leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Music, Musical

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025) – Perfection

Released: 20th June
Seen: 10th December

We are officially at the point where the K-pop genre has hit critical mass, probably been there for a while thanks to supergroups like Blackpink or BTS showing how dominant they can be on the pop charts. This is part of an era that, according to my research, is known as the Korean Wave and hopefully when we talk about the absolutely insane rise of K-pop and the Korean wave in general in the future, we need to take the time to mention Kpop Demon Hunters, which feels like the kind of movie that can only exist now that K-pop has become such a massive element of pop culture that it has the incredible mass appeal that this work of art has.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Crime, Family, Mystery, Review

Zootopia 2 (2025) – Sssensational

Released: 27th November
Seen: 8th December

In 2016, Disney released Zootopia, which told the story of a society made entirely of animals (as in lions, tigers, bears, oh my) that was dealing with the disappearance of the predator class of animals. A buddy cop mystery movie told with just a ton of adorable animals in people clothes was basically a license to print money for Disney, which would rake in over a billion dollars from this one movie alone, and that still only made it the 4th highest-grossing movie of the year, which really says a lot about how insane the box office was only a decade ago. In the years since Zootopia has remained a very popular property, even getting a TV show on Disney+ in 2022, but it’s taken until now for Disney to get around to making a sequel, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Elio (2025) – Space!

Released: 19th June
Seen: 23rd June

Original movies are becoming something of a rarity these days, either relegated to the indie circuit or they have to be made by some well-known auteur who has enough cache to get his weird original concepts past the studio system. Look at the top 10 highest-grossing films of this year, with the notable exception of Sinners, they’re all either sequels, remakes or based on a very well-known piece of IP. It’s a sad reality that audiences just aren’t going to see original films at the rate that they used to. There could be many reasons for this, a run on effect of higher theatre ticket prices meaning people want as close to a sure bet as they can get, part of the post-Covid era issues, it could be related to the rise of streaming or the saturation of the market or it could even just be a horrible self fulfilling prophecy where the big studios don’t advertise their original films that well so people don’t know about them. Case in point, did you know there was a brand new original Pixar film in cinemas right now that’s not a sequel to Toy Story or any of their other classics and that it’s also deliriously charming? Well, now you do.

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

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2025) – What’s Up Doc?

Released: 27th March
Seen: 29th March

The Day The Earth Blew Up

David Zaslav is probably one of the worst executives any movie studio has ever had to suffer under, at least in my opinion. Sure, there are many morally worse than him and some who should probably just die in prison for what they have done. However, in terms of how they have abused their stature in the industry to destroy the art of others, few are as reviled as Zaslav. The man runs Warner Brothers and yet seems to hate anything to do with animation, notably removing large amounts of historic Looney Tunes cartoons from the studio’s streaming service and infamously cancelling the completed film Coyote VS Acme. It honestly has started to feel like the man in charge of one of the most legendary animation IP brands of all time was going to kill it through sheer incompetence as a studio head… but fortunately for us, one slipped through his slimy fingers and made it out into the world and it’s one of the best animated films in recent memory.

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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 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, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) – COWABUNGA!

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

Released: 7th September
Seen: 13th September

By now the story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their creation is well known. From its start as an underground comic designed to parody superheroes to the legendary cartoon series that gave us the theme song that you are inevitably humming right now to the first movie that not only was a defining action film for a lot of childhoods but allowed New Line Cinema to go from a little independent company to one that was big enough that it could eventually make the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s an absolute phenomenon of a franchise that’s had several iterations over the years with various visual styles and tones that range from the dark and serious to the light and comedic. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem leans more towards light and comedic but also might be the best take on the franchise since the 1990 film.

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

The Monkey King (2023) – Royalty

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

Released: 2nd February
Seen: 9th September

The Monkey King Info

Journey to the West is a 16th-century Chinese story that follows the adventures of four major characters, Tripitaka, Pigsy, Sandy and The Monkey King. This story is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese novels of all time, has been translated into an abridged English language version, is the subject of multiple adaptations in every medium you could think of and is a truly important piece of work that I haven’t read or even heard about before doing background research for this review of the Netflix animated film The Monkey King, which adapts that characters specific story from the original text. It’s important to tell you that I have not read the original text because I cannot tell you if this is a faithful adaptation of it (though based on the Wikipedia description, it seems to get the core beats of the story correctly) but I can tell you if it’s a good kids movie… which it is.

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