leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Netflix, Review

The Monkey King (2023) – Royalty

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: 2nd February
Seen: 9th September

The Monkey King Info

Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese story that follows the adventures of four major characters, Tripitaka, Pigsy, Sandy and The Monkey King. This story is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese novels of all time, has been translated into an abridged English language version, is the subject of multiple adaptations in every medium you could think of and is a truly important piece of work that I haven’t read or even heard about before doing background research for this review of the Netflix animated film The Monkey King, which adapts that characters specific story from the original text. It’s important to tell you that I have not read the original text because I cannot tell you if this is a faithful adaptation of it (though based on the Wikipedia description, it seems to get the core beats of the story correctly) but I can tell you if it’s a good kids movie… which it is.

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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 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 Adventure, Biography, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, History

My Barbenheimer Experience

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.

There really is nothing quite like a good old double feature. Two films intentionally curated to be screened back to back and shared by a collective audience who can use one film to build up to another, it’s an idea so fundamental to the film-going experience that at least one film has opened with a song dedicated to the glory of double features (albeit ones of the Science Fiction variety). 

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation

Nimona (2023) – Metal!

Released: 30th June
Seen: 3rd July

The fact that Nimona exists today at all should legally be considered a miracle just based on what it’s been through to get to a screen. Starting life as a webcomic, the film rights were bought in 2015 by Blue Sky Pictures, a Fox company that was planning on making a movie out of it, and had everything gone the way it was originally supposed to, that film would’ve come out in early 2020. Now, if you know your history of insane company acquisitions, you’ll know that in 2019, Disney bought Fox and with that purchase now has ownership of everything Fox has ever made or was making at the time (though let’s be real, they did it because it was the only way for them to get hold of certain Marvel properties that they knew they’d want eventually). This purchase meant that Disney owned Nimona now, and that’s where the trouble started.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Review

Elemental (2023) – Elementary

Released: 15th June
Seen: 22nd June

When it comes to releasing quality films, there are very few studios that could be labeled as sure bets. Studios that, more often than not, are somewhat of a marker for quality films. If you’re a horror fan and see Blumhouse, you’ve got a good shot. People who might call themselves Cinephiles perk up seeing A24, Superhero buffs rush to Marvel films, it’s just a fact that some studio markers will get people paying attention and the kings of that in family film for the last few decades have been Disney/Pixar who has basically just released great films non-stop for decades. Even with their most recent releases having trouble at the box office, they’re still making good quality films that capture the imagination and test the limits of the 3D animation software that they use, and with Elemental they’ve absolutely pulled that off again.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Review

The Flash (2023) – Flash In The Pan

Released: 15th June
Seen: 20th June

The Flash Info

The Flash tells a very complicated story, both on and off-screen (but we’ll get to the off-screen stuff later). The story starts with Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) who is still dealing with the after-effects of being part of the Justice League, basically meaning he has to be on call whenever Bruce Wayne needs backup AKA someone to speedily clean up after his mess. Between those jobs he is doing what Barry Allen always does, calling his father who is in jail for murdering Barry’s mother (a crime he didn’t do) and trying to find evidence to prove his innocence. Somehow, Barry learns that his speed powers can be used to go back in time which means he should be able to go back in time to save his mom’s life… unfortunately, that also means he has somehow changed the world in ways he will have to spend the entire film dealing with.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review

Mad Heidi (2023) – Good and Cheesey

Copy provided for review
Seen: 10th June

In 1880, author Johanna Spyri wrote the first book in the Heidi series. The story of a little orphan girl who lived in the Alps was immensely popular, one of the most famous pieces of Swedish literature ever printed and has been adapted to film multiple times over the years. The character of Heidi in particular has this image of innocence that’s so powerful that one of the most famous people to play her in a movie was Shirley Temple and after so many adaptations it becomes harder and harder to find a new angle on how to approach the story of Heidi. However, much like the recent season of Drag Race showed us that there’s a lot of fun in being a demented version of Shirley Temple, Mad Heidi shows off just how much fun it can be to take a character as innocent as Heidi and throw her into the world of glorious 70’s exploitation cinema!

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Review

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023) – Net Positive

Released: 1st June
Seen: 1st June

It’s kind of wild to think about how different things were in December of 2018, both in terms of general worldwide issues and in the pop-culture landscape. Obviously, we didn’t know at the time that we were about a year away from experiencing one of the biggest worldwide events in human history, weren’t to know that the simmering of fascism that popped up in small places was going to become an overwhelming constant nightmare that would seemingly never end and in the world of pop culture we’d all just experienced the absolute shock that was Infinity War. 

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leebutler Adventure, Family, Fantasy, Review

The Little Mermaid (2023) – Part Of Our World

Released: 25th May
Seen: 25th May

When people talk about the Disney Renaissance, they are talking about a very specific period of time from 1989 to 1999 when Disney released hit after hit with stunning regularity. Ten films over a ten-year period that would revive the Disney brand in a way that basically set the stage for its eventual dominance over the industry today. It could be argued that without the Disney Renaissance, we wouldn’t have the MCU that dominates the landscape today.

Even the worst film in the Disney Renaissance is better than most other films from the same time period, it’s truly a remarkable time in cinema history and it all started with a simple film about a mermaid who wanted to be where the people were… and because Disney has decided exploiting it’s back catalog is a substitute for good film making, we now have a remake of The Little Mermaid, the film that started this Renaissance. In somewhat of a miracle, it’s not actually that bad.

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