Movie – Page 57 – Movie Meister Reviews

October 25, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Vacation Friends (2021) – Vacation Acquaintances

Released: 27th August
Seen: 24th October

There is a specific kind of comedy movie that goes something like this. A stuck in the mud guy who lives a boring life runs into a loud eccentric maniac who somehow manages to keep living despite being borderline insane. This leads to a series of shenanigans, a fight between the two leads and eventually they make up or the smart ones let reality set in to keep them apart. At its best you can get something like The Cable Guy which took this premise to its darkest point, at worst you get something like The Wrong Missy which is a film that should be used to torture prisoners. Today we’re going to look at the comfortable middle with Vacation Friends, because I need something nice and easy.

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October 24, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

After We Fell (2021) – We Fell Down Went BOOM!

Released: 9th September
Seen: 24th October

Ever since 50 Shades became the biggest thing in books, every idiot who could write a half-competent bit of smut tried their hand at it and let those be turned into movies. The 50 Shades film trilogy is widely regarded as awful, the gangster rapist version known as 365 days was not just bad but one of the worst films I’ve ever seen… and then there’s the After franchise, a truly hateful little series based on fan fiction about Harry Styles that’s so vile he should sue for character defamation. Somehow the first After made enough money to warrant a sequel and then the second After movie, After We Collided made… less money. Now we’re onto After We Fell and it’s just absolute garbage.

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October 23, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 7

Short Session 7 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for even more Melbourne Documentary Film Festival shorts, because there are so many to get through. Today we look at Short Session 7. So far we’ve had a ton of fantastic shorts, I don’t really see them dropping the ball any time soon.

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October 22, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 5

Short Session 5 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for another stack of short films from the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. Today, we’re going through session 5 on their program which might have the best set of shorts so far, and that bar has been set pretty high by everyone else.

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October 21, 2021 leebutler Review

The Forever Purge (2021) – So Close

Released: 22nd July
Seen: 18th October

The Purge franchise might be one of the most overtly political horror franchises in recent years, which is saying a lot considering how political the Horror genre can get. Pretty much since the second movie, the franchise has been a metaphor for classism, racism and the way fascism can spread fast through a population which has even the hint of a suggestion that such behaviour is allowed. It’s always been a little controversial and very blunt, but usually, it can make for a half-decent time… The Forever Purge certainly has some political ideas that resonate today, just doesn’t really go all-in on them and that makes for a frustrating watch.

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October 20, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 6

Short Session 6 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Time for another batch of documentary shorts from the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, because they’re there and we can totally do this. This time, it’s session 6 that we’re going to go through. The same setup as before, roughly a paragraph on every short so let’s get into it.

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October 19, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Short Session 3

Short Session 3 was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

So, mild housekeeping. Normally on this blog I review feature-length films because that’s what’s easily available to me and provides the most material for a review. For the next week I’m going to be focusing entirely on some shorts available during the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, so basically I’m going to pick a series of shorts and review them all for about a paragraph each. Why? Because it’s my blog and I do what I want!

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October 18, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Looby (2019) – Intriguingly Artsy

Looby was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

Keith Looby is one of those artists that did a ton of great work, some winning major awards, who has been almost completely forgotten by the masses. He won the Archibald Prize in 1984, was named Canberra artist of the year in 1992 and has had a series of exhibitions all over the world and yet it feels like his name is not as well known as it should be considering his impact. Part of this could be due to his relationship with the art world in general which we can politely call “Troubled”… and this relationship is the main focus of the documentary about Looby’s life.

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October 17, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony (2021) – Refried Leftovers

Hannibal Hopkins & Sir Anthony was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

This year’s Oscars ceremony might go down as having one of the most insane endings ever, and I’m including that time La La Land won for about 17 seconds. If you recall the ceremony ended up switching the categories around in order to put Best Actor at the end of the show in a move that was clearly anticipating Chadwick Boseman winning for his stellar performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Everyone on social media at the time could see this coming, the ending felt obvious and we all waited with bated breath to see Chadwick’s widow walk up and emotionally destroy us… and then Anthony Hopkins won, wasn’t allowed to give a speech over Zoom because the people producing the show are idiots, and then the ceremony just ended. It was a catastrophe that was, rightly so, the lowest viewed Oscars ceremony in history.

That being said, it did give Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar which puts him in a league of legendary actors who have more than one Oscar to their name, so now seems like a great time to release a documentary about him… It’s such a pity that it feels like this one started production just after he won the Oscar in April and was ready to be presented a month later in May.

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October 16, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Cry Of The Forests (2020) – They Speak For The Trees

Cry Of The Forests was seen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

So have you noticed how our planet is all kinds of screwed thanks to big industries deciding to put quarterly profits over the concept of humanity living on this planet? I have, it keeps me up at night which is not a thing I needed help doing! Do you know who else has noticed this big problem? The protestors that make up many of the subjects for the film Cry of the Forests and to put this in modern-movie terms, this documentary turns them into environmental Avengers doing their best to defeat the logging company destroying a precious resource… it’s heartbreakingly important.

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