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 Biography, Comedy, History, Netflix, Review

Unfrosted (2024) – Bland

Released: 3rd May
Seen: 5th May

Unfrosted Info

Throughout the 1990s it was inarguable that the biggest person in pop culture was Jerry Seinfeld. For nine seasons his TV series was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, taking the mundane elements of our day-to-day lives and creating iconic television comedy out of them. What makes Jerry’s run as the star of the biggest TV show of the decade so incredible is that he could’ve gone on even longer, indeed he was offered millions upon millions to do a 10th season but he turned it down because he wanted to go out on top. Ever since then, Jerry has mostly stuck to doing little documentaries, talk show appearances and a show about comedians in cars drinking coffee but, except for The Bee Movie, Jerry has never really returned to the world of acting since his show finished… and Unfrosted is a reminder of why he shouldn’t act anymore because it turns out he stopped being good at it in 1998.

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leebutler Comedy, Musical, Review

Mean Girls (2024) – Fetch

Released: 11th January
Seen: 1st April

Mean Girls Info

In 2004, the film Mean Girls was released and changed the cultural landscape as we know it. It’s kind of staggering to think about just how much of current pop culture can be traced back to that one film. The obvious things it did was demonstrate that Lindsay Lohan wasn’t just a child actress and mark the start of Tina Fey’s rise as a comedic force but it also created a ton of jokes that are still referenced today. Fetch, She Doesn’t Even Go Here, Too Gay To Function, the concept of wearing pink on a certain day of the week and the phrase “Cool Mom” all can be linked back to Mean Girls. It defined an entire generation’s sense of humour, it can’t be understated the kind of cultural impact that it had. Hell, it’s 20 years later and we’re still talking about it, and not just because they adapted it into a stage musical which then got adapted into a film musical, the one I’ll be talking about today.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review, Uncategorized

Slay (2024) – YAAASSSSS!!

Released: 22nd March
Seen: 1st April

A lot of streaming services have taken to making their own original films and for good reason, those films are owned by the streaming service and therefore can’t be taken away by any company (the exception to this is HBO Max who make and take away their own products because HBO Max is run by a fucking moron). There’s a general belief on this blog that those streaming originals are just as valid as any other film and thus they get reviewed, be they from Netflix, Prime or Shudder.

The one streaming service that has been an exception to this and that’s Tubi, which is weird because that’s a free service so their original films are easiest to access. However, their films also just don’t really stand out enough to warrant discussion. No one talks about the Terror Train remake, War of the Worlds: Annihilation or the sequel to the Terror Train remake that came out 3 months after the Terror Train remake so it felt pointless reviewing them when there were bigger things to review. Maybe that snobbery needs to be looked at, maybe some of Tubi’s garbage needs to be ransacked… or maybe I was just waiting for Tubi to release an original film that might interest me and “Drag Queen Vampire movie” is absolutely the kind of film I’m very interested in.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Dream Scenario (2024) – Dreamy

Released: 1st January
Seen: 31st March

Dream Scenario Info

There is no term on the planet that I hate more than “Cancel Culture”, it’s a term that was basically invented by assholes to make it seem like being told to stop being racist/sexist/bigoted was a free speech violation. It’s almost always an attempt for people to brush aside consequences for when they act like an idiot in public… that being said, there are some times when the reaction by the internet is horribly over the top. Sometimes someone in public makes a joke that’s a little off-colour or does something that’s accidentally disrespectful, the internet jumps on them and vilifies them for a while before the person makes a grovelling apology which only makes things worse until the internet moves onto their next target. On Twitter (I refuse to call it anything else than that) we call this the Twitter Main Character where the ultimate goal is not to become that person. It looks like the cycle of the Twitter Main Character has officially gone mainstream because Dream Scenario is basically a feature film based around that concept and it’s just as weird and hilarious as you might expect.

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Beautiful Wedding (2024) – Annulment

Released: 8th March
Seen: 12th March

Beautiful Wedding Info Directed & Written By: Roger Kumble Starring: Virginia Gardner, Dylan Sprouse, Libe Barer, Austin North

In 2023 the film Beautiful Disaster was unleashed onto an unsuspecting and unwilling public. It’s part of this weird era of film where everyone wants to do their own Fifty Shades AKA Take a shitty fanfiction, file off some serial numbers and make a movie about it. This gave us the awful After series, the rapey 365 Days series and a series that exists, Beautiful Disaster paired a bad boy boxer and an innocent young woman who made a bet with each other that they wouldn’t sleep together for 30 days, which naturally led to the both of them starting a relationship because that’s how these movies go. It was certainly not the worst version of this kind of movie, but it was pretty bad (I named it the 8th worst movie of 2023, something that I stand by) so knowing that a sequel was coming out made my blood run cold. I thought the After series was done, maybe I’d be free from this crap for a while but no… Prime Studios have other plans for me, bad plans.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

American Fiction (2024) – Stranger Than… Well

Released: 9th January
Seen: 27th February

We live in an age where we keep hearing the same refrain over and over again, “No one can take a joke anymore, you can’t joke about anything”. It’s a refrain screamed largely by people who’ve been telling the exact same joke since 1993 and can’t be bothered to update their material. The truth is that you can still make jokes about pretty much anything as long as you do it well, you can push the boundaries of good taste if you’re able to actually do something interesting. Comedy is still fairly easy to do and can be quite shocking while doing it, you just need to not only tell the jokes well but know what you want to target with your comedy. American Fiction knows exactly what it wants to target with its comedy, and oh boy does it land every single punch that it throws.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

May December (2024) – Once Upon A December

Released: 1st February
Seen: 13th February

In 1997, Mary Kay Letourneau pleaded guilty to 2 counts of second-degree rape of a child. The child in question was 12-year-old Vili Fualaau and what made this case turn into the stuff of tabloid legend was that not only would Mary Kay go on to give birth to Fualaau’s child while in prison (two of them throughout the relationship, but one specifically was born during her initial prison sentence) but they would eventually get married and remain married for 14 years, until 2019. The entire story was everything that the tabloids love, it had sex, intrigue, lying, and a hint of a taboo romance that created an epic drama that people could follow. Everyone who was around then heard at least one or two comics making jokes about how lucky Vili in particular was to be in a situation where an older woman had sex with him, it was the ultimate water cooler topic for ages… and in the center of it all were two people, one of whom was a victim who didn’t get his story told. Sadly, May December doesn’t tell his story as it probably could’ve, but using the Letourneau/Fualaau story as a springboard it weaves a darkly fascinating tale of its own.

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