leebutler Action, Biopic, Drama, History, Sport

The Smashing Machine (2025) – Oh, Smashing

Released: 2nd October 2025
Seen: 9th February 2026

Over the last several decades, one of the biggest names in cinema has been The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson. His films have grossed billions of dollars; he is currently the 10th-highest-grossing actor of all time, and he did all that without having to appear in a Marvel film or anything involving Avatar. He’s one of the highest paid, most recognisable and most beloved film stars of recent years… but he’s not a great actor. Let’s be honest, no one’s ever accused him of giving a transformative performance in his entire career; the man is a personality who effectively plays himself in every single film he ever appears in. Now this isn’t a bad thing per se, a lot of very famous actors are kind of known for playing themselves in every film that they do (Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Will Ferrell just to name the first three that come to mind). With Dwayne Johnson, however, it comes with the fact that he not only plays the same character, but he’s doing it at a time when his wrestler-turned-actor contemporaries John Cena and Dave Bautista are delivering genuinely great, layered acting performances that demonstrate a range that Dwayne just hasn’t been able to do. What Dwayne’s been needing for quite some time is a chance to show off his skills, to stretch himself and prove that he isn’t just a one-trick pony… The Smashing Machine does kind of prove that, but in a way that also really shows off his limitations

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leebutler Drama, Review

Sentimental Value (2025) – Intriguing

Released: 25th December 2025
Seen: 28th February 2026

It’s often hard to figure out how to open these reviews; the style developed almost a decade ago out of an understanding that a single paragraph would be placed above the fold, and I’ve just carried that on like it was a standard element of writing. Something that just happened several years ago for no particular reason is now locked in, will probably be standard until something dramatic changes, and I’m forced to re-evaluate how things are done… You could consider that process to be something of an imperfect metaphor for Sentimental Value, a film that revolves around the idea of how things that happened in the past can still have a massive impact on people several years later. Is it the best metaphor out there? No, is it the best I could do for this opening paragraph that inevitably means nothing other than tone setting for the rest of the review? Also no, but it’s what we’ve got.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) – Rosy

Released: 7th August 2025
Seen: 27th February 2026

We all know the famous phrase “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That phrase feels more relevant today than ever, where everything just feels constantly overwhelming. Burnout is real and is not only happening in people’s professional lives but in their personal ones. Day-to-day events just pile up in a way that feels insurmountable and unfixable because the people who could fix them are unavailable. That’s a feeling that we’ve all had before and it’s the kind of emotional destruction that could make for a fascinating film, or at least a fascinating performance, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fortunately both of those things.

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leebutler Biography, Drama, History, Review, Romance

Hamnet (2026) – To Be Or Not to Be

Released: 15th January
Seen: 13th February

In the history of the English language, there are few playwrights as revered as Shakespeare, it is often suggested that he is the greatest playwright in history and almost certain that his work has been adapted more times than any other writer. His work includes 39 plays, over 150 sonnets, 3 narrative poems, a few other verses and I’m sure someone will claim he also wrote the McDonald’s jingle at some point. He’s credited with creating several well known phrases (some have been misattributed to him, for more on that look up the fantastic Brows Held High video about Shakespeare that came out a while ago) and in general is just a major figure in history that will be remembered long after the rest of us are put on the compost heap and eaten by worms… oh, and also he had a wife who, hilariously, was named Anne Hathaway, but the movie Hamnet changed her name to Agnes because having a main character of your drama named after the star of The Princess Diaries would probably take away some of the potency of it.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Sport

Marty Supreme (2026) – Ping Pong Boy

Released: 22nd January
Seen: 7th February

In the history of cinema, the genre of the sports movie has presented us with some truly great films that stand the test of time. From A League Of Their Own to Air Bud, all genres and levels of prestige have been the subject of a good sports movie. Almost every sport you can think of has had a film focused on it, including table tennis. Of course, up till now, most table tennis films haven’t exactly been the most well-known; perhaps the biggest one would be Forrest Gump, but that’s not so much a table tennis film as it is a film where someone played table tennis at some point. Honestly, the sport of table tennis hasn’t had its big, sweeping, dramatic epic until now, and Marty Supreme is undeniably the ultimate in table tennis cinema.

