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

The Toxic Avenger (2025) – I Love You Toxie

Released: 29th August
Seen: 30th August

In 1984, a little independent film company known as Troma released a film that would change the course of the company forever. What started as a little low-budget horror film tentatively titled Health Club Horror would be released with the more memorable name The Toxic Avenger. To say that this film became a cult hit would be a massive understatement. The Toxic Avenger was the kind of cult hit that defined Troma. Toxie would turn into their official mascot and appear in several other movies. The Toxic Avenger would also turn up in other media, video games, comic books, a hit off-Broadway musical and even a Saturday morning children’s cartoon named The Toxic Crusaders. 40 years later and a certain subsection of the world still loves this big green freak in his torn up tutu, so much so that it almost feels inevitable that Hollywood was going to remake this little underground film because that’s just what happens to these cult films, someone will always try to recreate the lightning in a bottle that the original somehow had… so imagine my shock when they actually pulled off the magic trick of making this film work!

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Novocaine No Pain (2025) – Painless

Released: 13th March
Seen: 9th August

Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) is a rare medical condition that basically makes the person who is born with it (as it’s a genetic disease) unable to feel pain. On the one hand, this sounds like a great thing, a life without pain sounds good in theory, but in practice, it means that it’s easy to do things like bite off sections of your tongue or burn yourself without ever noticing you’re doing it. It’s the kind of medical condition that’s a favourite of strange medical shows because what show isn’t going to love a story about someone who doesn’t feel pain. It doesn’t seem to get much time in the sun when it comes to cinema, though, until Novocaine No Pain (which is what the movie Novocaine has been titled in Australia, for reasons that make no sense) which is possibly the first CIP Action Comedy and it’s just generally fantastic.

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

A Minecraft Movie (2025) – Loading…

Released: 3rd April
Seen: 22nd June

Is there even any point to doing this? No, seriously, was there any point for any reviewer to even consider touching this movie? Sure, I’m reviewing it several months after it was a phenomenon, largely because there is no way in hell I was going to be in a cinema while a bunch of people went insane for a zombie jockey on a chicken, but even when it was just coming out, what was the point of reviewing it? A movie based on Minecraft is one of those things that’s almost certainly never going to be some kind of critical darling but no matter what it was going to make a shitload of money. Not only did it end up doing that (Currently it’s the highest grossing film of the goddamn year) but it ended up being responsible for the trashing of several cinemas when audiences forgot how to watch a damn movie and lost their minds during a scene where a zombie boy rides a chicken. A Minecraft Movie is review-proof, there is no point… except that I saw it and I just have to ask, am I old now? Am I too old for this? Have I aged out of stupid childish trash? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Elio (2025) – Space!

Released: 19th June
Seen: 23rd June

Original movies are becoming something of a rarity these days, either relegated to the indie circuit or they have to be made by some well-known auteur who has enough cache to get his weird original concepts past the studio system. Look at the top 10 highest-grossing films of this year, with the notable exception of Sinners, they’re all either sequels, remakes or based on a very well-known piece of IP. It’s a sad reality that audiences just aren’t going to see original films at the rate that they used to. There could be many reasons for this, a run on effect of higher theatre ticket prices meaning people want as close to a sure bet as they can get, part of the post-Covid era issues, it could be related to the rise of streaming or the saturation of the market or it could even just be a horrible self fulfilling prophecy where the big studios don’t advertise their original films that well so people don’t know about them. Case in point, did you know there was a brand new original Pixar film in cinemas right now that’s not a sequel to Toy Story or any of their other classics and that it’s also deliriously charming? Well, now you do.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

One Of Them Days (2025) – Best Buds

Released: 6th March
Seen: 16th June

The buddy comedy is a staple of cinema that has created absolute legends of the genre. Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Cheech & Chong, some truly iconic comedy pairings have been the backbone of this genre. It’s a genre that lives and dies on the chemistry of the two leads; a truly great comedic pairing can make any film work even if the script isn’t that good. Entire careers have been made just from how good a couple of actors bounce off each other. It’s a tricky thing to make work, but when the stars align, you can get something pretty special. In One Of Them Days, we get to introduce the new comedic coupling of Keke Palmer and Sza, a double act that I don’t think anyone really would’ve expected to happen, but now that it exists, it’s actually pretty amazing to behold.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Review, Romance

