leebutler Comedy, Drama, Netflix, Review

Kinda Pregnant (2025) – Pregnant Pause

Released: 21st March
Seen: 26th April

Amy Schumer is one of those comics who always gets a bad rap and is a common target of some pretty intense online vitriol. If you ever hear some online douchebag proclaim that women aren’t funny, her name will be one of the first ones to come out of their shithole mouths. Now I believe that Amy can be a pretty funny comic performer when she has the right material, her work on the Comedy Central Roasts was universally great, her first film Trainwreck was hilarious, her TV series Inside Amy Schumer had some brilliant sketches that still hold up to this day and I’ll even say she was a good co-host of the Oscars a few years ago. She has her problems as a performer, but she is capable of being very funny… just not in Kinda Pregnant, but that’s because there’s not much about that film in general that would be considered funny.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Wolf Man (2025) – Hairy

Released: 16th January
Seen: 25th April

On May 22nd 2017, Universal announced that it was launching a new franchise that would feature all of their legendary movie monsters in a shared universe. It was intended to culminate in a grand team-up, The Avengers of horror to be combined into a little franchise known as the Dark Universe. Their inaugural movie was 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, and it bombed so hard that the Dark Universe as a concept was dead by June 10th (the day after the release). No one wanted to touch this franchise, it had so royally fucked itself that the entire concept of these legendary horror creatures was gone… right up until someone thought to try again but without the gimmick of a team up, just make some good films with these characters.

The first one off the line was The Invisible Man in 2020, which is still one of the best horror films of the last decade. Its writer/director, Leigh Whannell, had managed to modernise the horror legend and make it something special so when the announcement came out that Leigh was going to try it again with Wolf Man, it was hard not to be excited. Now, this isn’t a failure on the level of The Mummy, but it’s not an undeniable legend like Invisible Man either.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Netflix, Review

Back In Action (2025) – Dull and Lifeless

Released: 17th January
Seen: 22nd April

In 2014, Cameron Diaz did something quite admirable. After the release of Annie, she announced her retirement to spend more time with her kids. Considering this was Cameron Diaz, one of THE major movie stars of the era, for her to stop working on her own accord was a major thing. This was one of those celebrities who could sell a movie just on their name alone being attached. She had a two-decade-long career that was the envy of many others in her generation, and then she just chose to stop acting. People have been hoping she’d make a return for ages, almost since the day she announced her retirement, but she stuck to her guns until this year when she took part in the Netflix film appropriately titled Back in Action, her grand return to the movies… she deserved better.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Companion (2025) – Hearty

Released: 30th January
Seen: 21st April

One of the best things in a good horror film is a twist, a moment when the narrative takes a sharp left-hand turn out of seemingly nowhere and takes the audience on a thrill ride. There’s been a few recent horror films that have been spectacular at this, things like Barbarian where it set itself up as a film about two people stuck in an Airbnb overnight and ended up being one of the most demented films of the year or The Perfection which took the concept of a ‘twist” and dialled it up to 11 to see just how many twists it could fit into 90 minutes without the audience losing its mind. Today’s film, Companion, is a terrifically twisted take on the romance film that takes a few big swings and mostly makes them work.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) – It Is What It Is

Released: 21st March
Seen: 20th April

Over the last few years, a trend has been getting more common, namely that major well well-known works are entering the public domain, meaning that anyone can use them without a problem. For a long time, nothing was entering the public domain thanks to a certain set of laws being adjusted, but now major characters are turning up in the communal toy chest that we can all reach into at any time. What has also become something of a tradition is that people making low-budget horror films have been grabbing these new toys, slathering them with blood and using them to fill digital shelves with their low-budget fare. Most of these haven’t been great (Blood & Honey and The Mouse Trap both ended up on my worst film lists for their respective years) and there’s been some that show improvement (Blood & Honey 2 is still a genuinely fun time) but we’ve yet to have one that just got the joke right off the bat and made something that was enjoyable… until someone ate their spinach and presented us with Popeye The Slayer Man.

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