leebutler Uncategorized

The Lovebirds (2020) – Something For (Almost) Everyone

Released: 22nd May
Seen: 25th May

In case you hadn’t noticed, these last several weeks have been…  a lot. It’s been a couple of months now that the entire world has basically had to shut down while we deal with a minor apocalyptic pandemic and everyone is reacting differently. Some are just getting tired and depressed, some are playing a whole lot of Animal Crossing, others are outside demanding barbers open so they can get haircuts because no one loves them enough to grab a pair of scissors and snip their bangs. I’ve personally been doing the first two of those, my Animal Crossing island is awful at the moment but I clearly have plenty of time to create a little getaway where I don’t have to deal with the third kind of person. 

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leebutler Uncategorized

The Wrong Missy (2020) – The Wrong Movie

Released: 13th May
Seen: 17th May

The Happy Madison film company logo might as well be the poop emoji for what it represents as a marker of quality. Every now and then they’ll release something decent, the corn kernel of their cinematic output that’s just overwhelmed by a monsoon of shit that spews out of that company like water from a fire hydrant. It’s almost like they’ve set a challenge to make the laziest comedies known to man and milk people’s love for a pack of former SNL bad boys as much as they can. Their films are also, effectively, creative excuses to go on long trips on company money to fancy locations where they can basically have a vacation between making what they claim is a movie. Since the end of 2015, shortly after the release of the infamously awful Pixels, every movie from Happy Madison is a Netflix exclusive but because Netflix doesn’t seem to have quality control, we get films like The Wrong Missy which are almost clinically designed to make me hate life itself.

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Becoming (2020) – It Becomes Something Good

Released: 6th May
Seen: 8th May

In November of 2008, America did something amazing. They elected their first black president, a major moment in history and a presidency that would’ve been important just for that alone if all Obama had done those 8 years was sit in the White House and eat cheerios. With Barrack Obama becoming president, this also meant that his wife Michelle Obama would go down in history as the first black woman to be first lady, another monumental moment on its own before you even factor in what was done over the next eight years. 

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Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020) – Touching and Important

Released: 25th March
Seen: 6th May

Crip Camp Info

In 1971, almost a decade before summer camps became associated with hockey mask-wearing murderers, there was a place called Camp Jened. This camp was a little different from a lot of other camps, in that it had a heavy focus on disabled kids who would be able to have a normal camp experience. They’d play ball, go swimming, catch crabs, all the things that one normally associated with going to summer camp back in the 1970s. It was a place where these kids could just be like any other kid without anything holding them back, because back in 1971 there still wasn’t an American Disabilities Act and the outside world effectively segregated them due to their physical and mental disabilities… eventually, the kids at Camp Jened would have enough of this system and went from camp goers to activists who fought the government and won.

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leebutler Uncategorized

A Secret Love (2020) – A Sweet Secret

Released: 29th April
Seen: 5th May

A Secret Love Info

In terms of gay history in film, we tend to focus more on the 70s-80s than almost any other time until now. If you were to ask most writers, it seems like the history of gay culture began around the time of the AIDS crisis and everything has happened in its shadow but that’s not the reality of the situation. Gay people have been a part of society since society became a thing but with few exceptions (like The Favourite or Wilde), we rarely see stories from before the decades mentioned… except in documentaries, which often give us stories of legendary queer people and the stories of their lives back when things were a lot worse than they are now.

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The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) – No One Wanted This

Released: 27th January
Seen: 5th May

The Last Thing He Wanted Info

So, while I’m still learning how to effectively write these reviews, I have slowly developed a system that works for me. After I do the first paragraph (usually designed to be just eye-catching enough that if you were to scroll through my main page that it might make you want to know more) I will then stop and think about how to describe the plot. I might have IMDB open to remind me of character and actor names but I can usually come up with a decent enough plot synopsis that doesn’t give away more than I need to in order to get you to know just what kind of movie I’m talking about. The plot synopsis is always a quick thing for me, I try to keep it short and sweet because if you want a proper plot synopsis then Wikipedia is in the next tab over. I add it for context and little more than that… this time? I’m tempted to skip it because the plot is so poorly constructed that even just adding it for context feels pointless but it’s my structure now so I feel obligated to try.

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Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story (2020) – I’m Begging For Mercy

Released: 30th March
Seen: 3rd May

In 2004 Cyntoia Brown shot and killed Johnny Allen, this is an indisputable fact. What was always in dispute was motive, the prosecution said that she was a prostitute who robbed and murdered an innocent john while he was asleep and Cyntoia claimed she feared for her life after being sexually assaulted. At trial Cyntoia was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 51 years which would’ve made her 67 at the time of her potential release. However, thanks to the governor, she received clemency in 2019 and was released from prison. Now, those of you who are good at math will have caught onto this but… did I mention she was 16 at the time?

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Dangerous Lies (2020) – LIEEEEEEEES

Released: 30th April
Seen: 2nd May

About a year ago I did a review for a film called Secret Obsession which was basically Netflix picking up the scraps left over from a Lifetime all-you-can-eat-buffet and turning it into something meant to resemble a film. It wasn’t exactly good and you could kind of tell what network it was made for originally but I figured “Oh well, if Netflix does a Lifetime movie every now and then that could be entertaining. Sometimes those are campy enough for a laugh” and Netflix apparently heard me and decided to make an even blander wannabe lifetime movie… I’m so ready for 2020 to be over.

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Spenser Confidential (2020) – Not So Condidential

Released: 6th March
Seen: 28th April

The buddy cop movie is a classic and reliable genre for a reason, the formula is so simple that if you pull it off right you will have something fun. You take two very different people, an Odd Couple if you will, and then you put them in cop outfits and make them do cop stuff. This is not a hard concept to execute and yet Netflix has already kinda screwed it up with the disastrous Coffee and Kareem which still haunts my nightmares which I have a lot more of now because I sleep more often because what the hell else does one do during a pandemic? Anyway, since Netflix either knew Coffee and Kareem was going to hurt or because they figured that no one would care if they did the same general thing again they made another buddy cop movie and this time they did an adequate job, IMPROVEMENT!

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