leebutler Uncategorized

Minor Premise (2020) – Extremely Slow in the Payoff

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on December 10th, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA0wua85kUI

I’m sure we’ve all seen a few science fiction films before that have used the same old trope. A scientist has a great invention, they can’t get anyone else to be the test subject so they test it out on themselves and the ensuing chaos is caused by the experiment going horribly horribly wrong. It’s a trope for a reason, it works and it often leads to an interesting character in the form of the scientist and can also lead to a devastatingly emotional ending (think of The Fly remake for a prime example of this). I love a good story of a scientist being put through the wringer because of their own hubris and Minor Premise presents an interesting version of this story, albeit one that’s a little more heady than most.

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leebutler Review

Attack of the Unknown (2020) – Who Knows?

 NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on December 2nd, 2020

Attack of the Unknown starts like a lot of action films, with a SWAT raid on a drug kingpin compound. Their goal is simple, to arrest a crime syndicate boss and transport him to jail. At first, this seems like a relatively easy idea… right up until the Aliens invade, at which point it turns into Assault on Precinct 13 but with aliens who have come to drain the blood from humanity (because the Aliens are also vampires). With the fate of the world in the hands of a small team of SWAT agents and a bunch of criminals, humanity might be doomed.

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leebutler Review

The Tender Bar (2022) – Cheers!

Released: 7th January
Seen: 31st January

In 2005, reporter John Joseph ‘”JR” Moehringer released his memoir The Tender Bar to much critical acclaim.  The book detailed his life from childhood through college and into his mid-30s, largely surrounding the people who he happened to meet at a bar called Dickens. The book was a success and like a lot of successful books, it eventually got turned into a movie because apparently, we’ve hit the point where writers’ memoirs get to turn into movies… maybe we’ll be lucky and JR won’t turn out to be a piece of shit like the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy. He already has a leg up by having the better movie, though it’s not a great one.

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leebutler Review

Bloody Hell (2020) – A Bloody Good Time

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on October 12th, 2020

Bloody Hell is a 2020 horror film that focuses on a man named Rex (Ben O’Toole). Rex tried to do something noble, he tried to stop a bank robbery as it was happening and ended up taking down all of the robbers. Unfortunately his attempt at doing something good for his community ended up backfiring and Rex was sent to jail for 8 years, while also becoming something of a celebrity.

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leebutler Review

An Unquiet Grave (2020) – Silent Burial

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on October 13th, 2020

An Unquiet Grave is a 2020 Horror film that feels more like a drama at times, playing with the idea of grief and coming to terms with it. The film takes place a year after a car crash has taken the life of Jamie’s (Jacob A. Ware) wife and he still hasn’t come to terms with it, but he has found a ritual that he can use to bring her back. He brings his wife’s sister Ava (Christine Nyland) with him to help perform this ritual but Ava soon discovers that she might not actually survive this ritual, and now Jamie will have to deal with the guilt of exchanging Ava’s life for that of his wife.

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leebutler Review

Home Team (2022) – It’s A Shame

Released: 28th January
Seen: 31st January

In 2012 the coach of the New Orleans Saints, Sean Payton (Kevin James), received a one-year suspension for his part in a scandal that was known as “bounty gate” where players on the team were paid to intentionally injure players on the other team. Now, Sean has maintained his innocence in this and the details are more complicated than I care to look into (I’m not a sports person, I had to get all that off Wikipedia so I understood the situation as best I could) but the key point is that Sean didn’t coach his team during 2012 and instead used that time to coach his son’s sixth-grade team during that season. This story is the inspiration for the movie Home Team, which is what happens when the Happy Madison team decides to make a sports biopic and then gets bored and just makes their usual shit.

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leebutler Review

A Ghost Waits (2020) – A Ghostly Love Story

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on October 23, 2020

A Ghost Waits is a low budget horror rom-com that follows a simple house cleaner named Jack (MacLeod Andrews) who has been given the job of cleaning up an abandoned house. He’s heard that this house keeps losing tenants for some reason and part of his job is to make sure everything is up to code since maybe the tenants keep leaving because the heating doesn’t work or they found structural damage and just split. Turns out there’s no real structural damage to the building… however, there is a ghost named Muriel (Natalie Walker) and she is as terrible as all Muriel’s are and her job is to scare anyone out of the house that Jack is cleaning. What follows is one of the weirdest love stories in recent years.

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