leebutler Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (2024) – Scarring

Released: 19th April
Seen: 28th April

On the 19th of April an interview with director Zack Snyder dropped where he delivered this quote:

You may love or hate my movies, I’m 100% fine with that but a vote against me is a vote for the focus groups. Know by saying ‘Snyder sucks’ you’re also saying “you know what? give me more focus groups! I want Happy Meals!

As one might expect, the second this phrase hit the internet there was a group of people who took issue with it, myself being one of them. This quote kind of speaks to the arrogance of Zack Snyder, how he seems to believe that his films are something so outside the mainstream and doing something so unique that we have to support him for the love of cinema. It is, truthfully, one of the most pretentious things that has ever been said by a director of mainstream cinema… it’s also absolute bullshit because, having now seen Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, there’s truly nothing about it that goes against focus groups because it reeks of the most pandering studio bullshit one could imagine.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review, Uncategorized

Slay (2024) – YAAASSSSS!!

Released: 22nd March
Seen: 1st April

A lot of streaming services have taken to making their own original films and for good reason, those films are owned by the streaming service and therefore can’t be taken away by any company (the exception to this is HBO Max who make and take away their own products because HBO Max is run by a fucking moron). There’s a general belief on this blog that those streaming originals are just as valid as any other film and thus they get reviewed, be they from Netflix, Prime or Shudder.

The one streaming service that has been an exception to this and that’s Tubi, which is weird because that’s a free service so their original films are easiest to access. However, their films also just don’t really stand out enough to warrant discussion. No one talks about the Terror Train remake, War of the Worlds: Annihilation or the sequel to the Terror Train remake that came out 3 months after the Terror Train remake so it felt pointless reviewing them when there were bigger things to review. Maybe that snobbery needs to be looked at, maybe some of Tubi’s garbage needs to be ransacked… or maybe I was just waiting for Tubi to release an original film that might interest me and “Drag Queen Vampire movie” is absolutely the kind of film I’m very interested in.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Dream Scenario (2024) – Dreamy

Released: 1st January
Seen: 31st March

Dream Scenario Info

There is no term on the planet that I hate more than “Cancel Culture”, it’s a term that was basically invented by assholes to make it seem like being told to stop being racist/sexist/bigoted was a free speech violation. It’s almost always an attempt for people to brush aside consequences for when they act like an idiot in public… that being said, there are some times when the reaction by the internet is horribly over the top. Sometimes someone in public makes a joke that’s a little off-colour or does something that’s accidentally disrespectful, the internet jumps on them and vilifies them for a while before the person makes a grovelling apology which only makes things worse until the internet moves onto their next target. On Twitter (I refuse to call it anything else than that) we call this the Twitter Main Character where the ultimate goal is not to become that person. It looks like the cycle of the Twitter Main Character has officially gone mainstream because Dream Scenario is basically a feature film based around that concept and it’s just as weird and hilarious as you might expect.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Immaculate (2024) – Holy Moly

Released: 21st March
Seen: 31st March

Immaculate Info

Religious horror is a fascinating genre when it’s done right. The concept of something holy being turned into something evil is a prime concept for horror, the catch is that there is a certain section of the audience who don’t believe in the specific holy element that the film is working with so you have to make them believe in it just enough for the horror to work. When done right you can get great works of horror like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby (fuck Roman Polanski) or The Omen. When done wrong you get… well, the sequels and remakes of those three movies. Immaculate is the newest entry into the religious horror subgenre and it’s fair to say this is one of the ones that does it right, but also does it in a way that’s gloriously fucked up.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2 (2024) – The Wonderful Thing About Sequels

Copy provided for review

In 2023, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain. Thanks to how stupidly copyright law has been written, the bear of very little brain was finally free to be used by anyone a mere 97 years after he first appeared in the book Winnie The Pooh. Naturally, the first thing that was done with him is the same thing that’s often done when well-known family-friendly characters are free for anyone to use, someone made a horror movie out of it. Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey came out to be a surprising box office hit, making over 5 million dollars on a $100,000 budget… it was also god awful, it ranked third on my list of the worst films of 2023, it swept the ever-controversial Razzies where it took home 5 of the 9 awards and was a joke to everyone who thought about cinema of 2023. The idea that it earned enough to get a sequel was laughable and there was no doubt that any sequel was going to be an inevitable horrible piece of shit… so why the hell do I like this film?

