Adventure – Lee's Movie Reviews

April 13, 2019April 13, 2019 leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy

Missing Link (2019) – Proof Of Happiness

Released: 11th April
Seen: 13th April

Stop Motion animation is probably the most difficult kind of animation there is. Building scale models and animating them in the physical world, moving just a tiny portion of the models for every single frame and slowly creating movement by hand, something where a small accident could ruin days of work. If a model dries up then that could destroy a film. For the longest time the big name in the field of stop motion animation was Aardman Animation, the people who made Chicken Run (which I just found out is getting a sequel, which is awesome), and now the new people claiming the throne of stop motion animation is Laika who has been fairly consistent in releasing great films, and their latest film is no exception.

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April 11, 2019April 13, 2019 leebutler Action, Animation, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

Hellboy (2019) – Aww, Hell!

Released: 11th April
Seen: 11th April

In 1993 the comic book artist Mike Mignola created the character of Hellboy for Dark Horse comics. A demon-human hybrid, the character became a big enough hit with readers to get an adaptation in 2004 with the movie Hellboy that was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro who managed to turn it into a minor box office hit, pulling in almost 100 million worldwide on a 66 million budget. It got enough critical praise and a cult following to get Universal to shell out for a sequel with the same cast and same creative team, 4 years later letting out Hellboy 2: The Golden Army which fared even better, netting almost 160 million on an 85 million budget and (at least as far as I’m concerned) was just a better movie all around. Now it’s a decade later and rebooting old franchises is all the rage, and Guillermo Del Toro is coming off of two Oscar wins for his beloved film The Shape of Water so now would be the perfect time to get him to come back, drag Ron Perlman with him to don the red latex again and knock everyone out with an amazing Hellboy movie… or you could just get a bunch of completely different people to try and make money off the name alone and hope to god no one actually cares about being entertained, that’s a valid option.

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April 4, 2019 leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

SHAZAM! (2019) – Hot Damn!

Released: 4th April
Seen: 4th April

I’ve previously talked on this blog about how nervous I get walking into DC films. After their attempt at an expanded universe netted exactly one good film (Wonder Woman, for the record) and got them a resounding box office failure with their massive team-up film… let’s just say that I get nervous when I walk into these things. Then Aquaman happened and it was above any expectation. I dare say that I should’ve probably given it an even 4 out of 5 now that I look back on it because it was a genuinely fun playful movie that understood that the material was not meant to be dark and so it didn’t bother being pointlessly grim. With the advertisements for Shazam! I was admittedly a little more excited, there was a brighter tone that excited me and made me hopeful that they were going to get this right… oh my god, oh my god you guys!

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March 31, 2019 leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy

Wonder Park (2019) – Wonder Meh

Released: 4th April
Seen: 31st March (Advance Screening)

So, I’m not exactly a theme park enthusiast. I’ve tried to go to them before and never really enjoyed them. Maybe it’s the people, maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s the weight restrictions that basically tether my feet to the ground that I don’t want to walk on for four hours for three rides, I’ve just never been big on them. However, films about theme park rides? I… don’t care for those either, but only because they’ve never actually been good. With the notable exception of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, a film based on a theme park never seems to work and only seems to irritate the audience that goes to see it. When a film was announced to be about a girl who builds a magical theme park, I was ready to be annoyed and irritated by it. I was prepared for it to be Emoji Movie level trash. I was ready to sit down and write almost 2000 words about why it was an abhorrent piece of cinematic sludge that will poison your children’s minds and render them mute with its awfulness… but that implies that what I saw had something in it that was interesting enough to elicit that reaction from me and the only reaction I really have is “Oh, that exists”.

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March 10, 2019 leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) – Everything Is Almost Awesome

Released: 28th February
Seen: 10th March

In 2014, the movie The Lego Movie came out and shocked everyone. Sure, Lego had released parody movies before straight to DVD and had little joke sketches made but a full-length original feature-length film that was just generally about Lego? That sounded like it was destined for disaster. And yet, stunningly, it wasn’t. The Lego Movie fast became a monster hit, the 5th highest grossing film of 2014, it got an Oscar nomination for the deliriously catchy song “Everything Is Awesome”, a song so catchy that me typing that sentence has forced that song back into the heads of everyone who heard it. It also managed to surprise everyone with an emotional story about someone’s imagination being restrained by the attitude of their distant father. It’s genuinely one of the greatest animated films of the last decade and I will gleefully die upon this hill… so, when they announced that there was a sequel coming out, I was incredibly nervous because there aren’t exactly many sequels to great animated films that are as good as the original. Lucky me then that The Lego Movie series just enjoys surprising me with how good it actually is.

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March 7, 2019March 7, 2019 leebutler Adventure, Animation, Family

Flying The Nest (2019) – Free Bird

Released: 28th February
Seen: 7th March

So this film has gone under many names, for some reason. Originally from Iceland, the film was released under the title “Lói: Þú Flýgur Aldrei Einn“. In several English speaking countries, the film was released under the title “Ploey: You Never Fly Alone“, which is a little bit wordy but it works. In the USA, Spain and Germany it just got the title “Ploey“, which is a perfect single word title… I saw it under the title Flying the Nest which is a horrible title thought up by bad people who don’t understand how you work with words. Even I, noted bad word user, thought that title was a garbage title and was not looking forward to this movie based upon that title. Then I walked into the cinema and out of over 160 seats, I was the only person there. Bad title, no audience, and then the film started and I realised that I had made a terrible mistake by going to see this movie. I will be referring to this movie by the title I saw it under for the remainder of the review because I want you to have that stupid title drilled into your skull.

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March 6, 2019 leebutler Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Captain Marvel (2019) – Marvelous

Released: 7th March
Seen: 6th March (Advance Screening)

Have you ever been looking forward to a movie, one you’re sure is going to be a lot of fun with some cool characters and funny lines but then you go online and learn that it’s an evil piece of feminist propaganda meant to cuck all the men and turn them into soy boys, or whatever the hell idiots online think feminism will do to them? Yeah, that’s basically how it’s been building up to this movie, The internet has turned into a constant barrage of idiots taking the lead actresses quotes out of context and pretending they’re anti-men or being giant raging turd monsters telling a woman to smile because they looked at 4 pictures where she isn’t and that means she never does. Oh, oh and then there’s the other thing where people who haven’t seen any movie ever said that instead they’re going to go see Alita instead of Captain Marvel because Alita isn’t at all a feminist movie and is totally apolitical, even though it’s literally a movie about a lower class being lied too and oppressed by the one percent and the only hope for anyone is a woman who is surrounded by flaming garbage dumpsters in the shape of men. Basically, I have hated every single discussion building up to the release of this movie because it has slowly sapped me of my hopes for humanity and now that I have seen it… this is what you were scared of? This? THIS IS WHAT FRIGHTENED SO MANY MEN ONLINE, PEOPLE!

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