leebutler Editorial

The Best Performances of 2023

2023 has been a pretty great year for film, even though it hasn’t been particularly profitable. Hell, this year’s Oscars might’ve been one of the best in a long time because every one of the actors who got honoured was someone that people love and they all delivered some great performances, and this year everyone seemed to up their game and bring even better performances than last year. 

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Worst Films of 2023

2023 feels like the first year in a while where things can somewhat come back to normal, which is to say that it still sucked but we could actually go outside every now and then. Of course just because we decided the plague was over doesn’t mean the world didn’t almost explode, indeed several wars have been going on all year which has put a deep divide through the world and there’s also the constant lingering threat that next year might have America deciding to put a known fascist back in the most powerful position on earth for funsies… so, of course, my way to deal with this and several other bits of bile is to unleash them in list form about films I didn’t like.

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Best Films of 2023

2023 in film has been kind of strange, it feels like the cinema is starting to approach returning to what it was pre-pandemic but there’s been some massive shake-ups in what a hit film can be. Instead of Superheroes dominating the box office, this year Barbie ran the roost and even helped meme a serious drama to near the top of the box office (If you try to claim Oppenheimer could’ve made that much without the Barbenheimer meme, I will laugh in your face). Small-budget horror films managed to dominate early in the year and a few old franchises came back and surprised everyone, either by being surprise hits or vanishing in seconds (remember how we had an Indiana Jones film this year? Did anyone see it, cos I know I didn’t).

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

Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child Of Fire

Released: 22nd December
Seen: 25th December

Here’s the hottest of my hot takes regarding recent trends in cinema. Zack Snyder has changed from being an interesting director who took chances into possibly one of the most boring directors out there. What makes him boring, at least to me, is that he seems to think every film he touches has to be some edgy, dark, gritty adult tale no matter what the context. This works when he does films about Zombies, something where being dark and gritty actually can work, however, when he tried this with goddamn Superman it started the ball rolling on the utter destruction of the DC cinematic universe. Now he’s turned this dark gritty edgy lens to another beloved property that’s primarily aimed at children, Star Wars… and god damn it, Rebel Moon just kind of sucks.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Suitable Flesh (2023) – Skin-Crawlingly Creepy

Released: 27th October
Seen: 24th December

In 2020 we lost the great Stuart Gordon, one of the gods of 80s horror. The man gave us such glorious works as Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak along with having a hand in classics like Honey I Shrunk The Kids. A lot of the work that made him an undeniable icon of the genre was his adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories and a lot of those films were written by Dennis Paoli who has screenwriting credit on five of Gordon’s films, those being Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dagon, Castle Freak and The Pit And The Pendulum. It’s safe to say that a large number of the early films that gave us an idea of what a Stuart Gordon film could be wouldn’t exist in the same way without Dennis Paoli’s writing. So, the question is what would happen if you paid tribute to Stuart Gordon by getting Dennis to write another adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft film and let the director of Wrong Turn 2 handle the direction? Turns out, you get something that’s pretty fucking fun.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Mystery, Review

It’s A Wonderful Knife (2023) – Season’s Stabbings

Released: 1st December
Seen: 18th December

Without a doubt, the best new trend in horror has been slasher movies taking classic comedies with supernatural elements and twisting them into corny fun slasher movies. This trend started when Happy Death Day took on Groundhog Day, then Freaky repeated it with Freaky Friday and Totally Killer used Back to the Future as its main inspiration. It’s a trend that feels like it’s going to go on for a while, upcoming horror films like Time Cut (which also sounds like it’s using Back to the Future as a jumping-off point) show that there is a lot of potential fun to be had with this new trend… enter It’s A Wonderful Knife which is possibly the most basic version of this concept yet which proves that it can work even when being phoned in.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Review

Wish (2023) – …well

Released: 26th December
Seen: 17th December (Advanced Screening)

Wish Info

In 1923, Walt and Roy Disney founded a little company called the Disney Brothers Studio to produce a small series of Alice in Wonderland cartoons. A few years later the company would be renamed Walt Disney Studios and a little cartoon called Steamboat Willie (which is soon gonna be public domain… so look forward to how that’ll be used!) would not only become the first cartoon with synchronized sound but essentially transform the company into a household name. They would go on to make Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the first animated feature-length film which would begin a long several decades as the most well-known and influential animation company on the planet. 

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leebutler Comedy, Musical, Review

Dicks: The Musical (2023) – Absolutely Nuts

Released: 7th December
Seen: 5th December

Dicks: The Musical Info

In 2014 Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson put on a two-man show called F***ing Identical Twins. The show ended up being noticed by someone at 20th Century Fox and was bought in 2016 with the intent of being turned into a musical… and then the Fox-Disney merger happened, a lot of projects got thrown around like metaphors in a desperate writer’s head and soon the project landed at A24 where it got a rename, a high-end cast complete with Tony and Emmy winners galore and legendary comedy director Larry Charles. With a combination like that behind it, it should’ve been inevitable that Dicks: The Musical would turn out to be one of the funniest movies to hit cinemas in recent years.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

Saltburn (2023) – Brilliance On The Dance Floor

Released: 16th November
Seen: 24th November

In 2021, Emerald Fennell released Promising Young Woman, which quickly became one of my favourite films that I’ve ever been able to review. The year it came out I proclaimed it the second best film of the year, had the fourth best performance of the year and was adamant that the film should win every single Oscar it was nominated for. I was an evangelist for the film and when talking about it on the Best List I said, quote “if Emerald Fenell walks into your office and asks to make a movie, you hand that woman a blank cheque and let her go wild”… It’s clear that someone was listening to this request, because if Saltburn isn’t what happens when Emerald Fennell goes wild, I don’t know what is.

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leebutler Biography, Drama, History, Netflix, Review

Rustin (2023) – Historic

Released: 16th November
Seen: 23rd November

Bayard Rustin was born in 1912 and lived one of the most fascinating lives that you will ever skim through on Wikipedia. Raised as a Quaker, the man was openly gay back when that was a much more dangerous thing to be than it is now (and oh boy is it still dangerous now), he recorded several albums of gospel music, was at the forefront of many civil rights movements and even ended up adopting his lover in the 80s because they were unable to get married so had to do the most creative workaround ever to ensure they had their rights. The man is genuinely fascinating, someone who should probably have an entire docuseries made about his life but if you were to pick one event from his remarkable life to make a movie about it seems fitting that his work in organising the legendary march on Washington would be the focal point for the biopic Rustin.

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