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

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) – COWABUNGA!

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: 7th September
Seen: 13th September

By now the story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their creation is well known. From its start as an underground comic designed to parody superheroes to the legendary cartoon series that gave us the theme song that you are inevitably humming right now to the first movie that not only was a defining action film for a lot of childhoods but allowed New Line Cinema to go from a little independent company to one that was big enough that it could eventually make the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s an absolute phenomenon of a franchise that’s had several iterations over the years with various visual styles and tones that range from the dark and serious to the light and comedic. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem leans more towards light and comedic but also might be the best take on the franchise since the 1990 film.

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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 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 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 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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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

What’s Love Got To Do With It (2023) – Fine

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: 26th January
Seen: 11th August

Sometimes a film title is so strongly tied to the content of the film that the title enters a list of titles that probably should never be used again. Some titles just draw certain images to your mind, for example, a film could never reasonably be called “Philadelphia” again because everyone’s going to make a horrific AIDS joke about it. Some titles just have a link to a topic to them that can’t be ignored… this was the thought process I had when I heard that a film was coming out called What’s Love Got To Do With It? because that is the title of the legendary 1993 Tina Turner biopic and using that title for a silly little romcom felt like an insane choice. Having seen the film, it turns out that it’s not a big deal because something tells me that no one’s going to really remember that this one exists in a few years so there shouldn’t be any confusion happening.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

80 For Brady (2023) – Legendarily Average

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: 5th August

A sad truth about Hollywood is that older actresses tend to get nowhere near as many good roles as they deserve. It’s certainly getting better, last year alone had several great legendary older women turning out some great performances and even getting awards love for it but most of them are being relegated to either side characters or underwhelming grandma roles. Fortunately, there is a slowly growing subgenre of films that video essayist Be Kind Rewind has effectively dubbed Book Club films, which tend to include a group of assorted iconic actresses on a simple little adventure. The downside is that these films don’t really give these legendary actresses much to do beyond just hanging out together and getting a cheque – and in the case of 80 for Brady, four icons are relegated to a barely watchable Super Bowl advertisement.

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