leebutler Review

Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (2019) – Unearthly Delight

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

I’ll be honest and admit the name Lydia Lunch was not one I had heard of before I started watching the documentary Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over. Why would I? I’m an unhip Aussie who wasn’t even conceptualised back in 1979 when Lydia started performing with her band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (which… yeah, best band name ever, calling it now). In a way, I feel like not knowing anything about Lydia worked to my advantage because watching the film felt like being punched in the face with shock and awe, which feels like it fits in well with her aesthetic.

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leebutler Review

Sleeze Lake: Vanlife at its Lowest and Best (2020) – Van-tastic

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Sleeze Lake: Vanlife at its Lowest and Best Info

There’s an old truism that “If you remember the 70s then you weren’t there”. This has also been applied to the 60s, largely because of Woodstock, but it can also apply to the 70s when everyone was just doing endless amounts of drugs… like, enough drugs that anyone who was around in the 60s or 70s isn’t allowed to ever talk shit about what drugs the youth of today do. Anyway, this era led to a lot of memorable big festivals where a lot of people did a lot of drugs. Today’s Sydney Underground Film Festival entry is about one of the lesser-known drug-filled festivals, but also one of the strangest.

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leebutler Review

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest (2021) – GAME ON!

Seen at the Sydney Underground Film Festival

Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest Info

It’s been two years since I’ve been able to go to a film festival, specifically my favourite film festival on earth. The Sydney Underground Film Festival, a festival dedicated to strange underground films that are usually shown in this great little venue that’s clearly not really meant for a film festival but some nutbags decided to put up a projector in a few rooms and boom, you got a festival.

This festival provided 2 previous entries to my “best of” list, that being Greener Grass and Use Me, and I was hoping to get to go again this year but… well, that thing that meant I only got to review Fast and Furious 9 yesterday moved the festival to online only. The upside? That means that for the next month I’ll be able to get through a lot of these films that I might not have been able to see if I was going in person (maybe that’ll keep me sane until this lockdown ends). 

So, let’s start this off with a documentary about a guy and his arcade system.

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leebutler Review

Fast & Furious 9 (2021) – Deliciously Dumb

Released: 17th June
Seen: 9th September

Fast & Furious 9 Info

Remember when the Fast & Furious franchise was just about underground car racing? Remember the early films that were just about this cop who infiltrated an underground racing ring? Feels so long ago, now they’ve turned into superhero films but with cars instead of superpowers where every movie has some giant cataclysmic world-ending event that can only be stopped by Vin Diesel doing a really sick burnout off the top of a skyscraper. It’s the dumbest movie franchise and it is just endlessly fun almost because it is so spectacularly dumb. Now we’re up to Fast & Furious 9 and god damn it keeps getting dumber and I keep just enjoying its celebration of stellar stupidity.

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leebutler Review

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021) – Paints An Interesting Picture

Released: 25th August
Seen: 6th September

Bob Ross Happy Accidents Betrayal & Greed Info

Between 1983 and 1994, Bob Ross delighted viewers with his charming little show The Joy Of Painting. For over 400 episodes, Bob and a series of guest stars would talk the viewer through methods of painting landscapes and he became a cultural phenomenon. Even now, years after his passing, the image of the cheerful man with the giant afro and the well-used painter’s palette is iconic. Hell, it’s well known enough that a recent episode of Drag Race had someone recreate the look with a wig made of squirrels (and sure, they were in the bottom that week but you still knew who they were). Well, turns out the story of Bob Ross’ legacy wasn’t exactly as happy as the little trees that were in many of his paintings.

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leebutler Review

The Kissing Booth 3 (2021) – ARRRRGH

Released: 27th August
Seen: 5th September

The Kissing Booth 3 Info

Sometimes I genuinely worry for Netflix, I really do. In their desperate need to fill up their library with films that can’t be taken away by competing studios who want to start their own awful streaming service (Tangent: The Paramount Plus streaming service is crap and they should delete it now before they hurt themselves) they just greenlight everything that’s remotely in their price range. Sure this led to the recent trilogy of Fear Street films that were absolutely amazing, but it also led to the series The Kissing Booth which culminates in The Kissing Booth 3, a film which makes me hate the concept of kissing, booths and the word “The”.

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leebutler Review

Cinderella (2021) – More Like Sinderella

Released: 3rd September
Seen: 4th September

The story of Cinderella has been adapted countless times in multiple forms. From the legendary Disney animated classic of 1950 to the millennial favourite 1997 version that starred Whitney Houston and Brandi, to the Disney Live-Action version from 2015, there have been so many attempts made at this simple story that it feels weird to go five years without someone taking a shot at it. 

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