Love Hurts (2025) – Painful

Released: 6th February
Seen: 31st May

It’s always kind of fascinating to see what film an Oscar winner chooses as their big follow up, the movie they put themselves front and centre for that can basically be advertised with the phrase “Starring Oscar Winner”. Sometimes it can be an important personal work of art that the actor managed to finally get produced because they have an Oscar to their name, sometimes it’s a fun romp that shows they have a wide range outside of the film that got them the award in the first place… sadly, often times, the big follow up to an Oscar-winning performance is a massive dud that feels like it’s wasting it’s big star. Love Hurts does something really impressive in that it feels like it’s wasting two Oscar winners and that’s the only impressive thing it does for its entire runtime.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Screamboat (2025) – Oh Boy!

Released: 2nd April
Seen: 26th May

On the 28th of December last year, I subjected myself to the absolutely horrific piece of garbage known as The Mouse Trap which had the distinct honour of being the first horror film to take advantage of the fact that Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. That film was so god awful that it made it to the top of my worst of the year list, an honour it would’ve gotten even if last year was a normal year for me where there were 10 films on such a list. It was a truly putrid film that was the perfect example of a film made to cheaply cash in on something being public domain. No cleverness, no joy, just a shitty generic slasher with a Mickey Mouse mask on because you could legally get away with it. At the end of my review of that “film” I pointed out that the next film that was going to play with the idea of Mickey Mouse as a killer would be called Screamboat and all I wanted was for it to be somewhat better than The Mouse Trap was…well, Screamboat is the exact film I was hoping for when I heard that they were making a horror movie about Steamboat Willie.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Another Simple Favour (2025) – Meh-mbo Italiano

Released: 1st May
Seen: 13th May

In 2018 a little film called A Simple Favour came out to rapturous applause. A fun, extravagant murder mystery thriller with a pair of female leads at the top of their game that delivered on every single front, it was a smash hit all around. I personally loved it so much that I named it the best film of the year that it came out and it came out in the same year that Avengers: Infinity War came out so the bar was high. That was 7 years ago, with the additional time and looking back on their cultural impact I have to admit that maybe I put it too high on the list (lists of that nature are never perfect, merely reflecting the critics belief in the moment they create the list) but I still stand by it being an absolutely brilliant movie that probably should’ve had a sequel years ago. We finally have got one, but was the wait too long for another favour?

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Heart Eyes (2025) – Love

Released: 13th February
Seen: 13th May

The Holiday Slasher is an idea that basically defined the boom period of the slasher genre back in the 80s, the idea being that a producer could just pick any random holiday and make a movie around it. This simple idea led us down the rabbit hole of My Bloody Valentine, Leprechaun, Silent Night Deadly Night, Thanksgiving and about a hundred other horror films of varying quality. Of course, lately there’s been a lot less of this kind of film, mostly because every holiday was already handled by a film from the 80s, so there’s not much new territory to tread on here. If you can’t do something new though, at least do something fun, and Heart Eyes is doing something very fun.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Horror, Review

The Ugly Stepsister (2025) – Cinder-hell-a

Released: 9th May
Seen: 11th May

The story of Cinderella is one that’s been told more times than anyone would be insane enough to count. It’s been animated, it’s been turned into multiple musicals, it’s been parodied and referenced and put in every position that the insane creative mind can consider. It’s even been the subject of many horror films over the years, which makes sense considering the Brothers Grimm iteration of the story is particularly brutal. Indeed several major versions of the story lean into some pretty violent imagery, the Into The Woods version of the story has the stepsisters cutting off their heels in a direct reference to the Brothers Grimm while the Revolting Rhymes version by Roald Dahl had the prince lopping off heads, so this is a story that’s perfect for a horror retelling. The Ugly Stepsister tackles the story from the genre of Body Horror and does a beautiful job at it.

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