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

Mickey 17 (2025) – Hey Mickey

Released: 6th March
Seen: 23rd March

Mickey 17 Info Image Directed and Written By - Bong Joon Ho Starring - Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun

In 2020, the Oscars did something genuinely cool. For the first time in the history of the ceremony, a non-English language film won Best Picture, a moment that might be the last actually good thing to happen in 2020. The film in question, Parasite, took home four awards that night for Screenplay, Directing, International film and Best Picture. The director, Bong Joon ho, instantly became a major player and whatever film he made after Parasite was going to be a big deal so we all waited for over half a decade for his next big feature film. That film has finally come out after half a decade and as expected, Bong Joon Ho has delivered something truly spectacular in his latest work, Mickey 17.

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leebutler Biography, Fantasy, Music, Musical, Review

Better Man (2024) – A Different Man

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 24th February 2025

Biopics in general have never been my thing, mostly because they’re pretty much all the same. A performer gets famous, does a lot of drugs, pisses off a lot of people before finally pulling through and becoming the superstar that was worthy of making a biopic about. It’s all the same and only ever becomes interesting based on the lead actor’s performance. It’s such a predictable formula you can almost guess what song will be performed after each drug-taking montage if you know enough of the main musician’s hit songs. The only biopic in recent memory that was actually good enough to make me enjoy it would be Rocketman which took the life of Elton John and turned it into a lavish musical that ignored the constraints of linear time to present the story of Elton’s life. I’ve been genuinely waiting for someone to look at that movie and steal what made it work to see if it could be replicated, imagine my surprise when Take That bad boy Robbie Williams did that exact thing and threw in a CGI monkey just for the fucking hell of it.

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leebutler Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Nosferatu (2025) – A Symphony Of Brilliance

Released: 1st January
Seen: 3rd February

The 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror feels like some kind of miracle, namely that we still have access to the film at all. Made in Germany as an unofficial adaptation of the Dracula novel, the original film was the subject of a copyright lawsuit brought on by Bram Stroker’s widow and all copies were supposed to be destroyed by fire. Somehow, a few copies of the film managed to survive and would soon be circulated around the world where it would become not only a cinematic classic but one of the most influential horror films of all time. People have referenced Nosferatu for almost a century now, the infamous shot of Count Orlock’s shadow against the wall with his fingers stretched out alone has been copied by more films than one would dare count and so many vampire films have copied the visual appearance of Count Orlok to some degree. It’s a film that has influenced many and even been the subject of a few remakes, including this remake by Robert Eggers which manages to take the classic material and elevate it in a way only Eggers can.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review

Moana 2 (2024) – You’re Welcome

Released: 27th November
Seen: 15th December

In the screening for Moana 2 that I went to, the cinema was pretty packed with a ton of parents bringing their children to see the sequel to the 2016 original. Kids who were so young that it’s possible they weren’t even alive when the original Moana came out. These kids probably have only seen a handful of films in their life and one of them is going to be Moana 2, a formative feature film in their lives that will linger for a while as it introduces them to the magic of cinema. When you see little kids watching Moana 2 and see the joy it puts in their eyes, it’s kind of hard to say anything particularly negative about the film in general because it makes it clear how much it does not matter. The target audience does not care about critical reviews, they do not care about story structure or pacing because they’re just there to see this super awesome girl called Moana do some super awesome things and that’s great. I’m glad that Moana 2 is going to be a good first film for a lot of kids… I just wish it lived up to its potential to be a great first film.

