Music – Movie Meister Reviews

November 7, 2022 leebutler Biography, Comedy, Music, Review

Weird: The Al Yankovich Story (2022) – Now You Know

Released: 4th November
Seen: 6th November

If there is any genre that would be on my dislike pile it would be the biopic, after all despite each one being about a very different artist, they all end up being the same. A traumatic childhood, hard-fought battle to get a recording contract, a surprise hit, lots of drugs, more hits, more drugs, more hits while doing more drugs culminating in a massive meltdown during a very important concert and redemption set to the tune of one of the most famous songs of that performer’s career.

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November 4, 2022 leebutler Drama, Horror, Music, Review

Torn Hearts (2022) – Whatever Happened To Peg Bundy?

Released: 8th September
Seen: 2nd November

In 1962, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis starred in the surprising late career hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? which was a touchstone in both of their careers and also inadvertently created a new subgenre known as Hagsploitation, or Grande Dame Guignol. The genre itself revolved around older female actresses playing characters who used to be glamorous stars but have turned into mentally unstable recluses who occasionally do a little bit of murder.

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August 18, 2022 leebutler Drama, Music, Romance

Purple Hearts (2022) – Dishonourable Discharge

Released: 29th July
Seen: 17th August

Recently one of the big discourses around cinema has been the idea that superhero movies are destroying cinema. The idea is that they’re all the same and overwhelming the market, every movie nowadays wants to be just like them so we don’t get anything new or exciting. Respectfully, that feels like a case of hating the popular thing just because it’s popular. As someone who sits through hundreds of films a year for this blog, maybe half a dozen of them are superhero films and if anything, they’re a nice respite because they’re usually at least entertaining enough that it’s a few hours enjoyably spent.

No, you want to know what the real death of cinema looks like? It looks like yet another bland boring romance movie starring a pair of attractive people who can just barely get lines of dialogue out playing boring cliche characters with minimal chemistry (if any) who regurgitate the exact same romance plot we’ve seen a thousand times over… anyway, let’s talk about Purple Hearts

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July 13, 2022August 15, 2022 leebutler Review

Elvis (2022) – Set My Soul On Fire

Released: 23rd June
Seen: 12th July

For years now there has been a conspiracy theory that Elvis Presley isn’t dead. The story goes that Elvis grew tired of fame and of his exhausting schedule and so he faked his own death and went off to live as a normal person. People claim to see him in coffee shops, he works in a little cafe in the middle of the desert, people just see Elvis all the time. I have never subscribed to this theory, I firmly believed for years that Elvis Aaron Presley died on August 16,1977 in his home in Memphis… now I might have to question that because Austin Butler might just be the pseudonym that Elvis chose to perform under one last time.

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July 5, 2022 leebutler Review

Studio 666 (2022) – Hail Satin

Released: 24th February
Seen: 3rd July

During the course of the pandemic (because we’re currently pretending to be over the pandemic despite thousands upon thousands of new cases popping up every single day) a lot of artists have had to get innovative with what they could do in order to be creative. Some embraced the online world in new ways by doing internet shows, some decided to basically use the time as a forced vacation and others decided to just try something completely new and out there because what the hell else were they going to do? The Foo Fighters decided to take that third route shortly after completing their 10th album Medicine at Midnight by making a feature film… a strange little horror-comedy called Studio 666.

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May 24, 2022July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

Marry Me (2022) – A Little

Released: 10th February
Seen: 23rd May

In 2020 Jennifer Lopez was robbed, one of the biggest robberies in recent years which we shall not be getting over any time soon… that robbery was, as they often are, perpetrated by the Oscars who denied her a nomination for her absolutely jaw-dropping performance in Hustlers. It was a shocker to everyone that she was snubbed, she was one of the people everyone just assumed were going to be nominated but for some reason, she wasn’t. Still, it was enough for people to really see just what Jennifer could do when given a chance and people were hopeful that her next big film might be able to get her the award she should’ve had 2 years ago… she then made Marry Me, a film that’s basically fine but isn’t going to be getting any awards any time soon.

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March 13, 2022July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

CODA (2021) – Hilariously Touching

Released: 13th August 2021
Seen: 12th March 2022

When it comes to the history of film, one of the groups that has been heavily underrepresented is the deaf community. When stories about them have been told, often the deaf character is played by a non-deaf actor who isn’t even part of the community but recently we’ve seen that change and be openly praised. Films like A Quiet Place featured Millicent Simmonds who is a young deaf actress and Sound of Metal had Paul Raci, the hearing child of deaf adults.

Now, speaking of Children of Deaf Adults, we have CODA which is a heartwarming dramedy about a deaf family with a hearing daughter who can also sing and it’s up for 3 Oscars this year… which is the only reason I would dare use Apple Plus to see it because damn that site will always annoy me.

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January 2, 2022July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

The Top Ten Worst Films of 2021

It’s been a bad year, the last several years have been bad years and there’s just so much bile that builds up over the course of 12 months that it needs to be let out in one long post about the meaningless hobby I’ve decided to have. Hell, not long before I hit the publish button on the best list, we lost Betty White so there is plenty of anger and rage stored up that needs desperately to be released.

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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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July 14, 2021July 22, 2022 leebutler Review

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) – You Let Me Down

Released: 29th April
Seen: 11th July

As I mentioned in my Judas and the Black Messiah review there were 2 films that were part of the major categories of this year’s Oscars that I didn’t get a chance to see in time. Judas was possibly the one I had the most chance of seeing, since it appeared in Sydney a month before the ceremony (but that’d involve a train ride into, what is still an epicenter of Covid cases). The one that would prove to be impossible to view in time was The United States vs. Billie Holiday… a film released on Hulu in the US back in February, because nothing says “thing that should be impossible to view legally” like a film put on a streaming platform. Anyway, it finally became available down here so I watched it and… well, I get why the only point of awards contention was the lead performance.

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