leebutler Review

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021) – Shantay You Slay

Released: 17th September
Seen: 27th September

In 2011 the BBC documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16 hit the airwaves. It told the story of Jamie Campbell, a 16 year old boy who wanted to be a drag queen and debut his drag persona of Fifi La True at his school prom. Keep in mind that back in 2011, Drag wasn’t as mainstream as it is now. At that point Drag Race, the show that would basically push the artform into the mainstream, was still a scrappy little show in its third season on Logo that would be lucky to rack up a half million viewers so going to school in drag was a big damn deal. Big enough to warrant a documentary.

That documentary then was seen by enough people to catch the eye of the West End and become a monster hit musical called Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and now the time has come for this hit stage show to turn into a movie.

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leebutler Review

FoodxFilm Festival Review: Gather (2020)

Over on the good old Soda & Telepaths I’m reviewing films that are part of the FoodXFilm Festival, which takes place over three days and has a whole bunch of films that relate in some way to food. The first one is a film called Gather, about indigenous people’s relationships with food… and also genocide, it’s a fascinating film, you should try and find it and also read my full thoughts on it

leebutler Review

Bad Girls (2021) – Talking About Bad Girls

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

The gloriously unsubtle is basically the bread and butter of the Sydney Underground Film Festival (which, by the time you read this, will possibly be finished for the year). Every time I’ve gone to see what they’re showing, most of their films are some level of bonkers, no ifs ands or buts. Well, it looks like someone’s stealing the show and decided to be the most bonkers thing around… ok second most bonkers, you can’t top Ninja Badass.

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leebutler Review

Ninja Badass (2020) – This Is What Film Should Be!

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Ninja Badass Info

I swear on my life, the plot description I’m about to type is accurate. I did not make a single solitary word of this up, this is a 100% accurate description of the plot of the absolutely glorious Ninja Badass. If anything, I’m leaving stuff out because you wouldn’t believe it was part of the film.

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leebutler Review

Bone Cage (2021) – Beautiful and Heartbreaking

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Bone Cage Info

There’s been a recent trend online where people are posting pictures of notes at local restaurants or other businesses that say that they don’t have enough staff because a lot of their workers left during the pandemic. It’s been a long time coming for workers of all kinds to realise that they don’t need to be treated like dirt anymore and don’t need to take demeaning jobs that make their lives actively worse so it’s nice to see people standing up and basically forcing a lot of big companies to pay their workers a livable wage and treat them better… of course, there are still those who might be stuck in a job that they hate due to circumstances beyond their control, which is the central idea behind Bone Cage and god damn is it just an incredible film.

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leebutler Review

Externo (2021) – The Medium Sized Short

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Externo

One of the more fun things that have been happening over the last several years is just watching slowly as more and more people develop an attitude that can best be described as “Hey, those people who collected Marie Antoinette’s head had the right idea, maybe it’s approaching time to do that again to a different bunch of rich assholes”. It seems like the majority of us have finally cottoned onto the idea that we’re not going to become independently wealthy and those who already have the money won’t be sharing any time soon. Pointing out the power and influence the wealthy hold is certainly a great idea for a film… Externo tries it, kinda succeeds, but also kinda bores.

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leebutler Review

The World’s Best Film (2020) – The World’s Sweetest Documentary

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

There is really no pithy opening paragraph I can come up with to properly start this review of a film that, rather charmingly, calls itself “The World’s Best Film”. I tried, couldn’t think of anything… mostly cos I was just too damn charmed by the film to really bother with the normal format of these reviews.

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leebutler Review

An Ideal Host (2020) – One Hell Of A Dinner Party

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

One of the genres that’s consistently hard to get just right is the Horror-Comedy. Sure some films do hit that mix right out of the park (Evil Dead 2, Tucker & Dale Vs Evil, etc) but for the most part they tend to either be more horror or more of a comedy and never quite hit that perfect balance. Today’s film, An Ideal Host, leans on the side of caution and splits the film into doing comedy at the start, horror at the end and it actually works out pretty well.

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leebutler Review

Zero Fucks (2020) – Unsubtle As Hell

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Zero Fucks Info

It shouldn’t be a controversial statement to point out that Donald Trump is a giant raving douchebag with fascist tendencies, a boner for his daughter and a penchant for being extremely rapey while also giving zero fucks about the very concept of democracy… it shouldn’t be, but welcome to 2021 where everything is awful and we learned nothing from history because we let basically Hitler with a bad tan run wild with a government all of his own for 4 years and we’re currently living through something that can only be compared to the Spanish Flu of 1918. Things suck and they will continue to suck until the earth is finally done with our shit and kills us all… what I’m saying is that now is the perfect time for a film like Zero Fucks which is basically just 80 minutes of venting several years of built-up anger at the state of things.

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