leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) – Rosy

Released: 7th August 2025
Seen: 27th February 2026

We all know the famous phrase “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That phrase feels more relevant today than ever, where everything just feels constantly overwhelming. Burnout is real and is not only happening in people’s professional lives but in their personal ones. Day-to-day events just pile up in a way that feels insurmountable and unfixable because the people who could fix them are unavailable. That’s a feeling that we’ve all had before and it’s the kind of emotional destruction that could make for a fascinating film, or at least a fascinating performance, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fortunately both of those things.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Bugonia (2025) – Bee-Gone-Ia

Released: 30th October 2025
Seen: 22nd February 2026

On December 4th, 2016, a fucking moron – who I won’t bother naming here – went to the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop in DC and fired multiple shots. Thankfully, he didn’t end up hurting anyone. Still, his plan was to go in to investigate the pizza place because he believed, thanks to other fucking idiots, that there was a child trafficking ring being operated out of the basement. One small problem, Comet Ping Pong didn’t have a basement nor was it in any way related to a child trafficking ring, it just happened to be a place where the Clinton campaign would occasionally buy food and a bunch of idiots reading emails decided that the phrases “pizza” or “Hot dogs” was some kind of elaborate code suggesting that they were buying children. This is probably the turning point where conspiracy theories went from curious things that went around the internet into actual real-world problems that caused the stupidest among us to threaten the lives of others, try to overthrow duly elected governments and believe that drinking raw milk is actually good for you. It’s the kind of insane shit that’s ripe for someone to use as the basis for a thriller, and Bugonia takes that mantle and runs with it.

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leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Review, Thriller

One Battle After Another (2025) – Great Battle

Released: 25th September
Seen: 21st December

As the year draws to a close, the time is soon approaching when we’re going to learn what the big awards contenders are. The ones that will sweep the upcoming ceremonies that will go down in history as one of the few films every year to get the title of “Oscar-nominated”. It’s always a little hard to guess exactly who the nominees are, hence why every single year there are articles printed about a couple of major snubs and surprises that no one saw coming. Other films, however, are pretty much guaranteed to be in the conversation from the second they turn up on the scene, and one such film that’s absolutely dominated any discussion about upcoming awards is the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not very hard to see why.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Influencers (2025) – Like

Released: 13th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2023, Shudder released Influencer which was immediately a critical hit and got pretty good viewership numbers, at least good enough to warrant making a sequel. Now, at the time I was one of the few who didn’t love the film, I thought it had good ideas but I wasn’t a fan of the execution. Upon a recent rewatch I’ve slightly changed my mind, mostly because the central performance of the character CW grew on me. It still felt a little bit lackluster to me, but it moved to just being generally good so I was hopeful about the sequel… and sure enough, Influencers turned out to be absolutely brilliant.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) – Miraculous

Released: 12th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2019, Rian Johnson released Knives Out to an unsuspecting public, and the world embraced and fell in love with his all-star cast and murder mystery. It was a true masterpiece, a definitive work in the murder mystery genre that had people salivating for more. That’s when Netflix did one of the few truly cool things that they’ve done in a long time and gave Rian Johnson 400 million dollars to make two new entries in the franchise, the first one of those was Glass Onion in 2022, which was also absolutely brilliant and proved that Knives Out had genuine franchise potential. Now we’ve been blessed with Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in the Knives Out Franchise, and I’m fully at the point of insisting that Rian Johnson continue making these films until either he or Daniel Craig is no longer with us, because once again he’s made an actual masterpiece.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) – Uggh

Released: 4th September
Seen: 6th December

Ed and Lorraine Warren were complete and utter con artists whose damage to the people they claimed to help won’t be fully known for years to come. For literally decades they would go from town to town and “investigate” strange goings-on and somehow come to a “scientific” conclusion that this meant they found some form of demon. All the time just a whole mess of demons, it’s never mental illness or epilepsy or strange coincidences… nope, always demons. I’ve said this before, literally verbatim because I copied that opening section from my review of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It which I still regard as the worst mainline Conjuring movie (The spinoffs are somehow worse, but none fill me with as much actual rage as The Devil Made Me Do It). One might hope that they would stop this franchise at some point, Horror as a genre is in a new era that’s not exactly suited to what The Warren’s and their lies could inspire but nope, we now have The Conjuring: Last Rites and my god, I hope this is the end because even the lies are getting repetitive and dull.

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leebutler Review, Thriller

Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) – Go Away Now

Released: 15th May
Seen: 2nd December

In 2023, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye decided to try his hand at acting with the miniseries The Idol and the reviews for that series were absolutely scathing on a level that very few shows could get. It had an infamously bad production history, and every episode was met with brutal vitriol as it became apparent to everyone paying even a little bit of attention that Abel was not a good actor. Honestly, the reviews were so bad that it seemed like it should stop him from ever being asked back to try and do anything even close to acting again… but alas, lessons were not learned and someone decided to give him a movie where he confirms he can’t act and his co-stars prove that even their incredible talents can’t save this crap.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Caught Stealing (2025) – Steals The Show

Released: 28th August
Seen: 30th November

Darren Aronofsky is the kind of director who seems to revel in polarising the audience, in making a film that’s going to get an extreme reaction no matter if it’s positive or negative. There aren’t really any films in his catalogue you could say are just good or well-liked; you either love his stuff or hate it. In recent years, even though I’ll admit he’s obscenely talented, I just wasn’t into his work on films like Mother! Or The Whale, but in the past, he’s delivered truly breathtaking work like Black Swan so undoubtedly there was a chance that he was going to win me back at some point with one of his works. It feels like Caught Stealing seems to be the first time that Darren has tried to make a film with a strong mass appeal (hilarious to say in retrospect since it bombed at the box office), and honestly, it’s just a damn good time.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Nobody 2 (2025) – Fun

Released: 17th October
Seen: 29th November

In 2021, a little film called Nobody was released to the public. The film could be basically described as a mass-appeal suburban version of John Wick, filled with some truly incredible action sequences, a captivating lead performance by Bob Odenkirk and enough charm to elevate the already excellent material. It was a genuinely glorious little film that easily was one of the best of 2021 (and while being a good film in 2021 was a low bar because of how that year was still a pandemic recovery year for the movies, believe me when I say that Nobody was still genuinely fantastic). It was the kind of film that seemed like it was destined to be a franchise and deserved a sequel just to see what this little family did now that their father’s clandestine history had been revealed. Well, in Nobody 2, the Mansell family decide that the way they’re going to handle things is by going on a summer vacation… it will go exactly as expected.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Good Boy (2025) – Barking Brilliant

Released: 3rd October
Seen: 25th November

Last year, I proclaimed that In A Violent Nature was the best film of the year (a claim I stand by, fight me). Part of what made that film so special was that it took a genre we all know pretty well, that being cheesy hyper-gory slasher films, and changed the perspective that we follow from the perspective of the future victims to the perspective of the slow-moving moving stumbling killer. It was such a simple shift that created a radically brilliant piece of art that kind of defied the rules of the genre by explaining the magic trick behind how they work. That simple idea of shifting the perspective of a story to a character that we don’t normally spend any time with really allows something familiar to feel exciting and new, and can allow for a really creative director to show off just what they can do. Good Boy is that kind of movie, taking a subgenre we know all too well and finding the most unique possible way to explore that genre that I’ve seen in a long damn time.

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