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.

Continue reading “Beau Is Afraid (2023) – Creepy and Kooky” →
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.

Continue reading “65 (2023) – Bleh!” →
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.

Continue reading “Magic Mike’s Last Dance (2023) – Last Chance” →
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). 

Continue reading “My Barbenheimer Experience” →
leebutler Drama, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Missing (2023) – Found It

Released: 23rd February
Seen: 28th May

In 2018 a little film called Searching was released to an unsuspecting public. Now at the time we had a few films that used the “it’s happening on a computer screen” gimmick (also known as Screenlife) but none had used it quite as effectively as Searching did in order to tell a truly intense story of a kidnapping from the POV of a worried father trying to use technology in order to find his daughter. It was an undeniable hit, raking in about 75 million on a budget that was basically just a few go-pros and a pair of fairly well-known actors but with its creative presentation and twist-filled story, it managed to get enough attention that a franchise sprung forth. This is how we get the film Missing, a follow-up that proves that there is a lot more life left in this concept that can hopefully be explored.

Continue reading “Missing (2023) – Found It” →
leebutler Biography, Drama, History

Tetris (2023) – Fittingly Exciting

Released: 31st March
Seen: 22nd April

In 1985, back in the USSR, a man named Alexey Pajitnov was tasked with testing out a new piece of hardware to figure out what it was capable of. Of the many things he tried, one thing he did was make a game where a set of blocks fell from the sky in random shapes consisting of four squares and if you lined them up, those blocks would disappear. That game was called Tetris and for a game that is such a ubiquitous part of gaming, the story of how it ended up managing to be released outside the Soviet Union (that’s how long ago this was, Russia was still the Soviet Union at the time) is absolutely bonkers and told wonderfully in the movie Tetris… shame because I was hoping the Tetris movie would be an insane attempt to turn the actual game into a narrative but hey, a biopic works too.

Continue reading “Tetris (2023) – Fittingly Exciting” →
leebutler Drama, Sport

Air (2023) – Let’s Get Some Shoes

Released: 5th April
Seen: 17th April

Air Info

In the history of sports, there are a handful of people who are so talented at what they do that it transcends the world of sports and they just become a part of the culture, and there is no one in history who exemplifies that more than Michael Jordan. Even if you don’t know a damn thing about basketball, even if you’ve never seen a single game and couldn’t give a single solitary crap about any of it you know who Michael Jordan was. He is widely considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time, some might even argue that he’s the greatest sportsman of all time. 

Continue reading “Air (2023) – Let’s Get Some Shoes” →
leebutler Biography, Drama, Family, Review

Dog Gone (2023) – Doggone It!

Released: 23rd March
Seen: 28th March

Dog Gone Info

It’s slowly starting to feel like the mortal enemy of this reviewer is dog-based films. No idea why, dogs are better than people and are truly precious on every level so surely just telling a story about a cute doggie doing cute doggie things should be enough to make for a nice movie but it seems like it’s just not to be. Films that use dead dogs as a plot point, boring but overall fine stories about police dogs and even films about dog shows that end up being pulled from cinemas to remove a joke that people compared to child grooming have all come out in the time that this blog has existed and every time the film is either irritating or bland or irritatingly bland. So, where does Dog Gone fit in? Honestly, it’s harmless… harmlessly bland.

Continue reading “Dog Gone (2023) – Doggone It!” →
leebutler Action, Drama, Review

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – Right Into The Dangerzone

Released: 26th May, 2022
Seen: 26th February 2023

Top Gun Maverick (2022) Info

The second biggest movie worldwide of 2022 was Top Gun: Maverick, a surprise sequel that comes 36 years after the classic 80s film that most people would remember as “The one with Dangerzone and that homoerotic beach volleyball scene”. It was an undeniable smash hit, heralded as the film that saved cinema after the pandemic seemingly destroyed it (indeed, it’s the second film since the start of the pandemic to cross a billion at the box office). It was truly the biggest story in cinema in 2022 and I pointedly didn’t go see it. 

Continue reading “Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – Right Into The Dangerzone” →
leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

Triangle of Sadness (2023) – Eat The Rich

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 7th February

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the rich are a bunch of bastards, very few who aren’t either rich themselves or a bunch of pathetic bootlickers could argue with that idea. In our capitalist society it turns out that most of the problems that we have as a people are basically due to the actions of a handful of obscenely wealthy people (emphasis on ‘obscene’). The only good thing about these people is that they make for excellent comedy fodder, after all who the hell is going to be offended by a joke at the expense of a billionaire… other than the aforementioned bootlickers. 

Continue reading “Triangle of Sadness (2023) – Eat The Rich” →