leebutler Review

Spiderhead (2022) – I Have Some Complaints

Released: 17th June
Seen: 3rd July

Netflix has been having what can generously be described as “A shitty year that’s been very shitty”. Their numbers of subscribers have been dropping, their revenue is dropping and they keep just landing in controversy after controversy. They also keep spending exorbitant amounts of money on absolute garbage films that have little to sell themselves on beyond the star power of the lead actor. To be absolutely blunt, Spiderhead looked like it was going to fall into that category but good news, it’s not absolute garbage… it’s just not very good. 

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leebutler Review

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022) – Gotta Go Slightly Faster

Released: 31st March
Seen: 29th June

Back in 2020 the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie was released. It quickly received wide acclaim from many people, largely because the studios changed the main design of Sonic after an initial backlash but people also praised several of the performances and thought it was a good representation of the character… I called it one of the worst films of 2020, largely because it felt like another standard “C list celebrity and CGI character take a road trip” movie that took a character known for speed and spent most of the movie with Sonic unable to use his speed power which is his main character trait (and also serious questions about how workers were treated in order to get the film finished with the new design). So naturally, a sequel sounded like an exhausting prospect for me… so imagine my surprise when Sonic the Hedgehog 2 isn’t totally awful.

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leebutler Review

Moonfall (2022) – Eclipsed

Released: 3rd February
Seen: 19th May

Moonfall Info

Back in the late 90s, one of the biggest names in Blockbusters was Roland Emmerich. The man made Independence Day, a film that not only showed that there was a new master of the blockbuster but also made so much goddamn money. Independence Day was the highest-grossing film of 1996, its visuals are some of the most remembered images from 90s cinema (the shot of a single beam of light destroying the White House alone is etched into the memory of everyone who was around in 1996) and it basically elevated Will Smith into a global cinematic phenomenon… yeah, Roland Emmerich kinda fluked it with that film because he’s really never been that good since, and Moonfall is just proof that he needs a new schtick.

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leebutler Review

The Northman (2022) – For The North!

Released: 21st April
Seen: 26th April

The Northman Info

Robert Eggers is quickly turning into one of the most fascinating directors in modern cinema. His directorial debut, The Witch, set the horror world alight and introduced us to Anya Taylor-Joy who is becoming one of the most sought after actors in Hollywood. It was the kind of first film that you could only dream of making, garnering critical and financial praise while establishing Eggers as the kind of artist who was able to make an intense period horror that people couldn’t get enough of… something he would prove again with The Lighthouse, a gloriously bonkers piece that proved that Eggers had some wild ideas that he wanted to test out. His first two films proved what Eggers could do on a small scale. The Northman shows what Eggers can do when he’s tasked with an epic and god damn it, it turns out he can do magic.

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leebutler Review

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) – NIC-FUCKIIIIIIING-CAGE

Released: 21st April
Seen: 24th April

Nicolas Cage is one of the most fascinating actors in modern history, with one of the wildest resumes you will ever find. He’s gone from mega-blockbusters like the National Treasure franchise to little weird indie films like Mandy and all the while he has developed a reputation of being able to commit completely to a film no matter how weird or bad it might be (Say what you will about his performance in Wicker Man, Cage did not half-ass it). He’s an Oscar winner and an absolute legend of the art form and has the kind of notoriety that makes him great fodder for comedy… and in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Nicolas Cage decides that if anyone’s going to make jokes about him then Cage is going to do them better than anyone.

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leebutler Review

Ambulance (2022) – Crashing

Released: 24th March
Seen: 7th April

Michael Bay is a very specific kind of filmmaker. His name is basically all you need to hear before you know what the film will contain and his films all feature pretty much the same thing, shit blowing up in various ways causing various amounts of carnage (depending on the film rating he’s permitted to have) that all tend to involve characters who we can charitably call one dimensional and a soundtrack designed to make you walk out of the cinema with your ears ringing. 

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leebutler Review

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) – Absolute Perfection

Released: 14th April
Seen: 6th April (Advance Screening)

Everything Everywhere All At Once Info

The concept of the multiverse has been a pretty major part of the cinematic landscape recently, largely thanks to the MCU using it as part of their recent romp through nostalgia. It featured heavily in the still stunning Spider-Man: No Way Home and will be brought up again in the Dr Strange sequel that also uses the word as part of its title, Multiverse of Madness.

It’s a fascinating concept that can have so many uses but if we’re being honest, the MCU is using the multiverse mostly for nostalgia blasts. That’s the multiverse on easy mode… Everything Everywhere All At Once is the multiverse on hard mode and its chock full of glorious batshit insanity combined with absolute pure wonder and I love every single second of it.

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leebutler Review

The Adam Project (2022) – TIME TRAVEL!

Released: 11th March
Seen: 29th March

The Adam Project Info

You know what I kinda miss? Those old cheesy family films that weren’t trying to be cinematic masterpieces but were basically pastiches of popular films that had kids doing cool stuff and a lot of stupid moments, the last one of those that got a wide release was The Kid Who Would Be King, a fun, frivolous little film about a kid who got King Arthur’s sword and had a big silly adventure. It was nice to see this kind of film get a brief comeback but ever since then it’s felt like no one has bothered to try again… until The Adam Project came along and hit me right in the nostalgia.

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Uncharted (2022) – Fairly Charted Territory

Released: 17th February
Seen: 27th March

In 2007 the first game in the Uncharted series hit shelves and it was nothing short of a smash hit, selling over a million copies in the first ten weeks and becoming one of the biggest-selling games for the PlayStation. Its success was so huge that there were plans for a movie being made way back in 2008 and for the 14 years since then, the franchise has bounced around with different writers, directors and stars. Just reading over the history of Uncharted it’s kind of incredible that it even got out of the development hell that it languished in for so long but now it’s here and… it’s fine. Nothing to write home about but it’s not awful.

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