Drama – Page 26 – Movie Meister Reviews

August 25, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Peanut Butter Falcon (2020) – Extra Creamy Sweet Goodness

Released: 30th January
Seen: 23rd August

Remember way back when the Oscars happened? That night where Parasite won all the awards, making it the last good day of 2020? Well, one moment during that ceremony that got a lot of praise was when Shia Labeouf and Zack Gottsagen came out to present the award for Best Short Film, notably because Gottsagen became the first person with Down syndrome to present an academy award.

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August 18, 2020August 18, 2020 leebutler Uncategorized

Force of Nature (2020) – Stormy Weather

Released: 13th August
Seen: 17th August

In 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The deadly category 5 hurricane was the worst natural disaster to ever hit those islands, causing over 3000 deaths and doing well over 90 billion in damages. It was a devastating event that was made even worse due to a poor response by the president, who at the time disputed the death toll and in general just did what one would expect a failed businessman to do when a disaster hit. Most people look at Hurricane Maria and they see a tragedy that changed millions of lives and shook the island of Puerto Rico to its core… and some looked at it and said “there’s a movie in that” and for some strange reason no one stopped them.

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August 15, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Beach House (2020) – An Extremely Psycho Beach Party

Released: 26th July
Seen: 14th August

There’s a certain setup in horror that can either work really well or backfire painfully. You’ve probably seen it in films like mother! and it’s certainly the backbone of The Beach House. The setup is that a couple are staying at a remote location all on their own until a stranger or two turn up and the nightmares begin. Either the new people are what brings on the horror (see The Strangers) or they’re part of the nightmare itself (again, mother!) or they’re not really related to the source of the horror but are the first ones to go through it… that last one describes what happens to the new people in The Beach House, and if they’re the warning of what’s to come then the main characters are in for a bad time.

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August 13, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

23 Walks (2020) – Promising But Tiring

Released: 26th July
Seen: 11th August

With all the movies out of the cinema, I’m noticing more and more of the replacements seem to be these quiet little films that might’ve gone straight to DVD or just been shown once on Sundays for seniors’ tea screenings. Little quiet films like Love Sarah and The Secret: Dare To Dream are so small and quiet that they’d probably never even be noticed on a normal screening schedule but we’re not on a normal schedule anymore, which is how a background noise film like 23 Walks can find its way onto a big screen.

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August 12, 2020 leebutler Uncategorized

7500 (2020) – Just Plane Awesome

Released: 18th June
Seen: 10th August

You know what’s hard? Starting reviews on movies about difficult subjects, like 7500, because I have to try and give a brief catchy way to clue you into the movie. This opening paragraph is designed, in part, to catch your eye while you’re scrolling through my site and maybe make you curious about the content of the review and normally can involve backstory or a comparison or even an anecdote that relates to the media at hand… well, 7500 is about a bunch of people hijacking a plane so how exactly do I ease into that? Guess what I just did might be the best I’ll be able to do.

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August 7, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Greyhound (2020) – Explosively… fine

Released: 10th July
Seen: 7th August

It’s somewhat of a cliché to refer to movies about the war (any war really) as “Dad movies”, but it’s one that feels weirdly appropriate no matter what kind of dad you have. There’s something about the genre that just paints the image of a dad on a couch ignoring everything while watching some good old boys bomb some nameless bad guys who have accents and maybe a weird 4 legged spider on a flag. Greyhound is definitely playing to that kind of dad, but a dad who also has things to do and needs to get his movie watching done in under 80 minutes if it’s at all possible.

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August 6, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020) – Delightful Dickens

Released: 2nd July
Seen: 5th August

The Personal History of David Copperfield Info

When it comes to adaptations of Charles Dickens, everyone has had a crack at one of his stories. There’ve been versions that rewrote Oliver as a story of a young gay prostitute and versions of A Christmas Carol focussed around a vacuous TV host, just to name the oddest ones I could think of. The brilliance of Dickens’ work is that it lends itself to adaptation with it’s grand characters, beautiful stories and fiendishly fun dialogue, though when you do adapt his work you have to be aware that some of the stories already have definitive adaptations you will be compared with.

If you adapt Oliver, you will be compared to the 1968 musical adaptation that everyone thinks about when they hear that title. If you adapt A Christmas Carol you’re going to have to do better than what the Muppets did back in 92 (or be interesting like the most recent adaptation) and now if you adapt David Copperfield… well, I’m not sure this would be the ultimate adaptation of that novel, but it’s a genuinely great one.

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August 4, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

The Secret: Dare To Dream (2020) – Keep This Secret

Released: 31st July
Seen: 3rd August

In 2006, The Secret was let loose upon society. The self-help book introduced many to the concept of the law of attraction, namely that if you think about something enough that it will appear in your life (which I can roundly disprove by pointing out that at no point in my life has Chris Hemsworth turned up to my house to feed me freshly peeled grapes, a thing I think about often). The book became a monster hit with people like her holiness Oprah championing it to the masses. Well, it’s 14 years later, so naturally now is the perfect time to start a cinematic universe around the concepts presented in that book.

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August 3, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Relic (2020) – Old Creaky Horror

Released: 10th July
Seen: 2nd August

One of the great things about the horror genre, indeed the thing that’s probably kept it thriving for so many years, is that horror is a fantastic way to tell a story through metaphor. So many of the greatest horror films of all time have been metaphorical tales decrying certain things in culture. They Live is an anti-Reagan era film, Get Out was calling out liberals who use performative wokeness while still engaging in systemic racism, every zombie movie made since Romero has been a metaphor for something. It’s a great genre to work in when dealing with a major topic… the catch is you’re still a horror movie and you still need to scare the audience at some point.

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July 29, 2020July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Love Sarah (2020) – Love?

Released: 2nd July
Seen: 28th July

It’s interesting to think that right now we should probably be inundated with movies filled with giant explosions. Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984, Black Widow, so many huge blockbusters should be out right now overwhelming our senses but sadly this year the world decided to see just how much it could mess everything up. As it stands there are no really huge movies coming out for a while, leaving a vortex that’s being slowly filled up by the films that would normally be forgotten by the mainstream, or surprise darlings like The King Of Staten Island… I mean, that’s what’s being shown down here where cinemas are open, they just seem to be filling it with whatever they can get their hands on that might normally go straight to DVD or be relegated to a seniors coffee morning screening. That’s as good a transition as I can be bothered to come up with, LOVE SARAH!

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