Like a lot of people, I had thoughts about the Cruella movie so I put those thoughts in a review that I posted over on Soda & Telepaths
Army of the Dead (2021) – Deadly Fun
Released: 21st May
Seen: 23rd May
I’ve made it no secret that I have a bit of a problem with how Zack Snyder has handled his time as part of the DCEU… namely, I believe his drab and depressing interpretation of the iconic DC superheroes is partially why that franchise stalled so hard that it might as well just die so we can hard reset it in a few years and try again. I’m not a fan of most of his work… with one notable exception. I absolutely loved his interpretation of Dawn of the Dead.
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The Woman In The Window (2021) – Put This In My Rear Window
Released: 14th May
Seen: 20th May
Sometimes a film comes out and you can just see its influences before the film even begins. The Woman in the Window as a film is clearly lifting a lot from films like Rear Window and Copycat, which are both fine films to take as influences so you would think that would hopefully lead to an interesting tense movie. Well, apparently this film’s other influence was an overturned trash can that racoons have picked through because this is actual garbage.
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Spiral: From The Book Of Saw (2021) – The Best Saw
Released: 13th May
Seen: 12th May (Advanced Screening)
The Saw franchise is, to put is mildly, polarising. Some people hate it and think it’s disgusting torture porn with little artistic merit, some think it’s a fun over the top slasher series that pushes boundaries, rewards longtime fans and occasionally has something important to say. I fall into the latter category, a fan and defender of this franchise.
Saw 6 would easily be my personal favourite, the one time in the franchise when they really tried to say something about the healthcare system in America. Sure, the series would eventually spiral out of control with the abysmal Saw 3D and the forgettable Jigsaw but really, every horror fan knows that slasher franchises are notoriously hard to kill… and thank god because Spiral might be the best Saw movie ever.
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The White Tiger (2021) – Class War Is Hell!
Released: 22nd January
Seen: 23rd April
One thing I’ve noticed about reviewing is that I don’t tend to do a lot of foreign films. “Foreign” in this context tends to mean “Films that aren’t made in Australia, England or America” because for some reason films from those countries never get considered “foreign films” . I believe the last time I did a film that was not from one of those countries might be when Parasite came out.
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I Care A Lot (2021) – Care Is An Understatement
Released: 19th February
Seen: 21st February
There is no greater evil, at least in my mind than those who take advantage of the elderly and infirm. The top of that list of evil people are known as professional guardians, not all of them (I’m sure some of them are perfectly good people) but we’re talking about the kind of professional guardians who take on a ward who is elderly and is needing help, pay themselves an obscene wage, puts that ward in an aged care home and slowly bleed them dry. To see how evil some of these guardians can be, I’d suggest watching this segment by John Oliver on them. They are so cruel and evil that it almost feels like an inevitable source for a film. I won’t lie, when I saw that I Care A Lot was about a woman who puts elderly people with dementia in a home and drains them of their money I was worried as hell about how it was going to handle this heavy topic. I’m glad to say it’s damn near perfect.
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Promising Young Woman (2021) – Promises, Promises
Released: 1st January
Seen: 8th January
“Boys will be boys”
“It’s a ‘he said she said’ situation”
“It’s a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action”
“If you really want to know the truth you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you did to this guy.”
Let’s be blunt, when women come forward with allegations about being assaulted chances are good she’s going to hear something like one of the above quotes. We have a serious problem when it comes to believing women who make allegations of sexual assault or harassment… that problem being that we don’t. Hell, we’re so bad at it that we might be dumb enough to hear the phrase “Devils Triangle” and believe the rapist that it’s a drinking game when anyone who has a cursory knowledge of Google knows it’s a threesome with two men… in a culture like this, a film like Promising Young Woman isn’t just inevitable, it’s cathartic.
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The Dry (2020) – Aussie Cinema Goodness
Released: 1st January
Seen: 6th January
I hate to take you back there but at this point in 2020 my country was in… well, I’d say we were in hot water but actually we were in the literal opposite of water. The bushfires of late 2019 to early 2020 were some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Sure, we have bushfires here a lot (Comes with having lots of bush and not as much water as we should have) but it was nothing like last year. Part of the reason we have such bad bushfires here is that we are a dry country, known for lengthy periods of drought. Droughts that lengthy can do some serious damage on little towns like Kiewarra, which is the setting for the Australian crime movie The Dry.
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Honest Thief (2020) – Honestly? Not Great
Released: 22nd October
Seen: 11th November
Can we, as a society, just admit that Liam Neeson action films have become repetitive and stale? Is that a thing that we can collectively do? Hell, let’s be honest, they were getting stale roughly around the third time he played a character who had a member of his family taken. It’s now to the point where you could write a Liam Neeson action film using a madlib form, they all have the same basic plot and only change the minor superficial details. It’s always the same and every time it gets a little bit less interesting and Honest Thief is just another one for the pile.
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The Empty Man (2020) – Yep, Empty
Released: 23rd October
Seen: 31st October
The Bye Bye Man
The Snowman
The Slenderman
Movies that begin with The and end in Man in the horror genre have lately filled me with dread lately. With the exception of The Invisible Man, I can’t think of a good film with this combination of words in the title so imagine how I felt seeing the poster for The Empty Man. If you thought I was prepared for a long slow boring film that tried far too hard to be smarter than it was, then you know me far too well… and you also just described the film to a T.
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Movie Meister Reviews 