Film – Page 68 – Movie Meister Reviews

July 4, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021) – Screamingly Great

Released: 2nd July
Seen: 2nd July

In 1989 the first book in the Fear Street series was released. This book, dubbed The New Girl, began a franchise that would probably have defined writer R.L. Stine’s career were it not for the Goosebumps series that started 3 years later. In fact, if you say the name R.L. Stine most people who were around in the 90s will start humming the theme tune for the Goosebumps TV series, because that book franchise got adapted quickly into books and even a couple of films while Fear Street would only get a pilot for a series that never got made. It’s taken over 30 years for Fear Street to finally get an adaptation but oh god damn did it was it worth the wait!

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July 3, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler 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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July 2, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

The Ice Road (2021) – Driving On Thin Ice

Released: 25th June
Seen: 29th June

In 2000 the History Channel had a series known as “Suicide Missions” and during that series they aired a special on the profession of Ice Road Truckers. This episode would prove to be popular during reruns and would lead to one of History Channel’s biggest hit series, known simply as Ice Road Truckers. The show went for 11 seasons, the last one ending in 2017. Now, what’s mildly interesting is that the first season was so popular that Fox bought the rights to make a movie out of it. I’m not sure if this is what that movie ended up being but it sure does seem like the kind of thing you commission in 2008 and bury for 13 years because it’s utter garbage.

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June 30, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Penguin Bloom (2021) – Blooming Cute

Released: 21st January
Seen: 28th June

So, here’s a fun number for you. 29. That is the amount of Australian produced films that were released in Australia in 2020, according to Screen Australia. Specifically, this includes Aussie co-productions and it’s a list that is… well, let’s put it this way, I literally try and review every film that comes out and I’m confident I missed most of these films.

In fact, going over this list (which I’ve linked to because it’s amazingly sad) I saw 5 Aussie films that were released in 2020, specifically The Invisible Man, Go!, True History Of The Kelly Gang, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears and Bloody Hell. I actively try to see everything and I saw 1 out of every 6 films my own country produced last year. That’s cos our industry isn’t as strong as it used to be so that’s why this year, I haven’t had a chance to review many of them… hell, the last one before today’s film that I got to review was The Dry.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t do more local content, because there isn’t much of it… and now, Penguin Bloom.

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June 29, 2021June 29, 2021 leebutler Review

Captive (2021) – Captivating

Released: 7th May
Seen: 28th June

Delusional Misidentification Syndrome is a term that covers a large list of mental illnesses that have ended up being used in media. Very simply put, these disorders can cause people to believe that their loved ones have been replaced or that they themselves are dead or even that multiple people are actually the same person in disguise. That last one, known as the Fregoli delusion, seems to be the foundation for the film I’m reviewing today called Captive.

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June 28, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Me, You, Madness (2021) – Killing Me Slowly With Averageness

Released: 28th April
Seen: 20th June

So… Louise Linton is an interesting person. If you’ve never heard of her, you might have heard of her husband, former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. You might know her from that ghoulish photo of her and her husband holding a sheet of freshly printed bills where they look like the villains in a Batman movie, or maybe from an Instagram post where she tagged a bunch of designers while flying to Fort Knox, or maybe from her work as an actress… just kidding, no way do you know her for that. Anyway, after a break to be part of the fortress of evil that was the Trump administration, Louise has decided she’d like to try writing and directing, which was an interesting idea to say the least.

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June 21, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Arlo the Alligator Boy (2021) – Smile At This Crocodile

Released: 16th April
Seen: 18th June

Back in the 90s and early 2000’s, Disney had this thing that they did where they would make a movie out of the first three episodes of an upcoming series in order to get people used to what was to come. This led to such films as The Return of Jafar, Mighty Ducks the Movie: The First Face Off and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins among a whole cornucopia of other films.

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June 20, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Uncategorized

Luca (2021) – Looka At This, It’s Cute (and a little bit gay)

Released: 18th June
Seen: 18th June

With all the films that are going to Disney’s premier service lately I’ve noticed a weird pattern regarding the films that they don’t throw a surcharge on the second it pops up… namely that they’ve been, largely, kind of bad. Sure there’s exceptions like Soul or Onward, but other films like Magic Camp, Stargirl and Artemis Fowl (a film that, no joke, didn’t pop up on their site’s list of original films when I went to look before writing this). Basically if a film skips cinemas and just pops up on Disney Plus I’m going to be going in with some trepidation… and then they just throw something like Luca up there and I wonder if they even know when they have a good thing on their hands.

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June 19, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Wish Dragon (2021) – A Charming Little Wish

Released: 11th June
Seen: 16th June

So earlier this year, Disney released the film Raya and the Last Dragon. It was a pretty great film as a lot of Disney’s animated fare tends to be but there was this weird thing going around where people wrote off its box office as a failure because it only made 130 million worldwide on a 100 million budget. For some reason this is a thing that keeps coming up this year where films are having their box offices judged based on pre-pandemic expectations, as though we’re completely through the wilderness. Spoilers, we’re not. Anyway I bring this up because I wonder if the supposed failure of Raya and the Last Dragon led to today’s film Wish Dragon not getting as much attention as it deserves which is a shame because Wish Dragon is charming.

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June 18, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Psycho Goreman (2021) – Glorious Cheese

Released: 3rd March
Seen: 16th June

Sometimes it really does surprise me just how understated some reviews can be about certain films. Due to this being a very small blog, I don’t really get to be ahead of the curve that much. I’m not on any press lists unless Soda & Telepaths hooks me up, screeners for any of the major streaming services don’t tend to fall in my lap and throw on top of that the reality of me being in Australia which is usually late to get a lot of these weird films. That’s why there’s still at least 2 major Oscar films I never reviewed, it takes a while for me to get to some of these films and usually there’s a critical consensus about them already by the time I see them… The critics have undersold how gloriously bonkers Psycho Goreman is, in their defence the brilliant insanity of this film is something that might be beyond mortal comprehension but let’s try.

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