time Cut (which also sounds like it’s using Back to the Future as a jumping-off point) show that there is a lot of potential fun to be had with this new trend… enter It’s A Wonderful Knife which is possibly the most basic version of this concept yet which proves that it can work even when being phoned in.

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December 17, 2023 leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review

Wish (2023) – …well

Released: 26th December
Seen: 17th December (Advanced Screening)

In 1923, Walt and Roy Disney founded a little company called the Disney Brothers Studio to produce a small series of Alice in Wonderland cartoons. A few years later the company would be renamed Walt Disney Studios and a little cartoon called Steamboat Willie (which is soon gonna be public domain… so look forward to how that’ll be used!) would not only become the first cartoon with synchronized sound but essentially transform the company into a household name. They would go on to make Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the first animated feature-length film which would begin a long several decades as the most well-known and influential animation company on the planet.

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December 6, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Musical, Review

Dicks: The Musical (2023) – Absolutely Nuts

Released: 7th December
Seen: 5th December

In 2014 Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson put on a two-man show called F***ing Identical Twins. The show ended up being noticed by someone at 20th Century Fox and was bought in 2016 with the intent of being turned into a musical… and then the Fox-Disney merger happened, a lot of projects got thrown around like metaphors in a desperate writer’s head and soon the project landed at A24 where it got a rename, a high-end cast complete with Tony and Emmy winners galore and legendary comedy director Larry Charles. With a combination like that behind it, it should’ve been inevitable that Dicks: The Musical would turn out to be one of the funniest movies to hit cinemas in recent years.

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November 27, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

Saltburn (2023) – Brilliance On The Dance Floor

Released: 16th November
Seen: 24th November

In 2021, Emerald Fennell released Promising Young Woman, which quickly became one of my favourite films that I’ve ever been able to review. The year it came out I proclaimed it the second best film of the year, had the fourth best performance of the year and was adamant that the film should win every single Oscar it was nominated for. I was an evangelist for the film and when talking about it on the Best List I said, quote “if Emerald Fenell walks into your office and asks to make a movie, you hand that woman a blank cheque and let her go wild”… It’s clear that someone was listening to this request, because if Saltburn isn’t what happens when Emerald Fennell goes wild, I don’t know what is.

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November 8, 2023 leebutler Comedy, Review

Quiz Lady (2023) – Correct Answer

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

Released: 3rd November
Seen: 7th November

You know what we really don’t have enough of lately? Simple original comedy films. Not something based on an IP or a remake of an old film but just a quirky little comedy that allows a couple of celebs to show off their comedic chops for 90 minutes. It’s kind of surprising because there used to be a time where every other week seemed to have some wild new original comedy that would give people a good break from the world and now the closest we get are genre mashups with a few punchlines. That’s why it felt like such a breath of fresh air to see something like Quiz Lady being released, a simple comedy with a couple of good stars and a fun/simple premise that seems like it should be rife with comedic potential… and it is, it’s nice when this opening paragraph doesn’t need to have a sudden sharp turn at the end for dramatic purposes, this is just nice.

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