leebutler Horror, Review

The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026) – Zzzzz

Released: 5th February
Seen: 28th March

When I tried to watch the movie I plan on reviewing today, I decided to watch it using my Chromecast on my TV. I have one of those Chromecasts that uses apps so I can just open up the AppleTV app and watch anything I’d bought on iTunes on my TV, it’s very handy. So, I rented The Strangers: Chapter 3 and started to try and watch it and on no less than 4 occasions during the movie, the video stopped and the Chromecast proclaimed there was an error and it needed to stop… I should’ve taken that as an omen, the Chromecast was trying to protect me from absolute garbage but nonetheless I persisted.

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leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Mercy (2026) – Release Me

Released: 22nd January
Seen: 23rd March

For better or worse, we live in the era of AI… or at least the era of AI being brute-forced into our daily lives by billionaires who rely on it to turn a profit and make a couple of extra dollars. It’s in everything, it’s in all the apps you use, the very site I post this on offers AI to write a synopsis of what I post (you’ll be happy to know I never use it, I can write shitty unfunny synopsis’ all by myself), and it’s overtaken social media where it does fun things like “makes child sex abuse material” or “endorses white supremacy”. People are now losing jobs and being replaced by AI, which is incredibly faulty and has a high risk of errors… but no error is as big as the error that was made when someone decided to give Mercy a budget and allowed this film to exist because it’s just fucking bad.

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leebutler Documentary, Review

Melania (2026) – Uggh

Released: 30th January
Seen: 23rd March

Donald Trump is a horrific fascistic scumbag, a useless pile of flesh that’s held together by bitterness and rape allegations. He’s up there on the list of worst world leaders to ever exist and yes, I am including the German guy with the funny moustache in that assessment. He’s vile, putrid, disgusting, and that’s the polite terms I can use without potentially risking getting investigated by the FBI. I do not like the man whatsoever, and I never ever have… I also have never been a fan of his wife, Melania. I’ve seen other people on the left try to pass her off as some kind of victim who secretly hates him and needs to just get away but I’ve never been one of those people, I’ve always been down to say she’s just as bad as him so when I heard there was a documentary being made about her, I was not looking forward to it. Of course, her documentary’s been a big talking point all year; it made so much money but also got critically panned, and it’s been the butt of every joke about a bad documentary for several months now. Now I’m not going to pretend I’m a fan of the film’s subject matter (did you work that part out already), but hey, I can enjoy a documentary about a bad person if the documentary is done well… but this isn’t, it’s Melania, and there is nothing good about Melania.

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leebutler Editorial

Oscar Predictions 2026

Once more we are at that time, the time where we all take a guess if the Academy of Motion Pictures is going to do something really cool or be their usual kind of boring selves. It’s been a pretty good year for film and certainly for the nominees. A new record has been set for the number of nominations a single film can get. We have a brand new category to deal with and several major international films are in discussion for some of the biggest awards. It’s also the first year where every single voter is contractually obligated to watch every film (because that was apparently not a thing up to this point)… I am not contractually obliged to see every film, in some cases I literally physically can’t but I saw as many as I could and now will use that to make my predictions for what will win, what I think should win, and what would cause some glorious chaos. 

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leebutler Action, Biopic, Drama, History, Sport

The Smashing Machine (2025) – Oh, Smashing

Released: 2nd October 2025
Seen: 9th February 2026

Over the last several decades, one of the biggest names in cinema has been The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson. His films have grossed billions of dollars; he is currently the 10th-highest-grossing actor of all time, and he did all that without having to appear in a Marvel film or anything involving Avatar. He’s one of the highest paid, most recognisable and most beloved film stars of recent years… but he’s not a great actor. Let’s be honest, no one’s ever accused him of giving a transformative performance in his entire career; the man is a personality who effectively plays himself in every single film he ever appears in. Now this isn’t a bad thing per se, a lot of very famous actors are kind of known for playing themselves in every film that they do (Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Will Ferrell just to name the first three that come to mind). With Dwayne Johnson, however, it comes with the fact that he not only plays the same character, but he’s doing it at a time when his wrestler-turned-actor contemporaries John Cena and Dave Bautista are delivering genuinely great, layered acting performances that demonstrate a range that Dwayne just hasn’t been able to do. What Dwayne’s been needing for quite some time is a chance to show off his skills, to stretch himself and prove that he isn’t just a one-trick pony… The Smashing Machine does kind of prove that, but in a way that also really shows off his limitations

