leebutler Horror, Review

Perpetrator (2023) – School’s Out!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 1st September
Seen: 2nd September

Horror as a genre is an ever-evolving beast but one thing it’s always great at is metaphor, using the story of the film to touch on heavy topics that might be harder to do in other genres. Sometimes it can work well, the problem of racism, specifically the more insidious subtle racism done by people who believe they aren’t racists, was handled wonderfully in Get Out. Sometimes it fails pretty spectacularly, like the gallant attempt to explore sexism and specifically the crisis of rape on college campuses which was the focus of the last Black Christmas film and ended up just not working (because it was a bad film, not because it was doing politics). Perpetrator is more on the upper end of that spectrum in terms of quality and idea, but its execution is just a little underdone.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review

Vacation Friends 2 (2023) – Vacation Acquaintances

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 25th August
Seen: 31st August

In 2021 there was a half-decent little comedy called Vacation Friends, it was fun enough but also pretty average. Mostly it was a showcase for a quartet of comedic actors who managed to make for a pretty enjoyable time. Indeed that main quartet of actors is so objectively great that I may have said that I wanted a dozen more films with that exact set of actors because they had such great chemistry… and then a finger of the monkey’s paw curled slowly and my wish was granted. Stupid me forgetting to add “but not another film in this specific franchise” when I was wording that wish.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Love Again (2023) – Think Twice

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th May
Seen: 30th August

Celine Dion is arguably one of the world’s best singers, even if you don’t enjoy her music it’s hard to deny the raw power of her voice. She was one of the biggest artists in the 90s for a reason and has managed to maintain a huge fanbase for almost 40 years because when she’s in her element there are few who could compare. What’s kind of surprising is that despite her voice accompanying some of the biggest films of all time, she’s done very little on-camera work in the film world. Before now it’s been a couple of cameos in TV shows and singing backup for Miss Piggy in Muppets Most Wanted, that’s kind of been it until Love Again came along and said “What if we took our cute little romcom and made it have several scenes dedicated to exclaiming how great Celine Dion is?”

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

Beautiful Disaster (2023) – Ugly

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 29th August
Seen: 29th August

Since this blog isn’t a job so much as it is a very silly hobby, the idea of “morality” comes into deciding what films to watch/review. Sometimes a film will come out surrounded by controversy that just doesn’t feel like it’s worth dealing with (hence why Sound of Freedom isn’t getting a look, feels like no matter what I say about that film could end in an uncomfortable reaction for me), sometimes a film’s promotion will make it seem like it’s not something that would be fun to deal with (Notice there was never a Cuties review? Didn’t wanna dive into that set of landmines) and sometimes it’ll come out that a major person involved in the process is a complete asshole who doesn’t deserve the money. 

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Horror, Review

Beau Is Afraid (2023) – Creepy and Kooky

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 20th April
Seen: 27th August

Ari Aster is one of the most fascinating filmmakers in the horror genre today, one of the people who rode the wave of the recent trend of “Elevate horror” with his fascinating films Hereditary and Midsommar. His films are known for being strange, dark, twisted nightmares with leading performances that get horrifically snubbed whenever award season comes around (The fact that Toni Collette didn’t get an Oscar for Hereditary is a crime that will be dealt with by the Hague when the time comes). With two hit films under his belt and being somewhat of a darling at A24, it stands to reason that Ari has built up more than enough clout to get away with a film that would normally never get made because it was too weird, even for A24. Ari seems to have used that clout to get Beau Is Afraid made and no matter what you might think about it, the fact it got made at all is something special.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Review, Thriller

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) – Ruse of Ritchie

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 12th January
Seen: 26th August

A few years ago, Guy Ritchie released a film called Wrath of Man which I may have called the most average Guy Ritchie film ever made, a film that just takes all the tropes one thinks of when they think of a Guy Ritchie film and does them as casually as possible. It felt especially average since it was the first film that the director made after The Gentlemen, which is still one of the most enjoyable films in his filmography. Well turns out there might be some competition for the title of “Most average Guy Ritchie film” with Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre… though it absolutely wins the award for stupidest film title, so there’s that.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Drama, Review

65 (2023) – Bleh!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 27th July
Seen: 24th August

The writing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods earned a special place in modern horror history when they wrote the script for the incredible film The Quiet Place, to this date still one of the tensest films this reviewer has had the delight of seeing. While the finished film shares that credit with John Krasinski (who did a rewrite of Beck and Woods’ script), the core concept came from this dynamic duo who would follow it up with a pretty enjoyable horror film called Haunt, proving they had some pretty great ideas in their back pockets ready to go. So with those two men behind the script and directorial duties for 65, along with a lead performance by Adam Driver and a concept involving space travel and dinosaurs you would think this would lead to something of a fun time… you would be wrong, fun implies feeling and that’s not something 65 elicits easily.

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leebutler Fantasy, Horror, Review

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023) – Ship Shape

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 10th August
Seen: 23rd August

In the 1897 novel Dracula, chapter 7 spends most of its time presenting pages from a log from a ship known as the Demeter. The pages from the log show the events that took place on a ship carrying a large quantity of goods from Varna, Bulgaria all the way to Whitby, England. As the journal goes on it becomes apparent that the trip was hijacked by the titular Dracula who slowly picked off the crew. It’s a single chapter, barely even 3000 words long and basically just meant to explain how the titular vampire managed to make it from his home in Bulgaria to England in a time when the only way to do so would’ve been by boat. It’s the kind of thing that most adaptations might make into a quick 2-minute scene, maybe not even fully delve into all the details but the people behind The Last Voyage Of The Demeter looked at that 3000 words and realised that could make for a pretty fun horror flick and thus, we got this enjoyable little treat.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023) – Last Chance

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 9th February
Seen: 22nd August

In 2012 the movie Magic Mike came out, loosely based on Channing Tatum’s real-life history as a stripper. It was a massive hit that showed that a film about strippers could actually be something of a mainstream movie (though this reviewer would argue that it takes itself far too seriously and the only fun bits are the parts happening in the club, the film spends a little too much time talking about furniture repair and drugs to actually be fun) which naturally led to a sequel in 2015, Magic Mike XXL, a film that seemed to get that part of the enjoyment of stripper movies is that they’re cheesy and fun and mostly an excuse to get a bunch of very attractive people to dance in suggestive outfits (and this reviewer would argue it’s better than the original, certainly utilizes the talented ensemble cast’s comedic skills in ways that the first film didn’t). The sequel made so much money that it was inevitable that another sequel was going to happen, it’s just a little sad that it took about 8 years to get Magic Mike’s Last Dance and it ended up being kind of a dud.

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