leebutler Comedy, Musical, Review

Dicks: The Musical (2023) – Absolutely Nuts

Released: 7th December
Seen: 5th December

Dicks: The Musical Info

In 2014 Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson put on a two-man show called F***ing Identical Twins. The show ended up being noticed by someone at 20th Century Fox and was bought in 2016 with the intent of being turned into a musical… and then the Fox-Disney merger happened, a lot of projects got thrown around like metaphors in a desperate writer’s head and soon the project landed at A24 where it got a rename, a high-end cast complete with Tony and Emmy winners galore and legendary comedy director Larry Charles. With a combination like that behind it, it should’ve been inevitable that Dicks: The Musical would turn out to be one of the funniest movies to hit cinemas in recent years.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

Saltburn (2023) – Brilliance On The Dance Floor

Released: 16th November
Seen: 24th November

In 2021, Emerald Fennell released Promising Young Woman, which quickly became one of my favourite films that I’ve ever been able to review. The year it came out I proclaimed it the second best film of the year, had the fourth best performance of the year and was adamant that the film should win every single Oscar it was nominated for. I was an evangelist for the film and when talking about it on the Best List I said, quote “if Emerald Fenell walks into your office and asks to make a movie, you hand that woman a blank cheque and let her go wild”… It’s clear that someone was listening to this request, because if Saltburn isn’t what happens when Emerald Fennell goes wild, I don’t know what is.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Quiz Lady (2023) – Correct Answer

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

Released: 3rd November
Seen: 7th November

Quiz Lady Info

You know what we really don’t have enough of lately? Simple original comedy films. Not something based on an IP or a remake of an old film but just a quirky little comedy that allows a couple of celebs to show off their comedic chops for 90 minutes. It’s kind of surprising because there used to be a time where every other week seemed to have some wild new original comedy that would give people a good break from the world and now the closest we get are genre mashups with a few punchlines. That’s why it felt like such a breath of fresh air to see something like Quiz Lady being released, a simple comedy with a couple of good stars and a fun/simple premise that seems like it should be rife with comedic potential… and it is, it’s nice when this opening paragraph doesn’t need to have a sudden sharp turn at the end for dramatic purposes, this is just nice.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

You Hurt My Feelings (2023) – Wo-o-o Feelings

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

Released: 15th June
Seen: 4th November

One thing that’s particularly hard to talk about is films with low stakes. Films where people are just trying to get by in a small everyday situation where there isn’t much being risked are often the kinds of films that are perfectly fine enough but don’t have much that you can really sink your teeth into in order to talk about. Maybe a smarter reviewer would have set up something so that films like this could be bunched together in a single post instead of trying to turn “It’s fine” into a thousand-word review… this isn’t a site run by a smarter reviewer, this site is run by a big dumb dummy who thought it would be a good idea to do a lengthy individual review on every film that is seen in a given year so now I will attempt to find ways to talk about You Hurt My Feelings for more than a few paragraphs, which is going to be a challenge but one worth trying.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Old Dads (2023) – Retire

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

Released: 20th October
Seen: 1st November

Every now and then a stand-up comic takes a chance and makes a leap from the stages of the comedy clubs to the bright lights of Hollywood to star in movies. So many greats have tried this, legends like Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy all have shown you can be great at stand up and as a movie actor. Others take their stand-up acts and turn it into a movie or TV show, this is how we got Seinfeld, The Machine or Trainwreck. Sometimes though people take the personality they’ve created for the stage and craft an entire movie around it, which can sometimes work wonderfully – and sometimes you get something like Old Dads, a film that takes Bill Burr’s style of angry comedy and fits it around the eternally fun conversation of how different the generations are… that’s a topic that never gets old, no sir.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023) – Leave On Read

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

Released: 11th May
Seen: 10th October

Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023) Info

In 2018 the film Book Club came out and was a huge hit. On a budget of 14 million, it grossed around 100 million, so it was pretty obvious that the industry was going to probably try and capitalize on that success. It seems like a simple enough idea, just get a bunch of legendary Oscar Winning/Nominated actresses who are over 60 together and put them in a silly little comedy, it’s how we got 80 For Brady and a few other films that make up something that the video essay channel Be Kind Rewind has dubbed the Book Club movie. Of course, with a profit that big it seemed inevitable that the quartet of Book Club women would be brought back to make another film. Sure enough they made one and… eh, it exists.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Totally Killer (2023) – Tubular

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

Released: 6th October
Seen: 7th October

One of the most fun additions to the horror genre recently has been when someone takes a classic supernatural comedy film and throws a serial killer in the middle of it. Groundhog Day with a serial killer? You get Happy Death Day. Freaky Friday with a serial killer? You get Freaky. It’s insanely simple to pull this off, half the work was done in the 80s so changing it from a zany comedy to a camp slasher is a fun new addition that we need a lot more of. There’s also some upcoming stuff like Caddy Hack, a horror version of the classic comedy Caddyshack and something called Time Cut which sounds like it’s going to be a spin on Back to the Future but with a serial killer… but apparently, that film has been waiting too long because it got beaten to the punch by Totally Killer and the bar is now set pretty damn high.

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leebutler Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Review

Renfield (2023) – Bitingly Funny

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

Released: 6th April
Seen: 6th October

Renfield Info

Ever since Bram Stoker printed his legendary novel Dracula, people have been doing wild and crazy things with the character. He’s one of the true greats of horror literature, the first Universal movie monster and a blueprint for pretty much every vampire that’s been used in modern media. He’s been the star of films, TV series, video games and even a musical. The uses for the character are endless and constant, hell a single chapter of the book ended up being made into The Last Voyage of the Demeter which is one of the best horror films of the year so it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of great ways to utilize this character and his world… and now, finally someone looked at the books and said “Wait, what about an entire film about Dracula’s butt monkey, Renfield?” and thus we get the absolutely glorious, sadly underseen, Renfield.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Haunted Mansion (2023) – Rich

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: 31st August
Seen: 21st September

Haunted Mansion Info

The Haunted Mansion is probably one of the most famous theme park attractions of all time. It’s so well known that even people who have never actually visited the park it’s built in at least know a few of its iconic visuals, like the ballroom full of ghosts or the elongating rooms. It’s such an iconic ride that it was inevitable that it’d inspire a movie and in 2003 it ended up doing so with The Haunted Mansion, a film that was certainly financially successful but was critically panned and not looked back on fondly by most (though it does have a cult following). The property would remain untouched in cinematic form for years until 2021 when the Muppets took a crack at it and, while their version only lasted a little under an hour, it was still well received by a lot of people and maybe gave Disney confidence they needed to really believe in another cinematic version of Haunted Mansion… and it’s a good thing they did because the new version is surprisingly good.

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