leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Music, Musical

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025) – Perfection

Released: 20th June
Seen: 10th December

We are officially at the point where the K-pop genre has hit critical mass, probably been there for a while thanks to supergroups like Blackpink or BTS showing how dominant they can be on the pop charts. This is part of an era that, according to my research, is known as the Korean Wave and hopefully when we talk about the absolutely insane rise of K-pop and the Korean wave in general in the future, we need to take the time to mention Kpop Demon Hunters, which feels like the kind of movie that can only exist now that K-pop has become such a massive element of pop culture that it has the incredible mass appeal that this work of art has.

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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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leebutler Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review

Freakier Friday (2025) – On And On And On

Released: 7th August
Seen: 20th September

In the year 2003, Disney did something absolutely unheard of by the company… They released a remake of one of their previous films. The film being remade was 1976’s Freaky Friday, which was a fairly decent success with several Golden Globe nominations and featured a young Jodie Foster (who would also be in Taxi Driver that same year, 1976 was a wild year to be Jodie Foster) so remaking it probably seemed like a foolish idea, but it went ahead. The film would star Lindsay Lohan in one of the roles that would go on to define her career and Jamie Lee Curtis in probably one of her most beloved performances outside of a slasher film. Together, they made a little piece of millennial magic. Anyone who was a teenager in 2003 knew this film and loved it on some level. Hell, just play a few notes of Take Me Away and anyone of that specific generation will have flashbacks to Jamie Lee Curtis shredding the guitar solo like she’d been a rockstar for her entire life. It was an undeniable sensation, it was the 20th highest-grossing film of 2003 and is a real fan favourite live action Disney film. It’s actually shocking that it took 22 years for them to make a sequel to it, but now they have… It’s fine.

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leebutler Adventure, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review, Romance

Snow White (2025) – Rotting Apple

Released: 20th March
Seen: 26th June

It’s hard to describe how much the world changed on December 21st, 1937, when Walt Disney premiered his feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Up to that point, no one thought it was possible; movies were still a young medium at that point, but animated cartoons were meant to just be small things put at the front of the proper movie, never the actual main event. Disney changed all that and created an entire genre of cinema. The original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is an undeniable classic, even without the historical relevance that comes with being the first of its kind; it’s also just a fantastic film with songs that we still hum to this day and some of the most iconic characters in the animated medium. It’s one of those retellings that redefined the original story. When you think of the story of Snow White there’s a good chance you think of the Disney version, you almost certainly revert to the names Doc, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Happy, Sleepy and Dopey for the dwarfs. It’s a piece of cinematic history that we should respect… and by “We” I mean “Disney” because based on what they did with the 2025 remake, I don’t think they respect their own history at all.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Netflix

A Minecraft Movie (2025) – Loading…

Released: 3rd April
Seen: 22nd June

Is there even any point to doing this? No, seriously, was there any point for any reviewer to even consider touching this movie? Sure, I’m reviewing it several months after it was a phenomenon, largely because there is no way in hell I was going to be in a cinema while a bunch of people went insane for a zombie jockey on a chicken, but even when it was just coming out, what was the point of reviewing it? A movie based on Minecraft is one of those things that’s almost certainly never going to be some kind of critical darling but no matter what it was going to make a shitload of money. Not only did it end up doing that (Currently it’s the highest grossing film of the goddamn year) but it ended up being responsible for the trashing of several cinemas when audiences forgot how to watch a damn movie and lost their minds during a scene where a zombie boy rides a chicken. A Minecraft Movie is review-proof, there is no point… except that I saw it and I just have to ask, am I old now? Am I too old for this? Have I aged out of stupid childish trash? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

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

Elio (2025) – Space!

Released: 19th June
Seen: 23rd June

Original movies are becoming something of a rarity these days, either relegated to the indie circuit or they have to be made by some well-known auteur who has enough cache to get his weird original concepts past the studio system. Look at the top 10 highest-grossing films of this year, with the notable exception of Sinners, they’re all either sequels, remakes or based on a very well-known piece of IP. It’s a sad reality that audiences just aren’t going to see original films at the rate that they used to. There could be many reasons for this, a run on effect of higher theatre ticket prices meaning people want as close to a sure bet as they can get, part of the post-Covid era issues, it could be related to the rise of streaming or the saturation of the market or it could even just be a horrible self fulfilling prophecy where the big studios don’t advertise their original films that well so people don’t know about them. Case in point, did you know there was a brand new original Pixar film in cinemas right now that’s not a sequel to Toy Story or any of their other classics and that it’s also deliriously charming? Well, now you do.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery, Review

Fountain of Youth (2025) – Ancient

Released: 23rd May
Seen: 26th May

The first streaming company to ever win a Best Picture Oscar was Apple TV+ who pulled off this genuinely impressive feat with a little film called CODA, a touching little comedy about a family where everyone except the eldest daughter was deaf and how she wanted to break out on her own even though that would end up creating a problem for her family and their business. It was a genuinely impressive moment for Apple, their streaming service was one of the smaller ones on the market with only eight narrative feature films to their name at that point. It gave them some sort of prestige, maybe Apple was going to be the smart streaming service that would make smaller interesting films that could be awards contenders or at least not churn out films so bland and basic that the term ‘content’ is the only way to fairly describe them… and now they’ve released Fountain of Youth, Apple’s moved into the content industry.

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

Thunderbolts* (2025) – THUNDER!!

Released: 1st May
Seen: 9th May

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will forever be a legendary moment in cinema, a franchise like this going for almost 2 decades with film and TV series creating this wide interconnected universe is almost unheard of and has rarely been as well executed as it has been here. Lately though, it feels like the MCU has been in a slump since the insane high of Endgame. Sure, there’ve been some bright spots, but nothing rose to the level of the MCU before Thanos snapped his fingers. It felt like everything was so spread out that it was hard to return to what made this franchise special. So here we find ourselves with another entry in the long-running franchise… and it might be the best one since Endgame and possibly in the top 10 of the entire MCU experiment, it’s that good.

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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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