leebutler Biography, Biopic, Drama, History, Music, Review, Romance

Maestro (2023) – Play Me Off

Released: 20th December 2023
Seen: 15th January 2024

With the Oscar nominations being announced just a few days ago, the time has come to tackle the annual tradition of playing catch-up on every nominated film that I somehow managed to miss throughout the year. Sometimes a film just isn’t released down here before the nominations (That’s happening with over a dozen films that I could see), sometimes a film is released but falls past the radar of must-see (how the hell was I meant to know that The Creator would be an Oscar nominee) and sometimes a film just seems like it’s going to be something I’m going to hate trying to review and because this is an unpaid hobby I avoid it until absolutely required… my dislike of biopics put Maestro firmly in that category and while I can admit it’s great, it’s still not my cup of tea.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance, Sci-Fi

Poor Things (2024) – RICH!

Released: 18th January
Seen: 23rd January

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those directors who you can guarantee will deliver a film that’s so different from everything else in the cinema that it’s hard to describe it as anything other than “A Yorgos Lanthimos Film”. Even when he does something close to a regular period piece like in his last film The Favourite there is something just beneath the surface that creates a strange experience. He’s one of those filmmakers that we’re lucky to have because he keeps things interesting and allows the audiences who see his work to experience something truly unique. Once again, with his latest film Poor Things, Yorgos has delivered something truly fascinating to behold.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Good Grief (2024) – Grief, It’s Good

Released: 5th January
Seen: 7th January

Telling gay stories in film is kind of a landmine sometimes. It seems more often than not those stories deal with immense tragedy, loss of family or just having one of the leads getting a specific fatal illness and dying for a dramatic conclusion. It’s rare to see a film about gay joy or even just gay resilience, it feels like more and more films are just kind of depressing in tone and it’s kind of sad… so it takes someone pretty damn talented to take a film about a gay man dying and turn it into a charming, funny and also emotional tale that feels somewhat hopeful by the end. Fortunately, Dan Levy is just that damn talented and has brought us Good Grief, something so charming and sincere that it’s just so soothing to watch.

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

After Everything (2023) – Death To All Of Them

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th October
Seen: 6th October

The After franchise has become a nemesis of mine, a franchise I have a deep and profound hatred of that will never die. Every single time a new entry is released, the sound of my wail of pain can be heard around the block because it’s almost predetermined what is going to be put on the screen. Every film is an hour and a half of a depressingly demented toxic relationship with a blank sheet of paper that answers to the name of Tessa (Josephine Langford) and an abusive piece of excrement meant to resemble one of the biggest pop stars of our generation who answers to the name Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). Every time it’s a film of two people who shouldn’t be sharing time zones having an absurdly toxic and awful time, arguing constantly and breaking up their arguing with lackluster sex set to music chosen by a DJ who is high on ketamine and every time it’s just a bad time for anyone watching that has half a brain. 

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Love Again (2023) – Think Twice

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: 11th May
Seen: 30th August

Celine Dion is arguably one of the world’s best singers, even if you don’t enjoy her music it’s hard to deny the raw power of her voice. She was one of the biggest artists in the 90s for a reason and has managed to maintain a huge fanbase for almost 40 years because when she’s in her element there are few who could compare. What’s kind of surprising is that despite her voice accompanying some of the biggest films of all time, she’s done very little on-camera work in the film world. Before now it’s been a couple of cameos in TV shows and singing backup for Miss Piggy in Muppets Most Wanted, that’s kind of been it until Love Again came along and said “What if we took our cute little romcom and made it have several scenes dedicated to exclaiming how great Celine Dion is?”

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

Beautiful Disaster (2023) – Ugly

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: 29th August
Seen: 29th August

Since this blog isn’t a job so much as it is a very silly hobby, the idea of “morality” comes into deciding what films to watch/review. Sometimes a film will come out surrounded by controversy that just doesn’t feel like it’s worth dealing with (hence why Sound of Freedom isn’t getting a look, feels like no matter what I say about that film could end in an uncomfortable reaction for me), sometimes a film’s promotion will make it seem like it’s not something that would be fun to deal with (Notice there was never a Cuties review? Didn’t wanna dive into that set of landmines) and sometimes it’ll come out that a major person involved in the process is a complete asshole who doesn’t deserve the money. 

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

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: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

What’s Love Got To Do With It (2023) – Fine

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: 26th January
Seen: 11th August

Sometimes a film title is so strongly tied to the content of the film that the title enters a list of titles that probably should never be used again. Some titles just draw certain images to your mind, for example, a film could never reasonably be called “Philadelphia” again because everyone’s going to make a horrific AIDS joke about it. Some titles just have a link to a topic to them that can’t be ignored… this was the thought process I had when I heard that a film was coming out called What’s Love Got To Do With It? because that is the title of the legendary 1993 Tina Turner biopic and using that title for a silly little romcom felt like an insane choice. Having seen the film, it turns out that it’s not a big deal because something tells me that no one’s going to really remember that this one exists in a few years so there shouldn’t be any confusion happening.

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Falling For Christmas (2022) – Snowed In

Released: 10th November
Seen: 27th November

In 1998 the world was introduced to Lindsay Lohan in a little film called The Parent Trap, a film that would instantly turn her into one of the biggest child stars on the planet. She followed it up with the beloved 2003 Freaky Friday, then the cult classic, Mean Girls. That trilogy of films turned her into an absolute superstar, one who could carry a film just on her name alone which she did for a while until she fell into some serious personal problems that derailed her career severely, her last lead role being in The Canyons back in 2013. Fortunately, Lindsay seems to have gotten through her troubles stronger than ever and has returned to the screen with the Netflix Christmas romcom Falling for Christmas which might not be great, but it’s certainly charming enough and a reminder of just how special Lindsay is as a performer.

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leebutler Comedy, Romance

Bros (2022) – Duuuude

Released: 27th October
Seen: 15th November

Bros Info

In 1894 there was a film released that is known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film”, the first film produced for the Kinetoscope which was one of the progenitors of the modern-day projector. This film would be very culturally significant as it is the first known sound film to exist and while the technology wasn’t perfect it was an important step in developing the ability to combine sound with image… that film featured a man with a violin playing a tune from the opera Les Cloches de Corneville and two other men dancing together to it. As far as we know, this is the earliest gay imagery captured on film and it lasts for about 17 seconds. 

Since then we’ve made leaps and bounds in terms of progress, gay stories are getting told more often in media and there are more roles for gay actors – and now, thanks to Bros, we finally have a gay romantic comedy that was written by and stars predominantly LGBTQ people that was released by a major studio… a thing that it’s apparently taken until 2022 for us to get around to doing, so that’s fun.

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