leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Good Grief (2024) – Grief, It’s Good

Released: 5th January
Seen: 7th January

Telling gay stories in film is kind of a landmine sometimes. It seems more often than not those stories deal with immense tragedy, loss of family or just having one of the leads getting a specific fatal illness and dying for a dramatic conclusion. It’s rare to see a film about gay joy or even just gay resilience, it feels like more and more films are just kind of depressing in tone and it’s kind of sad… so it takes someone pretty damn talented to take a film about a gay man dying and turn it into a charming, funny and also emotional tale that feels somewhat hopeful by the end. Fortunately, Dan Levy is just that damn talented and has brought us Good Grief, something so charming and sincere that it’s just so soothing to watch.

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leebutler Documentary, Netflix, Review

Bitconned (2024) – Nice Freaking Time

Released: 1st January
Seen: 1st January

Cryptocurrency is possibly one of the biggest scams to ever go mainstream in recent years. What’s sold as a way for regular people to make money without relying on banks is in reality a playground for con artists to squeeze money out of gullible rich people who see a new technology and dive in without thinking. The Crypto market has brought us the bitcoin and the NFT, both of which are totally bogus ideas that are hopefully on the way out soon but until then there’s a cornucopia of stories about crypto schemes and scams, one of which revolves around the company Centra Tech, the story of the rise and fall of that company and its founders is the basis for Bitconned.

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leebutler Editorial

The Best Performances of 2023

2023 has been a pretty great year for film, even though it hasn’t been particularly profitable. Hell, this year’s Oscars might’ve been one of the best in a long time because every one of the actors who got honoured was someone that people love and they all delivered some great performances, and this year everyone seemed to up their game and bring even better performances than last year. 

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Worst Films of 2023

2023 feels like the first year in a while where things can somewhat come back to normal, which is to say that it still sucked but we could actually go outside every now and then. Of course just because we decided the plague was over doesn’t mean the world didn’t almost explode, indeed several wars have been going on all year which has put a deep divide through the world and there’s also the constant lingering threat that next year might have America deciding to put a known fascist back in the most powerful position on earth for funsies… so, of course, my way to deal with this and several other bits of bile is to unleash them in list form about films I didn’t like.

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Best Films of 2023

2023 in film has been kind of strange, it feels like the cinema is starting to approach returning to what it was pre-pandemic but there’s been some massive shake-ups in what a hit film can be. Instead of Superheroes dominating the box office, this year Barbie ran the roost and even helped meme a serious drama to near the top of the box office (If you try to claim Oppenheimer could’ve made that much without the Barbenheimer meme, I will laugh in your face). Small-budget horror films managed to dominate early in the year and a few old franchises came back and surprised everyone, either by being surprise hits or vanishing in seconds (remember how we had an Indiana Jones film this year? Did anyone see it, cos I know I didn’t).

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