Drama – Page 18 – Movie Meister Reviews

December 15, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Pig (2021) – Some Pig

Released:16th September
Seen: 14th December

When one thinks of a Nicolas Cage performance, they tend to think of something big and crazy where Cage is going at 150% the entire time. You think of things like him screaming “Arrgh, not the bees”, you think of his wide crazy eyes, you think of someone who is unafraid to be completely committed to the most insane things he’s asked to do in any given film. Sometimes this leads to maddeningly strange performances like The Wicker Man, sometimes this leads to people using his skills perfectly for films like Mandy or Willy’s Wonderland that almost worked around Cage’s eccentricities as a performer.

Pig is a glorious reminder of the raw talent that the man has, there’s a reason he’s an Oscar winner and Pig probably should be the reason he gets a second but you know the Academy will never do anything that interesting.

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December 9, 2021December 9, 2021 leebutler Review

Dune (2021) – Spicy

Released: 1st December
Seen: 7th December

The 1965 novel Dune is one of those works of fiction that has permeated pop culture in ways that few other books have. Even if you haven’t read it, you probably know of the sandworms that turn the desert planet into a constant sea of danger, you might know about the drug Spice and that it’s been a notorious pain in the ass to try and adapt.

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December 8, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Single All The Way (2021) – Merry and Gay

Released: 2nd December
Seen: 6th December

Last year the Christmas film Happiest Season came out to rave reviews, as it should. It was a simple, sweet, charming Christmas film that also broke boundaries by being a wide release Christmas film that featured a gay couple. Strangely, Christmas films focusing on members of the LGBT community either have to be little underground affairs that don’t get big releases by major companies… well, Netflix clearly wanted to try and correct that by making their own gay Christmas film, Single All The Way. I guess it’s nice to know that we’re getting to the point where gay Christmas films can just be as cliched as the straight ones.

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December 6, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Four Good Days (2021) – Four OK Days

Released: 30th October
Seen: 4th December

Glenn Close is hitting the point where eventually she’s going to get an Oscar as a “We’re sorry we forgot to give you this back in 1988” gift. She almost got it a few years ago for her role in The Wife, last year she was nominated for Hillbilly Elegy – though thankfully that wasn’t the movie that her work was honoured for – and now with Four Good Days we have another film that probably would be getting her a nomination but probably won’t since it hasn’t got that much press… oh well, maybe when that Sunset Boulevard movie gets out of development hell they’ll give it to her, cos sadly Four Good Days is just too average in general to get much notice.

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December 5, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Power Of The Dog (2021) – Powerful

Released: 1st December
Seen: 4th December

It’s kind of strange to realise that Jane Campion hasn’t directed a feature film in over a decade. She’s one of those names that is on the shortlist of absolutely legendary directors even with only eight feature films to her name. She’s just one of those people who you expect a certain level of excellence from and with her first feature film in over a decade, The Power of the Dog, she reminds us why she is one of the great filmmakers of our time.

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December 4, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Old (2021) – Aged Badly Already

Released: 22nd July
Seen: 2nd December

The career of M. Night Shyamalan is certainly an interesting one, to say the least. He started with absolute bonafide smash hit The Sixth Sense and then onto critical acclaim with Unbreakable and Signs. He was heralded as a visionary, someone who would have a career worthy of envy… and then he had a decade straight of critical bombs. He’s never really made an actual financial bomb (except maybe Lady in the Water) but his name went from being a sign of potential to a red flag that you’re about to be greatly disappointed. Even when he had a mild comeback with The Visit and Split, people thought he would return to his form… and now after Glass and the film we’re talking about today, Old, I have to wonder if M. Night Shyamalan was ever actually the visionary that people claimed him to be or if he’s just a bad writer/director who got lucky with his early films.

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November 29, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

The Guilty (2021) – All Too OK

Released: 1st October
Seen: 27th November

While some films have large elaborate casts, there are those that are designed specifically to focus on a single performance. When these are done right, they can lead to some genuinely fascinating films with incredible central performances, we had one earlier this year with Oxygen, which bore a lot of similarities to Buried. The trick is to somehow maintain an audience’s intrigue for an hour and a half with only one performer and one location. Joining that group of films is The Guilty, a film that gives Jake Gyllenhaal a chance to show off just what he can do… interesting choice to release it around the time we’re apparently meant to hate him because a song said so, but hey that’s how things happen sometimes.

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November 27, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Trust (2021) – Intriguing

Released: 12th March
Seen: 24th November

You know, lately we’ve had a run of seriously bad sex dramas that are less sexy and dramatic and more like painful farces designed to make us pay for our sins. 50 Shades, After, 365 Days, all of them (and their terrible sequels) sexy dramatic films designed to titillate and intrigue that mostly just get on the thinking audience’s tits. They’re not good and not fun, what ever happened to fun sex dramas? Well, looks like Trust might be just barely good enough to show that there might still be some actual creativity left in this admittedly tawdry genre.

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November 21, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

tick, tick… Boom! (2021) – Explosively Great

Released: 19th November
Seen: 20th November

On January 25, 1996, the musical Rent opened to rave reviews. It was written by one Jonathan Larson who sadly would never get to read those reviews or bask in the 12 year run that Rent had because on the day Rent opened, Jonathan Larson passed away due to an aortic dissection. The only other work of Jonathan Larson’s that we know of is a piece called tick, tick… Boom! which began as a one man show in 1990 and then was adapted posthumously into a small 3 person play. Well, here we are about 30 years later and that little monologue has turned into a major movie musical and… god damn I’m so glad we’ve got people doing musicals properly again, Cats had me worried we’d never get to enjoy this genre again!

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November 18, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Respect (2021) – Lady Soul

Released: 19th August
Seen: 14th November

A little over two years ago I talked about the documentary Amazing Grace, a film that documented the recording of the greatest selling gospel album of all time by the legendary Aretha Franklin. At that time we had heard about a biopic being made with Jennifer Hudson taking on the role of the legend herself and it’s hard to deny that there was some serious excitement just from that casting. That film would come to be called Respect, released earlier this year and… yep, Respect is an Aretha Franklin biopic alright, with everything that one might think of when they hear the phrase “Aretha Franklin biopic”

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