leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

After Everything (2023) – Death To All Of Them

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th October
Seen: 6th October

The After franchise has become a nemesis of mine, a franchise I have a deep and profound hatred of that will never die. Every single time a new entry is released, the sound of my wail of pain can be heard around the block because it’s almost predetermined what is going to be put on the screen. Every film is an hour and a half of a depressingly demented toxic relationship with a blank sheet of paper that answers to the name of Tessa (Josephine Langford) and an abusive piece of excrement meant to resemble one of the biggest pop stars of our generation who answers to the name Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). Every time it’s a film of two people who shouldn’t be sharing time zones having an absurdly toxic and awful time, arguing constantly and breaking up their arguing with lackluster sex set to music chosen by a DJ who is high on ketamine and every time it’s just a bad time for anyone watching that has half a brain. 

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leebutler Drama, Romance

After Ever Happy (2022) – No Happiness Here

Released: 8th September
Seen: 8th September

After Ever Happy Info

As much as one might try to go into a film as impartially as possible, it’s not always possible to do so. We are but humans and thus we will inevitably create biases without even thinking about it. A film’s marketing can set up expectations that a film might never meet, a film could have a dramatic history behind the scenes that leaks out into the public eye and makes you wary of what’s to come (Anyone else excited to find out what the hell is going on with that Don’t Worry Darling movie?) and sometimes you have to go see a film in a franchise that you have lovingly referred to as your nemesis so you go in fully prepared to hate it… So, my nemesis finally released the new entry, After Ever Happy and the film is just as awful as every other one but they finally added a twist that is undeniably fascinating.

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After We Collided (2020) – Complete Car Crash

Released: 10th September
Seen: 11th September

After We Collided Info

2019 brought the hit series After to cinemas and… it was awful. A bland flavourless movie that only exists because the One Direction fanfiction it’s based on did well online. It made about $12 million on a $14 million budget and in a fair world that would mean the series died there… of course, that’s just the domestic total. Worldwide, After made (I swear I’m not joking here) $69 million and therefore it was going to get a sequel. Now, the first film was spectacularly bland so surely the second film is going to be just as bland right? Right?

…So, this is somehow less original than 50 Shades of Grey and a lot less interesting. 

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The Top Ten Worst Films of 2019

Well, here we are. The end of 2019 and we’ve gotten all the positive feelings out of our system, leaving us with a thick bile that needs to be expelled. That’s kind of how I feel about these lists, it’s more of a way for me to vent and purge out all the excess bad feelings I had towards some of the worst films of the year. Just need to get this out so I’m prepared for the year to come… and because I find it’s good to acknowledge just what mistakes were made over the last year, but mostly it’s just venting about things that’ve been bugging me for a while now and if we’re being honest, worst lists tend to just be venting by people who need a good bit of content. The rules I used for my best list carry over to this list too, go look at that list to check up on what those rules are (and to see if any films I liked match up with yours, because I thirst for views and attention) but first, some dishonourable mentions

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After (2019) – 50 Shades Of Bland

Released: 4th July
Seen: 4th July

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNLta4nDM10

In April of 2013, Anna Todd released the first chapter of a story titled After onto the website Wattpad. Wattpad is a website known mostly for fan fiction and in Anna’s case, she was big into One Direction. This would prove to be good for Anna because One Direction was still really big at the time, indeed probably at the peak of their collective career. So this fanfiction would focus on Harry Styles, the heavily tattooed member of the well-loved boyband, and create a tale where Harry Styles was a college boy who broods and has a bit of a dark side to him who would end up falling for the sweet innocent Tessa. The book was a huge hit on Wattpad, netting half a billion reads for the 99 chapters of romance between a member of One Direction and some girl who could be you, dear reader. Now, there was a time when this would be the end of the story. The Fan Fiction would stay online, net the writer some credibility in the internet space and we’d never have to talk about it on this blog because it would be unfair to be incredibly critical towards fan fiction which is normally written by bored people with a few hours to kill and a little fantasy they want to imagine… but then After just had to go get turned into a book, change the name Harry Styles to Hardin Scott (for obvious legal reasons) and become enough of a hit that someone had to make a movie out of this book because if Fifty Shades could turn into a hit franchise, surely this one will be a major hit too.

*sigh*

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