Documentary – Page 10 – Movie Meister Reviews

September 11, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest (2021) – GAME ON!

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

It’s been two years since I’ve been able to go to a film festival, specifically my favourite film festival on earth. The Sydney Underground Film Festival, a festival dedicated to strange underground films that are usually shown in this great little venue that’s clearly not really meant for a film festival but some nutbags decided to put up a projector in a few rooms and boom, you got a festival.

This festival provided 2 previous entries to my “best of” list, that being Greener Grass and Use Me, and I was hoping to get to go again this year but… well, that thing that meant I only got to review Fast and Furious 9 yesterday moved the festival to online only. The upside? That means that for the next month I’ll be able to get through a lot of these films that I might not have been able to see if I was going in person (maybe that’ll keep me sane until this lockdown ends).

So, let’s start this off with a documentary about a guy and his arcade system.

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September 8, 2021 leebutler Review

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021) – Paints An Interesting Picture

Released: 25th August
Seen: 6th September

Bob Ross Happy Accidents Betrayal & Greed Info

Between 1983 and 1994, Bob Ross delighted viewers with his charming little show The Joy Of Painting. For over 400 episodes, Bob and a series of guest stars would talk the viewer through methods of painting landscapes and he became a cultural phenomenon. Even now, years after his passing, the image of the cheerful man with the giant afro and the well-used painter’s palette is iconic. Hell, it’s well known enough that a recent episode of Drag Race had someone recreate the look with a wig made of squirrels (and sure, they were in the bottom that week but you still knew who they were). Well, turns out the story of Bob Ross’ legacy wasn’t exactly as happy as the little trees that were in many of his paintings.

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September 6, 2021September 6, 2021 leebutler Review

You Cannot Kill David Arquette (2021) – Out Of The Ring

So over on Soda & Telepaths I wrote about this fascinating documentary about the star of Eight Legged Freaks deciding to do wrestling… it’s a good review of a good film, you should read and then watch.

August 7, 2021 leebutler Review

Pray Away (2021) – One Of The Most Important Doco’s Of The Year

Released: 3rd August
Seen: 3rd August

If you want to get on the express ticket to my bad side, be on the side of Conversion Therapy. Conversion Therapy, otherwise known as Pray Away The Gay, is the idea that people can be turned straight via some form of extreme therapy. In reality, it’s a way to force queer people into suppressing their true selves in order to be accepted by a group made up of bigots who have only read one book and decided that the part of that book that said gays were bad was a rule they had to follow forever but the part about mixed fabrics was up for debate. Over the years there have been a lot of documentaries regarding this movement but the recent documentary Pray Away might be one of the best of the bunch.

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August 4, 2021 leebutler Uncategorized

Fantasia Film Festival 2021 – Alien On Stage

Over on Soda & Telepaths, I’ve been given credentials to cover the Fantasia Film Festival so I have a lot of films that I’ll be going through this month. The first one is Alien on Stage, a documentary about the weirdest stage play you’ve ever heard of that’s just so damn charming. I’ll be posting a ton of these reviews over the next month so please go read them so Fantasia will let us do this next year

July 23, 2021July 23, 2021 leebutler Uncategorized

9to5: The Story of A Movement (2021) – What A Way To Make A Doco

Released: 1st February
Seen: 22nd July

The last year has not exactly been easy for anyone, but especially those in a regular nine to five job that found themselves suddenly unable to work and make the pittance they’d been making previously. Seems like finally this idea of barely getting by with a back breaking job has found a limit that can’t be ignored, since we now know that at any moment something can happen that will just force the planet to shut down for a year. What we’re seeing now, as things very slowly start approaching normal (APPROACHING, we are nowhere near normal again and stop acting like it) is workers have finally had enough of their low wages and poor treatment and are fighting back… a story that feels eerily similar to the one told in the documentary 9to5: The Story of A Movement

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June 2, 2021June 2, 2021 leebutler Review

Why Did You Kill Me? (2021) – Seemed Like A Good Idea

Released: 14th April
Seen: 31st May

The crime documentary is definitely having a major resurgence right now, in no small part thanks to Netflix who seems to churn out a new one every other week. This kind of makes sense for a streaming platform desperate for unique content because in theory these are simple things to make. Find a weird murder with a lot of twists and turns, have relatives and police officers describe the events as they remember it, maybe hire some actors to recreate certain elements, wait for the editor to put it all together and you have a movie. What sets them apart is how weird/interesting/disturbing the crime is and the general presentation of the information. So, with a film titled “Why Did You Kill Me?” basically begging for attention, does it deserve it?

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March 9, 2021 leebutler Uncategorized

Bring Down The Walls (2020) – Another Brick In The Walls

Seen as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival (Online Screening)

The Prison Industrial Complex is a topic that’s been touched on by many truly fascinating documentaries for a reason, it’s an obscenely messed up system that is often used capriciously against POC and queer people who are just trying to live their lives. In the US it’s particularly awful, they have the largest number of prisoners on the planet and it’s disproportionately people of colour (largely black and Latin men).

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March 4, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Cured (2020) – An Important Piece Of History

Seen as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival (Online Screening)

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association took a vote to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. It was one of the most controversial votes that the board would ever have since homosexuality had been considered a mental illness since the first DSM was printed in 1952. With homosexuality being labelled a mental illness, it was able to be used as an excuse to deny employment or housing or basic rights to an entire class of people. This led to some of the most brutal torture ever done in the name of mental health, and a story that the film Cured tells brilliantly.

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February 25, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

P.S. Burn This Letter Please (2020) – And Watch This Film Please

Seen as part of the Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival (Online Screening)

The history of gay culture is hard not well recorded, this is almost intentional. Thanks to the way that the community at large was treated by a legal system that revelled in arresting gay people for the crime of existing, keeping records wasn’t a high priority. If one were to have letters or photos that caught moments of queer culture, they were either burned by an angry parent determined to pretend that their departed child was straight, or it was destroyed upon request by the person who wrote the letter who would often add “P.S. Burn This letter please” at the end.

Thankfully, someone in the 1950s ignored this request and kept a hold of a series of letters and photos that described the underground 1950s drag and gay scene and now we have a record of this period of the era when the LGBT community was its most secretive.

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