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Beautiful Wedding (2024) – Annulment

Released: 8th March
Seen: 12th March

Beautiful Wedding Info Directed & Written By: Roger Kumble Starring: Virginia Gardner, Dylan Sprouse, Libe Barer, Austin North

In 2023 the film Beautiful Disaster was unleashed onto an unsuspecting and unwilling public. It’s part of this weird era of film where everyone wants to do their own Fifty Shades AKA Take a shitty fanfiction, file off some serial numbers and make a movie about it. This gave us the awful After series, the rapey 365 Days series and a series that exists, Beautiful Disaster paired a bad boy boxer and an innocent young woman who made a bet with each other that they wouldn’t sleep together for 30 days, which naturally led to the both of them starting a relationship because that’s how these movies go. It was certainly not the worst version of this kind of movie, but it was pretty bad (I named it the 8th worst movie of 2023, something that I stand by) so knowing that a sequel was coming out made my blood run cold. I thought the After series was done, maybe I’d be free from this crap for a while but no… Prime Studios have other plans for me, bad plans.

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leebutler Editorial

Oscar Predictions – 2024

It’s that time again, the time when people who have no business making predictions about who should and shouldn’t win an Oscar give you their heartfelt opinions on who should and shouldn’t win an Oscar… It’s me, I’m people. I’m doing that exact thing this year because I do it every year, it’s what started this silly little blog so why not keep doing it? 

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

American Fiction (2024) – Stranger Than… Well

Released: 9th January
Seen: 27th February

We live in an age where we keep hearing the same refrain over and over again, “No one can take a joke anymore, you can’t joke about anything”. It’s a refrain screamed largely by people who’ve been telling the exact same joke since 1993 and can’t be bothered to update their material. The truth is that you can still make jokes about pretty much anything as long as you do it well, you can push the boundaries of good taste if you’re able to actually do something interesting. Comedy is still fairly easy to do and can be quite shocking while doing it, you just need to not only tell the jokes well but know what you want to target with your comedy. American Fiction knows exactly what it wants to target with its comedy, and oh boy does it land every single punch that it throws.

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leebutler Documentary, Review

Dario Argento: Panico (2024) – Opera-tic

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 26th February

In the history of the Horror genre, there are a few iconic directors whose work is so distinctive that their last name becomes a descriptive term. Hitchcock, Carpenter, Raimi, these names have all been used to conjure a specific style of filmmaking that people still mimic to this day. One name particularly powerful name that managed to define a certain kind of horror film is Argento, as in Dario Argento the legendary Italian director who made his name synonymous with a major element of the Italian horror of the 1970s and 80s with his works The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Inferno, Deep Red, Opera and probably his most famous work, Suspiria. During one of the biggest periods in horror cinema, Argento was one of the biggest names in the industry who was making funky fascinating fright films that fucked with the audience’s heads and with what cinema could look like. He is on the shortlist of directors whose careers warrant a documentary retrospective and Dario Argento: Panico is pretty much exactly what his work deserves… as a first documentary, anyway.

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

Past Lives (2023) – Living

Released: 31st August 2023
Seen: 25th February 2024

There’s a pretty standard formula when it comes to romantic dramas about childhood sweethearts who split apart and then bump into each other as adults. The cute childhood couple ends up blowing up their adult lives because the connection they had decades ago is still so strong and it’s cute, it’s romantic, it’s a cliche story choice for a reason because it’s got a feel-good charm to it, but it’s also not realistic. Being willing to blow up your life to be with someone you knew as a kid is not something people really do that often, but it happens all the time in movies. You never see a story of people who used to have a relationship, reuniting and realising that things actually turned out kind of OK in the long run… at least, you didn’t until Celine Song came along and created a realistic and truly touching romantic drama called Past Lives, 

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