leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review

Moana 2 (2024) – You’re Welcome

Released: 27th November
Seen: 15th December

In the screening for Moana 2 that I went to, the cinema was pretty packed with a ton of parents bringing their children to see the sequel to the 2016 original. Kids who were so young that it’s possible they weren’t even alive when the original Moana came out. These kids probably have only seen a handful of films in their life and one of them is going to be Moana 2, a formative feature film in their lives that will linger for a while as it introduces them to the magic of cinema. When you see little kids watching Moana 2 and see the joy it puts in their eyes, it’s kind of hard to say anything particularly negative about the film in general because it makes it clear how much it does not matter. The target audience does not care about critical reviews, they do not care about story structure or pacing because they’re just there to see this super awesome girl called Moana do some super awesome things and that’s great. I’m glad that Moana 2 is going to be a good first film for a lot of kids… I just wish it lived up to its potential to be a great first film.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Heretic (2024) – GOD DAMN!

Released: 11th October
Seen: 21st November

“The only thing less trustworthy than a man who questions his faith is a man who does not”

~  Pope Leo XIV

The question of faith is perhaps the most personal question that one could ever be asked. What you believe happens when you shuffle off the great perch that is life is something that has puzzled people for centuries and has inspired art since the moment we worked out that if you mixed some dirt and water you could make a pretty picture out of it. Faith is also incredibly powerful when used in Horror films, as evidenced by the classic horror film The Exorcist. Of course, the Exorcist looked at the ideas of religion and faith and came down pretty hard on the side of “Yes there is a God and a Devil and you need God to help kick the Devil in the dick”. What about the idea of questioning faith? What about using doubt to help create horror… well, Heretic is here to do exactly that and it does so with glorious aplomb. 

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leebutler Fantasy, Musical, Review, Romance

Wicked: Part One (2024) – Green With Envy

Released: 1st August
Seen: 24th November

On October 30th 2003, the Gershwin Theatre presented the opening night performance of a little musical about a woman with green skin battling adversity and learning her true power through friendship with a hyperactive floating Barbie… that show was Wicked and to this day that show has captured audiences around the world. As of writing this sentence, it’s the second highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time, the fourth longest-running show in Broadway history and has been toured around the world so many times that it would be impossible to calculate just how many people have seen the show. It is a genre-defining artwork, one that has been talked about being turned into a movie since approximately 47 seconds after a movie producer heard Idina Menzel sing Defying Gravity for the first time and knew that this show needed to be captured on film… it’s taken them 20 years, it’s not the cast that they expected to get and it’s split a 2-hour-long stage show into two movies of 2+ hours each, but it looks like they absolutely nailed it.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Smile 2 (2024) – What’s The Use of Crying?

Released: 25th July
Seen: 9th November

So… how was your week?

For people who might stumble upon this in the future, this review is being written in the direct aftermath of America looking at a female prosecutor and a convicted felon who a court has determined to be a literal rapist who also has people who study the rise of Adolf Hitler going “Hey, this guy feels familiar” and decided to give the fascist the practically endless power of the United States presidency so I’ve been a little depressed lately (and I’m not even from the US so god knows how I’d feel if I had to live in the same country that did that). It’s been a hard week full of intense emotions with a lot of people just feeling like the world is crumbling around them… seems like a perfect time to go watch the sequel to a movie about how mental illness can drive you to the brink of suicide and beyond, because it seemed like a more fitting option than that cute looking movie about round robots who raise ducks.

Content warning, this film deals heavily with ideas of suicide and mental illness and those will need to be discussed in order to properly discuss this movie. If that is too much for you… this movie will be too much for you, there’s your review. If even reading this far has stirred up emotions, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or the service in your country.

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leebutler Drama, Horror, Review

The Substance (2024) – Substantially Brilliant

Released: 19th September
Seen: 19th October

In April 2015, the show Inside Amy Schumer aired an episode titled “Last Fuckable Day” which contained a sketch featuring Amy alongside iconic actresses Tina Fey, Julia-Louis Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette. In the sketch Amy comes upon Tina, Julia and Patricia celebrating Julia’s Last Fuckable Day, the day that an actress goes from being considered fuckable to just being considered an elderly woman reserved for mother roles. It’s a hilarious and scathing indictment of the very real agist sexism that pervades the entertainment industry and how it treats women. Over the years there’s been several ways to talk about the culture’s obsession with looks, youth and fuckability in the media. Still, for the longest time the strongest indictment I saw came from this silly mid-2010’s sketch comedy series… and now we have The Substance, proving that horror is still the best genre for exploring complex concepts like this.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Terrifier 3 (2024) – Merry Christ-mass Murder

