Movie – Page 67 – Movie Meister Reviews

July 9, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Tom & Jerry (2021) – Slap-Stuck

Released: 1st April
Seen: 8th July

Ever since Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there have been a lot of attempts at putting animated characters into the real world. No film has ever really come close to Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of making that combination work, but where a lot of them falter has been the story. You notice how a lot of these films really lean on the main characters travelling cross country in a car with whatever B-list actor they could hire that month. Recently there’ve been more bad attempts at this with Sonic the Hedgehog being bad (sorry, it was) and some pretty good attempts like Detective Pikachu. So, on the spectrum between Sonic and Pikachu, where does Tom & Jerry fall? Right smack in the middle, perfect mediocrity.

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July 8, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Boss Level (2021) – Game On!

Released: 25th February
Seen: 7th July

It’s official, Time Loop movies are having a major resurgence and I am so happy that they are. First there was the horror film Happy Death Day, a film I still wish I had seen in time to put in my best of list for 2017 , then recently we had the Rom com twofer of Palm Springs and The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things which were both just very charming and now I get to talk/gush about Boss Level which is just more proof of what fun can be had with this very simple concept when it’s done right.

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July 7, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

America: The Motion Picture (2021) – America, F**k Meh?

Released: 4th July
Seen: 5th July

You know, I probably should’ve watched this one on the 4th of July. Would’ve been more appropriate to watch a film supposedly celebrating America to watch on the 4th of July, even if I did release the review days later. Well, little behind the scenes trivia for you, I did try to watch it on the 4th of July but at the halfway mark I fell asleep so I figured I should probably watch it again when I was more awake.

Well, I have now done that and it turns out the problem wasn’t that I was too tired, but that America: The Motion Picture is just kind of boring.

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July 6, 2021July 6, 2021 leebutler Review

Happily (2021) – Not Happy Jan!

Released: 2nd June
Seen: 4th July

One of the saddest things a film can do is to not seem to know what it should be, relegating the element of the movie that’s actually worth exploring to a single scene when it realistically should just be what the entire movie is. I’m sure we’ve all seen movies where it meanders for an hour and then gets to a single interesting scene that makes you go “Where has this been for the last hour? Why isn’t this the entire movie?”… and if you haven’t, watching Happily will give you that exact feeling.

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July 5, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Vanquish (2021) – Destroy It!

Released: 2nd June
Seen: 2nd July

Normally when I review a film, I will try to avoid looking up other reviews or even look at the number on Rotten Tomatoes because I really don’t want to be influenced when writing my own piece. I would hate to steal a line by accident or have my views influenced by the group, I’d rather like an unpopular film than pretend to hate it just to fit in. So, when I was googling the movie Vanquish in order to have the IMDB page up so I could get the spelling of certain names correct and saw that it had a 5% on Rotten Tomatoes I was in shock because that’s worse than the score for Music, and Music is my current front runner for worst of the year. Surely this can’t be that bad, can it?

…it’s close.

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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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