leebutler Comedy, Review

80 For Brady (2023) – Legendarily Average

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: 27th July
Seen: 5th August

A sad truth about Hollywood is that older actresses tend to get nowhere near as many good roles as they deserve. It’s certainly getting better, last year alone had several great legendary older women turning out some great performances and even getting awards love for it but most of them are being relegated to either side characters or underwhelming grandma roles. Fortunately, there is a slowly growing subgenre of films that video essayist Be Kind Rewind has effectively dubbed Book Club films, which tend to include a group of assorted iconic actresses on a simple little adventure. The downside is that these films don’t really give these legendary actresses much to do beyond just hanging out together and getting a cheque – and in the case of 80 for Brady, four icons are relegated to a barely watchable Super Bowl advertisement.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Talk To Me (2023) – Give Them A Hand

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: 27th July
Seen: 5th August

It’s a sad truth that Australian cinema isn’t as popular as it used to be. Sure we had our heyday with films like Priscilla, Strictly Ballroom and Razorback but lately it feels like we’re mostly just a cheap backlot for American films with very few serious hits of our own. So when an Australian film not only manages to score a great opening week at the box office (especially against juggernauts like Barbie) but gets rave reviews that’s cause for celebration, especially because Talk To Me manages to live up to the insane hype that surrounds it.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) – Holy Hell

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: 6th April
Seen: 24th July

It’s almost a cliche at this point to bring up The Exorcist when talking about a movie featuring exorcism but it’s kind of impossible, some movies are just such a massive part of the cinematic landscape that anyone else touching that subgenre is inevitably going to be compared to them. Horror in particular has this problem a lot, all slasher movies tend to be leaning into templates made by Halloween or Friday the 13th, all Zombie movies are just riffing on Dawn of the Dead and all exorcism movies are basically just The Exorcist with a fresh coat of paint. You can absolutely do new interesting things with the genre, films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose throwing the genre into the courtroom create an interesting take on the genre… or you can just go “Oh but here’s a real person who actually did this job” and then do another version of The Exorcist but without the brilliance that made the 1977 film an absolute legend.

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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 Comedy, Review

Mafia Mamma (2023) – Mamma Mia!

Released: 13th April
Seen: 13th July

There are some actors who are so singularly talented that any material they’re given is almost automatically made better just by their involvement, the kind of performer who manages to shine even in absolute garbage. You have some obvious choices, all-time legends like Meryl Streep and Glenn Close are just two examples of people who basically make something great just by being in it. Then there’s Toni Collette, one of the greatest actresses that has ever come out of Australia, a performer who never fails to deliver something incredible and who probably should have at least one Oscar by now (I and many others will never forgive the Academy for snubbing her the year Hereditary came out). She’s truly something special as a performer… so how boring does a film have to be where even Toni Collette can’t make it into anything other than just a dull time?

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Joy Ride (2023) – Joyful

Released: 6th July
Seen: 6th July

When one thinks of the modern road trip movie, there’s a certain image that comes to mind for most audiences. That image is of a group of friends, usually four because that’s how many can easily fit in a standard car but that number can fluctuate, going outside of their normal lives and going on a simple adventure which results in insane shenanigans. This subgenre includes films like Road Trip, Euro Trip, and The Hangover which were insanely popular due to interesting locations, casts with great chemistry, and some decent writing… They were also overwhelmingly white, often using that as a major source of comedy since a bunch of white people in a foreign country and not understanding the customs has been comedy gold for a stunning amount of time.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation

Nimona (2023) – Metal!

Released: 30th June
Seen: 3rd July

The fact that Nimona exists today at all should legally be considered a miracle just based on what it’s been through to get to a screen. Starting life as a webcomic, the film rights were bought in 2015 by Blue Sky Pictures, a Fox company that was planning on making a movie out of it, and had everything gone the way it was originally supposed to, that film would’ve come out in early 2020. Now, if you know your history of insane company acquisitions, you’ll know that in 2019, Disney bought Fox and with that purchase now has ownership of everything Fox has ever made or was making at the time (though let’s be real, they did it because it was the only way for them to get hold of certain Marvel properties that they knew they’d want eventually). This purchase meant that Disney owned Nimona now, and that’s where the trouble started.

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leebutler Action, Review, Thriller

Extraction 2 (2023) – Even More Extraction!

Released: 16th June
Seen: 26th June

In the year of our lord 2020, Netflix released something that it doesn’t get to release often… a hit film that people actually watched. That film was Extraction, a powerhouse action flick directed by the stunt coordinator for such films as Avengers: Endgame and the Hunger Games Trilogy, which meant that it was basically designed from the ground up to deliver intense high-caliber action sequences with a somewhat interesting story to hold everything together. At the time the film managed to get 99 million viewers in the first month, it’s currently the 7th most viewed original film on the platform (at least as far as we know because Netflix is cagey about releasing its viewer data) – obviously Netflix was going to make a sequel to one of their biggest hits and so they brought back a few of the original cast, the original director and writing team and said “Go do that again” and sure enough, they went and did it again.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Review

Elemental (2023) – Elementary

Released: 15th June
Seen: 22nd June

When it comes to releasing quality films, there are very few studios that could be labeled as sure bets. Studios that, more often than not, are somewhat of a marker for quality films. If you’re a horror fan and see Blumhouse, you’ve got a good shot. People who might call themselves Cinephiles perk up seeing A24, Superhero buffs rush to Marvel films, it’s just a fact that some studio markers will get people paying attention and the kings of that in family film for the last few decades have been Disney/Pixar who has basically just released great films non-stop for decades. Even with their most recent releases having trouble at the box office, they’re still making good quality films that capture the imagination and test the limits of the 3D animation software that they use, and with Elemental they’ve absolutely pulled that off again.

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