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leebutler Fantasy, Musical, Review, Romance

Wicked: Part One (2024) – Green With Envy

Released: 1st August
Seen: 24th November

On October 30th 2003, the Gershwin Theatre presented the opening night performance of a little musical about a woman with green skin battling adversity and learning her true power through friendship with a hyperactive floating Barbie… that show was Wicked and to this day that show has captured audiences around the world. As of writing this sentence, it’s the second highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time, the fourth longest-running show in Broadway history and has been toured around the world so many times that it would be impossible to calculate just how many people have seen the show. It is a genre-defining artwork, one that has been talked about being turned into a movie since approximately 47 seconds after a movie producer heard Idina Menzel sing Defying Gravity for the first time and knew that this show needed to be captured on film… it’s taken them 20 years, it’s not the cast that they expected to get and it’s split a 2-hour-long stage show into two movies of 2+ hours each, but it looks like they absolutely nailed it.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Review

Inside Out 2 (2024) – Deep Thoughts

Released: 13th June
Seen: 30th June

In 2015 Pixar released Inside Out, a fascinating film that explained the complex concept of emotions in a funny, heartwarming way and was incredibly accessible for people to understand. In my humble opinion, it’s also the best thing that Pixar has put out that didn’t include Woody or Buzz Lightyear. It was truly a miracle of a film that has some of the most beautiful imagery and emotional beats (Seriously, you want to make me cry like a baby in under 10 seconds? Just start singing “Who’s your friend who likes to play?” and I’ll lose my damn mind). It was about as close to perfect as you could get from the Pixar people and it made so much money that it was inevitable a sequel would happen. It took almost a full decade for them to make it happen but now we finally have our follow-up to the emotional rollercoaster that was Inside Out and fortunately, Inside Out 2 manages to live up to the expectations that were set for it.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review

The Garfield Movie (2022) – Here Comes Garfield!

Released: 30th May
Seen: 30th June

In 1977, Jim Davis was working on a comic strip called “Jon” about a cartoonist named Jon Arbuckle and his cat Garfield. The strip had been called Jon for a year already but Jim smartly changed it to Garfield just before the strip would get printed nationally. It soon became an undeniable phenomenon, with the kind of merchandising that’s normally reserved for Sci-Fi epics and superheroes. It would go on to create a long-running beloved animated comedy called Garfield and Friends, a dozen animated specials, a second series that only finished airing in 2016 and two live-action movies that we try our best to forget. What hasn’t been tried yet is a full-length animated motion picture released in cinemas and now we have one… it’s fine.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (2024) – Scarring

Released: 19th April
Seen: 28th April

On the 19th of April an interview with director Zack Snyder dropped where he delivered this quote:

You may love or hate my movies, I’m 100% fine with that but a vote against me is a vote for the focus groups. Know by saying ‘Snyder sucks’ you’re also saying “you know what? give me more focus groups! I want Happy Meals!

As one might expect, the second this phrase hit the internet there was a group of people who took issue with it, myself being one of them. This quote kind of speaks to the arrogance of Zack Snyder, how he seems to believe that his films are something so outside the mainstream and doing something so unique that we have to support him for the love of cinema. It is, truthfully, one of the most pretentious things that has ever been said by a director of mainstream cinema… it’s also absolute bullshit because, having now seen Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, there’s truly nothing about it that goes against focus groups because it reeks of the most pandering studio bullshit one could imagine.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child Of Fire

Released: 22nd December
Seen: 25th December

Here’s the hottest of my hot takes regarding recent trends in cinema. Zack Snyder has changed from being an interesting director who took chances into possibly one of the most boring directors out there. What makes him boring, at least to me, is that he seems to think every film he touches has to be some edgy, dark, gritty adult tale no matter what the context. This works when he does films about Zombies, something where being dark and gritty actually can work, however, when he tried this with goddamn Superman it started the ball rolling on the utter destruction of the DC cinematic universe. Now he’s turned this dark gritty edgy lens to another beloved property that’s primarily aimed at children, Star Wars… and god damn it, Rebel Moon just kind of sucks.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review

Wish (2023) – …well

Released: 26th December
Seen: 17th December (Advanced Screening)

Wish Info

In 1923, Walt and Roy Disney founded a little company called the Disney Brothers Studio to produce a small series of Alice in Wonderland cartoons. A few years later the company would be renamed Walt Disney Studios and a little cartoon called Steamboat Willie (which is soon gonna be public domain… so look forward to how that’ll be used!) would not only become the first cartoon with synchronized sound but essentially transform the company into a household name. They would go on to make Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the first animated feature-length film which would begin a long several decades as the most well-known and influential animation company on the planet. 

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