Released: 11th October
Seen: 12th October

Two years ago something insane happened (in the world of cinema, something insane happens in the real world every other week lately). To the shock of almost everyone, a gonzo gorefest horror film was released worldwide in major cinemas and made over 15 million at the box office. Sure 15 million might not sound like a lot but when you’re made on a budget of 250K and are the sequel to an underground horror film that’s so extreme that even horror fans might wonder if it’s going too far, that’s wildly impressive. Terrifier 2 was an undeniable moment for horror, the moment we had to enter Art the Clown into the pantheon of great horror icons (and in general deliver one of the best performances of 2022. Since then, he’s only grown in popularity. He’s appeared in sitcoms, there’s merchandise with his horrific face all over it, and he’s a character in the latest Call of Duty game, it’s fair to say that he’s broken out of the underground and into the mainstream so it’s no shock that he would come back to the cinemas to remind us why Art the Clown is horror royalty.

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leebutler Drama, Horror, Review, Thriller

In A Violent Nature (2024) – Follow Friday

Released: 1st August
Seen: 3rd August

2009 is the last year that we got a Friday the 13th film in theaters. This franchise dominated the 80s and created an icon of horror cinema but has been dormant for 15 years. 15 years without an entry in a franchise known for being cheap to make and an almost certain bet at the box office is insane. The only thing that we’ve had from this franchise in that time has been a couple of fan films and a video game in 2017. That video game was an asymmetrical game where one player got to be Jason while everyone else played counselors and that design choice left the people making the game with a bit of a dilemma. 

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review, Sci-Fi

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) – Timely

Released: 25th July
Seen: 27th July

Six years ago, a little independent film called Deadpool 2 was released to cinemas, doing incredible business and cementing the legendary Merc with the Mouth as an iconic addition to the superhero genre. I know it feels like an absolute eternity since 2018, it was a different time before a plague basically upended our world and changed absolutely everything but you have to remember that 2018-2019 was probably the peak era of the modern Superhero genre, culminating in the cataclysmic cinematic event known as Avengers: Infinity War, followed a year later by Avengers: Endgame. Looking back with the gift of hindsight, Endgame marked the point where the superhero genre peaked and it’s probably never going to be that great again but at the time it felt like there would be no end and surely the next big thing would be another Deadpool movie. Surely it would be, Deadpool 2 was the 5th highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office, it was so popular they re-released it with new footage to make a Christmas movie, surely this meant that we’d get another run around with the funny red menace.

…then the plague happened, no one wanted to go to the movies anymore and Superhero films entered a slump. 

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leebutler Crime, Horror, Review

Maxxxine (2024) – I’m A Star…?

Released: 11th July
Seen: 14th July

In March of 2022, the world was introduced to Maxine Minx in a little horror film called X. The film revolved around a group of people making a porno film on a farm that they were renting from an elderly couple – an elderly couple that would go on to murder most of the people making that film except for final girl Maxine Minx. X was a fascinating film, combining a classic 1970s-era slasher film with the rise of Porno-Chic that was occurring around that era thanks to films like Deep Throat or The Devil in Miss Jones and contained one of the most fascinating slasher villains in the form of Pearl, an elderly woman who resented the sexual freedom of the young people who were on her farm. Something else that set X apart was a post-credits scene that revealed that not only would there be another film in this setting, but that it had already been filmed and would be released 6 months later. 

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Review

Inside Out 2 (2024) – Deep Thoughts

Released: 13th June
Seen: 30th June

In 2015 Pixar released Inside Out, a fascinating film that explained the complex concept of emotions in a funny, heartwarming way and was incredibly accessible for people to understand. In my humble opinion, it’s also the best thing that Pixar has put out that didn’t include Woody or Buzz Lightyear. It was truly a miracle of a film that has some of the most beautiful imagery and emotional beats (Seriously, you want to make me cry like a baby in under 10 seconds? Just start singing “Who’s your friend who likes to play?” and I’ll lose my damn mind). It was about as close to perfect as you could get from the Pixar people and it made so much money that it was inevitable a sequel would happen. It took almost a full decade for them to make it happen but now we finally have our follow-up to the emotional rollercoaster that was Inside Out and fortunately, Inside Out 2 manages to live up to the expectations that were set for it.

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