leebutler Horror, Review

Sick (2023) – Siiiick

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: 13th Jan
Seen: 2nd November

The slightly depressing reality is that we will probably never stop having to deal with the repercussions of the pandemic, or at least not for an excruciatingly long time. The last 4 years have been an absolute shitshow in terms of physical and mental health, the toll on the system from this one illness is impossible to properly measure and will undoubtedly be a reference point that most of us use for the rest of our lives. It’s also undoubtedly going to be a major part of a ton of art that’s being made for the next decade, how could it not be? It’s a major world event that absolutely everyone in some way has been impacted by, it not only impacted what kinds of art is made and how they make it but also will keep turning up as part of the narrative for a long time. Horror has had a fairly good crack at it with Host using it mostly as a way to justify a certain filming technique but now with Sick we have a film that uses it as an intrinsic portion of the central story and it makes for a surprisingly interesting little film.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Old Dads (2023) – Retire

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: 20th October
Seen: 1st November

Every now and then a stand-up comic takes a chance and makes a leap from the stages of the comedy clubs to the bright lights of Hollywood to star in movies. So many greats have tried this, legends like Steve Martin, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy all have shown you can be great at stand up and as a movie actor. Others take their stand-up acts and turn it into a movie or TV show, this is how we got Seinfeld, The Machine or Trainwreck. Sometimes though people take the personality they’ve created for the stage and craft an entire movie around it, which can sometimes work wonderfully – and sometimes you get something like Old Dads, a film that takes Bill Burr’s style of angry comedy and fits it around the eternally fun conversation of how different the generations are… that’s a topic that never gets old, no sir.

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leebutler Horror, Thriller

Night Of The Hunted (2023) – Oh Shoot!

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: 20th October
Seen: 30th October

For some strange reason, the idea of a movie diving into politics annoys a certain class of people who seem to think that movies used to be apolitical and only recently got infected. The truth of the matter is that all art, on some level, is political and some films are just more overt about it than others. This goes double for the Horror genre which has always been a great place to play with heavy political ideas (Look at Night of the Dead, Get Out or They Live for some prime examples of this) and recently has had a few films tackle the divide between the right and the left. Films like Tone Deaf or The Hunt tried to find ways to make fun of the divide, showing it to be comical and extreme in ways that maybe made for a half-decent film but was not great about the way it presented its politics. Night of the Hunted also has some problems with how it’s presenting politics, but without as much fun in how it’s trying to present those politics.

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leebutler Horror, Review

When Evil Lurks (2023) – Axe-cellent

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: 27th October
Seen: 30th October

Horror is seemingly going through somewhat of a resurgence lately. A lot of people who are huge fans of the genre will agree that 2022 was something of a landmark year for horror, something I would agree with as the majority of my best of 2022 list consisted of entries in the Horror genre. 2023 might not have been up to that level in terms of consistency but when this year releases a great horror movie, it’s an absolute masterpiece. Obvious huge monster hits have been things like Talk To Me, Cocaine Bear, or Evil Dead Rise which have shown that this is an era of some truly amazing horror films and there’s probably a bunch more that are due out any day now that’ll be on any list of great horror films from this year but a recent release may have forced its way to the top of that list through sheer force of will… that film is When Evil Lurks and god damn, it’s an all-timer.

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leebutler Documentary, Review

Hot Potato: The Story Of The Wiggles (2023) – Everybody Clap

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: 24th October
Seen: 27th October

When it comes to true cultural impact, there are very few bands who you can say have changed the course of history and also been massively popular. Obviously, you could throw in groups like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Kiss but any list of “culturally significant bands” that doesn’t contain The Wiggles is incomplete. With a set of brightly coloured skivvies and songs about fruit salad and driving around in a big red car, The Wiggles have dominated the world of children’s entertainment for over 30 years and have changed the lives of millions. It only makes sense that, like all truly great bands, The Wiggles would get to have a documentary of their own someday and just like the band itself, the documentary Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles is a truly brilliant piece of art that stands apart from others in its genre.

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leebutler Review

Fantastic Fest 2023’s Blonde Death

Over on Soda & Telepaths (Now called My Kind Of Weird) I wrote another review of a film that was part of Fantastic Fest, this time a film called Blonde Death which is a weird little shot on video film that apparently was just uncovered. Definitely a weird one but… well, go read what I said about it to know my full thoughts.

leebutler Action, Review, War

Sisu (2023) – Golden

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: 27th July
Seen: 23rd October

Sisu Info

Some films are important art pieces where every little detail needs to be considered in a wider context, some films are prestige pictures that need to be given reference and explored in as careful detail as possible, there are even films that are family affairs that should be questioned on how appropriate they are to be viewed by children and if they can also be enjoyed by a parent who legally has to be at the cinema with their child or risk a charge of child abandonment… and then there’s films like Sisu that say “Hey, Nazi’s fucking suck right? Wanna watch an old guy shove a pickaxe in a Nazi’s piss slit?” and you respond with an enthusiastic and gleeful cry that can be heard from space because Sisu delivers on the pure Nazi-dismembering joy that everyone can and should enjoy.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

The Boogeyman (2023) – In The Dark

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: 2nd June
Seen: 18th October

In 1973, Stephen King wrote a short story called The Boogeyman. The short story was published in a magazine called Cavalier and eventually was part of the first collection of King’s short stories known as Night Shift, which is also how we got such stories/films as The Mangler, The Lawnmower Man and Children of the Corn. The great thing about this process is that King tends to have some great terrifying ideas that work well in film and a lot of these short stories have fascinating ideas that would work great in a horror film… the downside is that they’re short for a reason and in order to make something feature length any filmmaker has to take what King did and build upon it and that’s usually where things start to falter. 

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