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leebutler Drama, Review

Sentimental Value (2025) – Intriguing

Released: 25th December 2025
Seen: 28th February 2026

It’s often hard to figure out how to open these reviews; the style developed almost a decade ago out of an understanding that a single paragraph would be placed above the fold, and I’ve just carried that on like it was a standard element of writing. Something that just happened several years ago for no particular reason is now locked in, will probably be standard until something dramatic changes, and I’m forced to re-evaluate how things are done… You could consider that process to be something of an imperfect metaphor for Sentimental Value, a film that revolves around the idea of how things that happened in the past can still have a massive impact on people several years later. Is it the best metaphor out there? No, is it the best I could do for this opening paragraph that inevitably means nothing other than tone setting for the rest of the review? Also no, but it’s what we’ve got.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) – Rosy

Released: 7th August 2025
Seen: 27th February 2026

We all know the famous phrase “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That phrase feels more relevant today than ever, where everything just feels constantly overwhelming. Burnout is real and is not only happening in people’s professional lives but in their personal ones. Day-to-day events just pile up in a way that feels insurmountable and unfixable because the people who could fix them are unavailable. That’s a feeling that we’ve all had before and it’s the kind of emotional destruction that could make for a fascinating film, or at least a fascinating performance, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fortunately both of those things.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Bugonia (2025) – Bee-Gone-Ia

Released: 30th October 2025
Seen: 22nd February 2026

On December 4th, 2016, a fucking moron – who I won’t bother naming here – went to the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop in DC and fired multiple shots. Thankfully, he didn’t end up hurting anyone. Still, his plan was to go in to investigate the pizza place because he believed, thanks to other fucking idiots, that there was a child trafficking ring being operated out of the basement. One small problem, Comet Ping Pong didn’t have a basement nor was it in any way related to a child trafficking ring, it just happened to be a place where the Clinton campaign would occasionally buy food and a bunch of idiots reading emails decided that the phrases “pizza” or “Hot dogs” was some kind of elaborate code suggesting that they were buying children. This is probably the turning point where conspiracy theories went from curious things that went around the internet into actual real-world problems that caused the stupidest among us to threaten the lives of others, try to overthrow duly elected governments and believe that drinking raw milk is actually good for you. It’s the kind of insane shit that’s ripe for someone to use as the basis for a thriller, and Bugonia takes that mantle and runs with it.

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leebutler Biography, Drama, History, Review, Romance

Hamnet (2026) – To Be Or Not to Be

Released: 15th January
Seen: 13th February

In the history of the English language, there are few playwrights as revered as Shakespeare, it is often suggested that he is the greatest playwright in history and almost certain that his work has been adapted more times than any other writer. His work includes 39 plays, over 150 sonnets, 3 narrative poems, a few other verses and I’m sure someone will claim he also wrote the McDonald’s jingle at some point. He’s credited with creating several well known phrases (some have been misattributed to him, for more on that look up the fantastic Brows Held High video about Shakespeare that came out a while ago) and in general is just a major figure in history that will be remembered long after the rest of us are put on the compost heap and eaten by worms… oh, and also he had a wife who, hilariously, was named Anne Hathaway, but the movie Hamnet changed her name to Agnes because having a main character of your drama named after the star of The Princess Diaries would probably take away some of the potency of it.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Sport

Marty Supreme (2026) – Ping Pong Boy

Released: 22nd January
Seen: 7th February

In the history of cinema, the genre of the sports movie has presented us with some truly great films that stand the test of time. From A League Of Their Own to Air Bud, all genres and levels of prestige have been the subject of a good sports movie. Almost every sport you can think of has had a film focused on it, including table tennis. Of course, up till now, most table tennis films haven’t exactly been the most well-known; perhaps the biggest one would be Forrest Gump, but that’s not so much a table tennis film as it is a film where someone played table tennis at some point. Honestly, the sport of table tennis hasn’t had its big, sweeping, dramatic epic until now, and Marty Supreme is undeniably the ultimate in table tennis cinema.

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