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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leebutler Fantasy, Horror, Review

The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (2023) – Ship Shape

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: 10th August
Seen: 23rd August

In the 1897 novel Dracula, chapter 7 spends most of its time presenting pages from a log from a ship known as the Demeter. The pages from the log show the events that took place on a ship carrying a large quantity of goods from Varna, Bulgaria all the way to Whitby, England. As the journal goes on it becomes apparent that the trip was hijacked by the titular Dracula who slowly picked off the crew. It’s a single chapter, barely even 3000 words long and basically just meant to explain how the titular vampire managed to make it from his home in Bulgaria to England in a time when the only way to do so would’ve been by boat. It’s the kind of thing that most adaptations might make into a quick 2-minute scene, maybe not even fully delve into all the details but the people behind The Last Voyage Of The Demeter looked at that 3000 words and realised that could make for a pretty fun horror flick and thus, we got this enjoyable little treat.

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leebutler Adventure, Biography, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, History

My Barbenheimer Experience

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.

There really is nothing quite like a good old double feature. Two films intentionally curated to be screened back to back and shared by a collective audience who can use one film to build up to another, it’s an idea so fundamental to the film-going experience that at least one film has opened with a song dedicated to the glory of double features (albeit ones of the Science Fiction variety). 

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Review

The Flash (2023) – Flash In The Pan

Released: 15th June
Seen: 20th June

The Flash Info

The Flash tells a very complicated story, both on and off-screen (but we’ll get to the off-screen stuff later). The story starts with Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) who is still dealing with the after-effects of being part of the Justice League, basically meaning he has to be on call whenever Bruce Wayne needs backup AKA someone to speedily clean up after his mess. Between those jobs he is doing what Barry Allen always does, calling his father who is in jail for murdering Barry’s mother (a crime he didn’t do) and trying to find evidence to prove his innocence. Somehow, Barry learns that his speed powers can be used to go back in time which means he should be able to go back in time to save his mom’s life… unfortunately, that also means he has somehow changed the world in ways he will have to spend the entire film dealing with.

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leebutler Adventure, Family, Fantasy, Review

The Little Mermaid (2023) – Part Of Our World

Released: 25th May
Seen: 25th May

When people talk about the Disney Renaissance, they are talking about a very specific period of time from 1989 to 1999 when Disney released hit after hit with stunning regularity. Ten films over a ten-year period that would revive the Disney brand in a way that basically set the stage for its eventual dominance over the industry today. It could be argued that without the Disney Renaissance, we wouldn’t have the MCU that dominates the landscape today.

Even the worst film in the Disney Renaissance is better than most other films from the same time period, it’s truly a remarkable time in cinema history and it all started with a simple film about a mermaid who wanted to be where the people were… and because Disney has decided exploiting it’s back catalog is a substitute for good film making, we now have a remake of The Little Mermaid, the film that started this Renaissance. In somewhat of a miracle, it’s not actually that bad.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Review

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) – Natural 20

Released: 30th March
Seen: 30th March

In 1974, the very first edition of Dungeons & Dragons was published and it pretty quickly became a mainstay of pop culture. Every decade seems to change how people look at it, be it back in the 80s when it was a very large part of the Satanic Panic bullshit or in the 2000s when we were talking about the first film adaptation that carried the name or even the 2010s when Stranger Things reminded people of why they enjoyed playing this game back in the 80s when the adults said it was evil and satanic. Even now it still maintains high popularity with an untold number of web shows and podcasts dedicated to variations on this classic tabletop RPG… I’ve never played it once, so I went into this movie completely blind and had a great time but who knows how a fanboy might react to this.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Review

Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022) – Aquatic Boogaloo

Released: 15th December
Seen: 16th December

In 2009, Avatar came out and was genuinely revolutionary. It caused a surge in sales of 3D TVs, becoming a benchmark for what 3D could look like and basically creating a brief 3D revival around the early 2010s, it was one of the most visually astounding films ever to be released and quickly became the highest-grossing film of all time, a title that it would hold up until 2019 when Endgame came out. Then it would take back that title with a re-release in 2021. Avatar absolutely dominates the discussion on the box office, proof that you don’t bet against James Cameron… and no one gives a single damn about the story of the film. 

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Review

Men (2022) – Uggh, Men

Released: 18th August
Seen: 20th November

There’s been a strange trend recently of people pretending that horror films have never been political before roughly 2016. It might seem harsh to say they’re pretending but the alternative is to assume they’re just incredibly media illiterate. Horror as a genre has been political since the start and horror in film is regularly political, even if it’s incredibly subtle about it. 

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Hocus Pocus 2 Promo Image
leebutler Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Review

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) – Wonderful Witchcraft

Released: 30th September
Seen: 30th September

In 1993 the film Hocus Pocus was released to an audience that really didn’t want anything to do with it. At the time it was critically thrashed and the box office wasn’t exactly glowing which is a little understandable when you consider it was released on the same day as the juggernaut that was Free Willy and not too long after Jurassic Park, so audiences were somewhat distracted. Of course, as time went on, thanks to regular screenings around Halloween and the home video market, Hocus Pocus eventually found its audience and became a massive cult hit and has been subsequently reevaluated by many as a pretty damn good family movie with more than enough charm to delight most audiences, along with possibly the best cover version of I Put A Spell On You to ever be recorded. 

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Review, Romance

Three Thousand Years Of Longing (2022) – Longing For More

Released: 1st September
Seen: 4th September

George Miller is one of those directors who came on the scene with a film that changed cinema and has almost constantly delivered truly fascinating work. His film Mad Max is, without hyperbole, one of the most important features to come out during the Australian New Wave period that lasted from the start of the 70s to the end of the 80s. He has the distinction of being one of a handful of directors to handle every entry into a long-running franchise, and then we go outside that to see his work on such legendary films as Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet and the absolutely perfect Babe 2: Pig In The City. He’s the kind of director who you can completely trust to give you a good time in the cinema… usually. With Three Thousand Years of Longing he delivered something else.

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