Crime - Movie Meister Reviews

September 26, 2021 leebutler Crime, Action, Review, Thriller

Bad Girls (2021) – Talking About Bad Girls

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

The gloriously unsubtle is basically the bread and butter of the Sydney Underground Film Festival (which, by the time you read this, will possibly be finished for the year). Every time I’ve gone to see what they’re showing, most of their films are some level of bonkers, no ifs ands or buts. Well, it looks like someone’s stealing the show and decided to be the most bonkers thing around… ok second most bonkers, you can’t top Ninja Badass.

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September 10, 2021 leebutler Action, Adventure, Crime, Review

Fast & Furious 9 (2021) – Deliciously Dumb

Released: 17th June
Seen: 9th September

Remember when the Fast & Furious franchise was just about underground car racing? Remember the early films that were just about this cop who infiltrated an underground racing ring? Feels so long ago, now they’ve turned into superhero films but with cars instead of superpowers where every movie has some giant cataclysmic world-ending event that can only be stopped by Vin Diesel doing a really sick burnout off the top of a skyscraper. It’s the dumbest movie franchise and it is just endlessly fun almost because it is so spectacularly dumb. Now we’re up to Fast & Furious 9 and god damn it keeps getting dumber and I keep just enjoying its celebration of stellar stupidity.

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September 1, 2021September 1, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Crime, Drama, Review

Let Him Go (2021) – Can’t Hold Back Anymore

Released: 4th February
Seen: 29th August

Let Him Go follows elderly couple Margaret Blackledge (Diane Lane) and George Blackledge (Kevin Costner), proud parents to their son James (Ryan Bruce) who is married to a young woman named Lorna (Kayli Carter). James and Lorna have their own son, little Jimmy, and things seem to be going well for this little family until one day when James falls from his horse and breaks his neck.

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August 31, 2021 leebutler Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review

The Little Things (2021) – Little Point

Released: 18 February
Seen: 25th August

The Little Things is a police drama about a pair of cops hunting down a serial killer. The cops consist of one wild card cop, Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington), and one straight laced rule following cop, Det. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek). Together they make quite a strange pair as they hunt for their killer. It looks like they might have it when they run into oddball Albert Sparma (Jared Leto) and they focus heavily on him but could the difficulties of their job make them unable to actually solve the crime? It certainly seems to stop them from making a film that’s as exciting as it should be considering the talent that’s on screen… yeah, there’s so little to talk about with this one that one of MY reviews starts with the plot instead of a wild tangent, I’m just as shocked as you are.

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July 10, 2021July 10, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Crime, Drama, Review

Run, Hide, Fight (2021) – Die Soft

Released: 5th May
Seen: 9th July

As a general rule I try my hardest not to let my personal politics impact my enjoyment of a film. I won’t pretend I don’t have intellectual differences with certain films ideas, I even spell them out in order to give context, but I can and have enjoyed movies with values I don’t agree with made by companies run by people who I don’t agree with… so, even though this movie was released in the US by Ben Shapiro’s website, The Daily Caller, a site I would consider a gateway drug to fascism and white supremacy, I promise you that connection had nothing to do with my enjoyment of the film… no, because in order to enjoy this film I would have to have little to no good taste even before I looked into its connections because it’s just so poorly made.

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July 6, 2021July 6, 2021 leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Romance

Happily (2021) – Not Happy Jan!

Released: 2nd June
Seen: 4th July

One of the saddest things a film can do is to not seem to know what it should be, relegating the element of the movie that’s actually worth exploring to a single scene when it realistically should just be what the entire movie is. I’m sure we’ve all seen movies where it meanders for an hour and then gets to a single interesting scene that makes you go “Where has this been for the last hour? Why isn’t this the entire movie?”… and if you haven’t, watching Happily will give you that exact feeling.

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July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Action, Crime, Review

Vanquish (2021) – Destroy It!

Released: 2nd June
Seen: 2nd July

Normally when I review a film, I will try to avoid looking up other reviews or even look at the number on Rotten Tomatoes because I really don’t want to be influenced when writing my own piece. I would hate to steal a line by accident or have my views influenced by the group, I’d rather like an unpopular film than pretend to hate it just to fit in. So, when I was googling the movie Vanquish in order to have the IMDB page up so I could get the spelling of certain names correct and saw that it had a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes I was in shock because that’s worse than the score for Music, and Music is my current front runner for worst of the year. Surely this can’t be that bad, can it?

…it’s close.

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July 3, 2021 leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Review

Nobody (2021) – Nobody’s Perfect

Released: 1st April
Seen: 29th June

Some films are really easy to talk about, they hand you a long list of positives and negatives that you can put into an order that gives a fair and balanced view of who might like it. Some films are so bad that it’s like a game of mad libs trying to come up with the most visceral description of disgust… rarely is there a film so good that I want to just make the entire review “IS GOOD GO SEE”, but Nobody is that rare film where I want to just not bother trying to be smart and just go with my base instinct of yelling “IS GOOD GO SEE”… but the internet seems to prefer it for the algorithm if a blog post is about 1000 words so here we go.

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June 12, 2021 leebutler Comedy, Action, Crime, Review, Thriller

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021) – It’s a little looney

Released: 24th June
Seen: 10th June (Advance Screening)

4 years ago, The Hitman’s Bodyguard was released to theatres and it was a cartoon-scented blast of joy straight to the heart. A giddy concoction made up of equal parts explosions and the word “motherfucker” that gave the audience a mindless ride that went for a few hours with some of the most charismatic stars to be put on this planet. Naturally, a movie that’s going for something that broad made bank and so, with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, we get a sequel that’s more of what we saw before and thank god for that because I need that familiar sense of normalcy.

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June 10, 2021June 10, 2021 leebutler Drama, Crime, Review

Cherry (2021) – Bowl of Pits

Released: 12th March
Seen: 9th June

I’ll admit, I’ve been pretty neglectful when it comes to my Apple Plus subscription. I’ve had the service now for a while, never paid for it because it came free with my phone, and yet I’ve watched a grand total of about 6 things on it. A few episodes of Defending Jacob (never finished the series, I assume Jacob got defended), The Out on Television docuseries, Disclosure, Greyhound, Wolfwalkers and Palmer.

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