leebutler Review

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022) – Gotta Go Slightly Faster

Released: 31st March
Seen: 29th June

Back in 2020 the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was released. It quickly received wide acclaim from many people, largely because the studios changed the main design of Sonic after an initial backlash but people also praised several of the performances and thought it was a good representation of the character… I called it one of the worst films of 2020, largely because it felt like another standard “C list celebrity and CGI character take a road trip” movie that took a character known for speed and spent most of the movie with Sonic unable to use his speed power which is his main character trait (and also serious questions about how workers were treated in order to get the film finished with the new design). So naturally, a sequel sounded like an exhausting prospect for me… so imagine my surprise when Sonic the Hedgehog 2 isn’t totally awful.

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leebutler Review

Shattered (2022) – Cracked

Released: 9th March
Seen: 22nd June

Sometimes when trying to pick a movie to review, the choice can be made as easily as “It was a cheap purchase on Google Play and looked halfway interesting” and that’s how the movie Shattered was first chosen. On the surface it should be at least somewhat interesting, it stars terminally fascinating performer John Malkovich, incredible young superstar Cameron Monaghan and personal adored favourite Frank Grillo. That trio alone should make for a fascinating and fun movie just on pure charm factor alone… but charm can only do so much, you still need to have story and characters and that’s kind of where Shattered starts developing some serious cracks.

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leebutler Review

Please Baby Please (2022) – STELLA-R!

Seen at the Sydney Film Festival

Sometimes a film is targeted to such a specific audience that once someone comes up with the perfect one-line description of the plot it almost renders the job of reviewing the film pointless, if the single-line description sounds like a great film to you then you’re going to like it and if not then you’ll probably hate it. Please Baby Please is part of this year’s roster of films that are part of the Sydney Film Festival and in the film festival program this film was described with the sentence “A Streetcar Named Desire by way of John Waters”… so that’s my job rendered useless, if that phrase doesn’t immediately make you go “I HAVE TO SEE THAT” then this film isn’t for you, review effectively over. 

But screw it, we’re here, let’s bump up the word count a little bit

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leebutler Review

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (2021) – Business As Usual

Released: 11th March 2021
Seen: 5th June 2022

The New Corporation Info

In 2003, the documentary The Corporation was released. It remains one of the most fascinating examinations of corporate culture because it took the common idea that a corporation is a person and asked the question “If Corporations are people, what kind of person would they be?”. Spoilers for a 20-year-old documentary but the answer was a psychopath. It didn’t come to this conclusion lightly either, it literally took the psychological profile of a psychopath and proceeded to show how the world’s biggest corporations ticked every single box with incredible ease. Since The Corporation came out though, the world has changed dramatically so the question The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel asks is “How have corporations changed?” and turns out, they’ve gotten worse.

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leebutler Review

10 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Films I’m Excited To See

Once again, we are heading towards the time when the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival will be happening in all its glory. Once again, unlike a lot of film festivals, they have an online portion for their festival (you can check it out here) that’ll be running for the entire month of July. There really is nothing like a good film festival, especially one full of fascinating documentaries and this one has dozens of them.

They also have a bunch that’ll be happening in the last week of July that’ll be in person in Melbourne… but I’m not in Melbourne so I won’t be able to see those, I can see the online ones and now I have access to the full list of films they’ll have on offer so here is a list of the 10 films that have me the most excited/interested/curious. Please note this isn’t a specifically ranked list, just the 10 that stood out to me.

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leebutler Review

The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022) – Juicy

Released: 26th May
Seen: 31st May

In early 2011, the first episode of Bob’s Burgers hit the airwaves and was an instant hit for maybe the first week and then the ratings quickly went down. Reviews for the early season were mixed and the show was considered to be on the bubble in terms of renewal but it eventually got a second season. Around the second season, the show began to pick up its stride, slowly turning into a juggernaut and currently has been running for 12 seasons with a 13th one already ordered… and this reviewer has only seen up to episode 2 of the second season. This means that going into The Bob’s Burgers Movie there’s a chance to answer the question “Can The Bob’s Burgers Movie work for someone who isn’t caught up on the show’s history?” and the answer is a resounding glorious yes.

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