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leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Review, Thriller

One Battle After Another (2025) – Great Battle

Released: 25th September
Seen: 21st December

As the year draws to a close, the time is soon approaching when we’re going to learn what the big awards contenders are. The ones that will sweep the upcoming ceremonies that will go down in history as one of the few films every year to get the title of “Oscar-nominated”. It’s always a little hard to guess exactly who the nominees are, hence why every single year there are articles printed about a couple of major snubs and surprises that no one saw coming. Other films, however, are pretty much guaranteed to be in the conversation from the second they turn up on the scene, and one such film that’s absolutely dominated any discussion about upcoming awards is the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not very hard to see why.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy

How To Train Your Dragon (2025) – Reproduction

Released: 12th June
Seen: 16th December

In 1998, Gus Van Sant remade Psycho. He had just come off the monster hit that was Good Will Hunting and used the reputation he had built to get Universal to foot the bill. The remake is infamous, a largely shot-for-shot remake that puts the film in colour and uses modern actors while replicating the original visual style as much as possible. The idea was to basically make fun of remakes, to show how it’s truly impossible to copy a film exactly as it originally was and have the same impact. That film definitely proved Gus Van Sant’s point because his remake of Psycho was a box office bomb and a critical punching bag. One would hope that maybe Gus’ experiment would’ve stopped others from trying to do the same thing again but no, we’ve lately been inundated with remakes of classic Disney films and now How To Train Your Dragon gets the same treatment and while it might be better than Psycho (1998), that doesn’t mean it deserves to exist.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) – Miraculous

Released: 12th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2019, Rian Johnson released Knives Out to an unsuspecting public, and the world embraced and fell in love with his all-star cast and murder mystery. It was a true masterpiece, a definitive work in the murder mystery genre that had people salivating for more. That’s when Netflix did one of the few truly cool things that they’ve done in a long time and gave Rian Johnson 400 million dollars to make two new entries in the franchise, the first one of those was Glass Onion in 2022, which was also absolutely brilliant and proved that Knives Out had genuine franchise potential. Now we’ve been blessed with Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in the Knives Out Franchise, and I’m fully at the point of insisting that Rian Johnson continue making these films until either he or Daniel Craig is no longer with us, because once again he’s made an actual masterpiece.

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

The Life Of Chuck (2025) – Oh Life

Released: 14th August
Seen: 11th December

When you think of a Stephen King story, you inevitably think of some weird horror story with a terrifying concept and a probably less than satisfying final act. You might also think of his sci-fi work, his grandiose epic The Dark Tower or The Stand. What might be thought of less are his dramatic works, despite them being adapted into truly grand movies. Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, movies that can genuinely surprise people when they learn it’s a Stephen King adaptation (I’ve literally seen this happen, I’ve shocked people by saying “The Green Mile is based on Stephen King). He doesn’t really get to flex his dramatic writing muscles as much because everyone generally wants a Stephen King book to be scary, but back in 2020 he released a novella called The Life of Chuck. The novella caught the eye of Mike Flanagan, who is one of the modern horror heroes, and he adapted it into a film of the same name which is certainly heartwarming but… well, let’s begin the review before I go into that.

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Review, Sci-Fi

Frankenstein (2025) – Monsterously Great

Released: 7th November
Seen: 28th November

The story of Frankenstein has been told so many times that, at this point, it’s actually a surprise when a full year goes by without someone attempting to tell their version of the legendary Mary Shelley tale, arguably the first science fiction story. Obviously, cinema’s love of this story began with the 1931 Universal classic by James Whale, but ever since then, it’s a well that people keep plunging their buckets into, hoping to extract something special. Of course, a lot of the time the well feels like it’s run dry because everyone has done every possible thing you could imagine with this character, there shouldn’t be anything new or interesting that could be done with him… but then along comes the legendary Guillermo Del Toro to use his special magic on the story and make it feel fresh once more.

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