Thriller - Movie Meister Reviews

April 14, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Mystery

Run (2021) – Thrillingly Fast

Released: 1st January
Seen: 8th April

Do you know the worst part about living in Australia while trying to do film criticism (or whatever we’re going to call what I do on this blog that I run)? There are so many films that I will just never be able to see in a legal manner, not through any local streaming services anyway. We live in a global marketplace where I can have just about anything I want sent to me from anywhere in the world, but movies appear to be one of the exceptions to this rule.

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April 12, 2021April 12, 2021 leebutler Sci-Fi, Drama, Fantasy, Thriller

The Midnight Sky (2020) – The Sky Is Forgotten

Released: 23rd December 2020
Seen: 8th April 2021

One of the weird things I have noticed since starting to review films is how some of them will stick around long after viewing, and some start moving out of my head the minute I’m finished. For example, one of the first films I watched as a reviewer was Get Out and I may have watched it once since reviewing it but I remember almost every single frame of that thing. Meanwhile, I saw Chaos Walking around a month ago and the only thing I remember from that film is Tom Holland’s in it… that’s it, that’s all I’ve got. Some films just refuse to be remembered… though, it’s a very rare film that makes me start forgetting I watched it while I’m still watching it, but The Midnight Sky did that.

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April 10, 2021April 10, 2021 leebutler Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Godzilla vs Kong (2021) – Lots of Monkey Business

Released: 25th March
Seen: 6th April

I believe it was the legendary French film analyst Dr Je Plaisante who said “Do you really need me to give you a fancy explanation to begin the review about Godzilla vs Kong, the film where a giant ape punches a giant lizard? Does Godzilla vs Kong look like a film that needs analysing? Do you get how silly it is to think Godzilla vs Kong is anything more than a joyous ode to destruction? I’m not even a real film analyst, my name is literally French for the phrase I’m Joking, that’s how pointless this entire review is!”… or something like that.

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February 22, 2021 leebutler Comedy, Crime, Thriller

I Care A Lot (2021) – Care Is An Understatement

Released: 19th February
Seen: 21st February

There is no greater evil, at least in my mind than those who take advantage of the elderly and infirm. The top of that list of evil people are known as professional guardians, not all of them (I’m sure some of them are perfectly good people) but we’re talking about the kind of professional guardians who take on a ward who is elderly and is needing help, pay themselves an obscene wage, puts that ward in an aged care home and slowly bleed them dry. To see how evil some of these guardians can be, I’d suggest watching this segment by John Oliver on them. They are so cruel and evil that it almost feels like an inevitable source for a film. I won’t lie, when I saw that I Care A Lot was about a woman who puts elderly people with dementia in a home and drains them of their money I was worried as hell about how it was going to handle this heavy topic. I’m glad to say it’s damn near perfect.

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February 9, 2021 leebutler Horror, Thriller

Wrong Turn (2021) – Sorry, Wrong Franchise

Released: 26th January
Seen: 7th February

Have you ever heard the story of how Saw 2 came to be? After the monster success of the first Saw movie the producers were desperate for a second film but the original writers didn’t have the time to come up with a new script. While trying to think of what to do the producers happened upon a script that’d been sent to them by Darren Lynn Boseman that was called The Desperate. After reading it they realised that a few modifications to the script would make it fit in with the Saw franchise and that’s how we ended up with the Saw 2 film that we got. I bring this up because I am convinced that a similar situation happened here with Wrong Turn aka The Foundation.

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February 4, 2021 leebutler Action, Thriller

The Marksman (2021) – You’re Taken The Piss

Released: 21st January
Seen: 4th February

Can we, as a society, just admit that Liam Neeson action films have become repetitive and stale? Is that a thing that we can collectively do? Hell, let’s be honest, they were getting stale roughly around the third time he played a character who had a member of his family taken. It’s now to the point where you could write a Liam Neeson action film using a madlib form, they all have the same basic plot and only change the minor superficial details. It’s always the same and every time it gets a little bit less interesting and The Marksman is just another one for the pile.

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January 21, 2021 leebutler Horror, Action, Thriller

Hunted (2021) – Little Blood-Red Riding Hood

Released: 14th January
Seen: 19th January

If you were to make a list of locations that horror movies take place in, The Woods would probably be somewhere near the top of that list. Something about being in the great outdoors, surrounded by trees and being far away from modern civilisation lends itself well to a horror scenario. Films like Cabin in the Woods, Evil Dead and Friday the 13th have all shown that surrounding a bunch of young people by a seemingly endless amount of trees and leaving them to deal with some form of serial killer can create a terrifying ordeal… you can also have films like Hunted, that work on some level but not as many as it should.

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January 9, 2021January 9, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Crime, Drama

Promising Young Woman (2021) – Promises, Promises

Released: 1st January
Seen: 8th January

“Boys will be boys”
“It’s a ‘he said she said’ situation”
“It’s a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action”
“If you really want to know the truth you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you did to this guy.”

Let’s be blunt, when women come forward with allegations about being assaulted chances are good she’s going to hear something like one of the above quotes. We have a serious problem when it comes to believing women who make allegations of sexual assault or harassment… that problem being that we don’t. Hell, we’re so bad at it that we might be dumb enough to hear the phrase “Devils Triangle” and believe the rapist that it’s a drinking game when anyone who has a cursory knowledge of Google knows it’s a threesome with two men… in a culture like this, a film like Promising Young Woman isn’t just inevitable, it’s cathartic.

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January 7, 2021 leebutler Thriller, Crime, Drama, Mystery

The Dry (2020) – Aussie Cinema Goodness

Released: 1st January
Seen: 6th January

I hate to take you back there but at this point in 2020 my country was in… well, I’d say we were in hot water but actually we were in the literal opposite of water. The bushfires of late 2019 to early 2020 were some of the worst I’ve ever seen. Sure, we have bushfires here a lot (Comes with having lots of bush and not as much water as we should have) but it was nothing like last year. Part of the reason we have such bad bushfires here is that we are a dry country, known for lengthy periods of drought. Droughts that lengthy can do some serious damage on little towns like Kiewarra, which is the setting for the Australian crime movie The Dry.

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December 14, 2020 leebutler Drama, History, Thriller

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (2020) – Order In The Court!

Released: 16th October
Seen: 13th December

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Say, for the sake of argument, that you’re part of a group of protestors who disagrees with actions that’re taken by the president and decide the best way to do it is to get a large group of people to march and demand that someone listen to their grievances. Now, while this is a right of the people it is often denied by those in charge who would instead choose to ignore them… or, as a random example, send a large amount of police to instigate a riot, throw tear gas at peaceful protestors and beat innocent bystanders with clubs and shields only to then turn around and blame the very protestors who have been attacked.

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