leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) – Brave And The Bold Choice

Released: 13th February
Seen: 16th February

In 2018, Thanos snapped his fingers and destroyed half of the universe. By doing so, he simultaneously created a point we could mark as the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the gift of time, we can pretty much state that Phase Three (AKA the era between Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Far From Home) has been the best phase of the MCU, but its absolute peak can pretty much be pinpointed to Infinity War and Endgame, two films that felt like the end of a cinematic crescendo that had been building for a decade up to that point. They were great movies, truly proof of what this genre could be like at its absolute best and probably one of the dumbest moves that Marvel made in terms of story because the problem is that once you hit a high like that, what happens afterwards?

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

Vengeance Most Fowl (2025) – Splendid

Released: 3rd January
Seen: 5th January

Wallace & Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl INformation

In 1989 the world was introduced to a lovable cheese-obsessed inventor named Wallace and his silent sentient super-smart dog named Gromit in the Oscar-nominated short film A Grand Adventure. Little did anyone know at the time that they had created a pair of cultural icons who would go on to be a major part of British pop culture for the next 35 years and counting. The charming little claymation characters and their somehow both subdued and wacky adventures would end up being the stars of a well known trilogy of shorts that included The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave (the last two getting Oscars) and eventually made their way to the big screen with the 2005 film The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. It’s been almost 20 years since then and apart from one more short it’s been very quiet for Wallace & Gromit but now they’re back with their new film Vengeance Most Fowl and once again they’ve proven that charm and a little bit of clay is a match made in heaven.

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

Moana 2 (2024) – You’re Welcome

Released: 27th November
Seen: 15th December

In the screening for Moana 2 that I went to, the cinema was pretty packed with a ton of parents bringing their children to see the sequel to the 2016 original. Kids who were so young that it’s possible they weren’t even alive when the original Moana came out. These kids probably have only seen a handful of films in their life and one of them is going to be Moana 2, a formative feature film in their lives that will linger for a while as it introduces them to the magic of cinema. When you see little kids watching Moana 2 and see the joy it puts in their eyes, it’s kind of hard to say anything particularly negative about the film in general because it makes it clear how much it does not matter. The target audience does not care about critical reviews, they do not care about story structure or pacing because they’re just there to see this super awesome girl called Moana do some super awesome things and that’s great. I’m glad that Moana 2 is going to be a good first film for a lot of kids… I just wish it lived up to its potential to be a great first film.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review, Sci-Fi

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) – Timely

Released: 25th July
Seen: 27th July

Six years ago, a little independent film called Deadpool 2 was released to cinemas, doing incredible business and cementing the legendary Merc with the Mouth as an iconic addition to the superhero genre. I know it feels like an absolute eternity since 2018, it was a different time before a plague basically upended our world and changed absolutely everything but you have to remember that 2018-2019 was probably the peak era of the modern Superhero genre, culminating in the cataclysmic cinematic event known as Avengers: Infinity War, followed a year later by Avengers: Endgame. Looking back with the gift of hindsight, Endgame marked the point where the superhero genre peaked and it’s probably never going to be that great again but at the time it felt like there would be no end and surely the next big thing would be another Deadpool movie. Surely it would be, Deadpool 2 was the 5th highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office, it was so popular they re-released it with new footage to make a Christmas movie, surely this meant that we’d get another run around with the funny red menace.

…then the plague happened, no one wanted to go to the movies anymore and Superhero films entered a slump. 

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

Inside Out 2 (2024) – Deep Thoughts

Released: 13th June
Seen: 30th June

In 2015 Pixar released Inside Out, a fascinating film that explained the complex concept of emotions in a funny, heartwarming way and was incredibly accessible for people to understand. In my humble opinion, it’s also the best thing that Pixar has put out that didn’t include Woody or Buzz Lightyear. It was truly a miracle of a film that has some of the most beautiful imagery and emotional beats (Seriously, you want to make me cry like a baby in under 10 seconds? Just start singing “Who’s your friend who likes to play?” and I’ll lose my damn mind). It was about as close to perfect as you could get from the Pixar people and it made so much money that it was inevitable a sequel would happen. It took almost a full decade for them to make it happen but now we finally have our follow-up to the emotional rollercoaster that was Inside Out and fortunately, Inside Out 2 manages to live up to the expectations that were set for it.

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

The Garfield Movie (2022) – Here Comes Garfield!

Released: 30th May
Seen: 30th June

In 1977, Jim Davis was working on a comic strip called “Jon” about a cartoonist named Jon Arbuckle and his cat Garfield. The strip had been called Jon for a year already but Jim smartly changed it to Garfield just before the strip would get printed nationally. It soon became an undeniable phenomenon, with the kind of merchandising that’s normally reserved for Sci-Fi epics and superheroes. It would go on to create a long-running beloved animated comedy called Garfield and Friends, a dozen animated specials, a second series that only finished airing in 2016 and two live-action movies that we try our best to forget. What hasn’t been tried yet is a full-length animated motion picture released in cinemas and now we have one… it’s fine.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) – Action Packed Glory

Released: 11th January
Seen: 26th April

In 2015 George Miller returned to the franchise that began his career after a 30-year break and gave us Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that many would argue (and be completely right to do so) was the best action film of the 2010s. A high-octane explosion-filled joyride through the desert, Mad Max: Fury Road revived a long-dead Ozploitation franchise and took it to Hollywood where it reminded the world that the guy who made the two Happy Feet movies used to be an absolute madman who made films where cars explode just for the fucking fun of it. What was a big surprise back then was that the standout character in the Mad Max movie wasn’t Max but a side character named Furiosa who became an instant classic character who people wanted to know more about. It might’ve taken nearly a decade but Miller has heard our cries and given us the glory that is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

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

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (2024) – Scarring

Released: 19th April
Seen: 28th April

On the 19th of April an interview with director Zack Snyder dropped where he delivered this quote:

You may love or hate my movies, I’m 100% fine with that but a vote against me is a vote for the focus groups. Know by saying ‘Snyder sucks’ you’re also saying “you know what? give me more focus groups! I want Happy Meals!

As one might expect, the second this phrase hit the internet there was a group of people who took issue with it, myself being one of them. This quote kind of speaks to the arrogance of Zack Snyder, how he seems to believe that his films are something so outside the mainstream and doing something so unique that we have to support him for the love of cinema. It is, truthfully, one of the most pretentious things that has ever been said by a director of mainstream cinema… it’s also absolute bullshit because, having now seen Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, there’s truly nothing about it that goes against focus groups because it reeks of the most pandering studio bullshit one could imagine.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Thriller

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One (2023) – Mission Possible

Released: 8th July 2023
Seen: 29th January 2024

At this point, the Mission Impossible series exists for one reason and one reason only, to basically make the entire world believe that Tom Cruise is the most badass human being alive. Sure, there’s a story, espionage, action and comedy that appeals to the masses and delivers high-octane thrills as needed but its principal job at the moment is to help launder the image of a man whose entire life is so intertwined with the evil that is Scientology that he needs people to ignore that and focus on the cool stunts that he can perform. It’s kind of a neat trick because normally it works, normally Tom Cruise movies open so big and make such a splash that we talk about how he saved cinema or something like that. So what does it take for a Mission Impossible film to underperform like this one did? I mean, mostly it was just bad luck with the strikes and people not going to the movies as much but it’s also a case of diminishing returns.

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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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