leebutler Uncategorized

HOLLYWOOD (2020) – Hooray For Hollywood

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on May 2, 2020

In 1985, during the height of the AIDS crisis, Hollywood heartthrob Rock Hudson became the first celebrity known to have the illness. This let the public know the secret that had been going around Hollywood for quite some time… Rock Hudson, star of stage and screen since the 1950s, was gay and had been hiding that his entire life.

What if he’d never had to hide? 

What if he’d been able to walk down the red carpet holding the hand of another man? What if there wasn’t a 26-year gap between Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier winning Oscars as black performers? What if Anna May Wong actually got her due respect?! Hollywood gives us those what-ifs and then some and it turns out that it would have been great.

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leebutler Review

BLOOD QUANTUM (2020) – An Important And Extremely Entertaining Shudder Exclusive

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 30, 2020

Zombies, one of the most overused creatures in media today. If you name a genre then sure enough, there’ll be a zombie-filled version of it somewhere. There are zombie romance films, zombie westerns, hell a little over a week ago I was watching a Disney zombie musical that was popular enough to warrant a sequel. Zombies are everywhere and everyone uses them but sometimes they get used for something special. Every now and then a zombie property breaks out from the bonds of the genre to actually be something special. Blood Quantum is one of those movies.

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leebutler Uncategorized

Defending Jacob: Season 1 (2020) – Chris Evans’ Long-Awaited Return To Television

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 27, 2020. It was a review of the first 3 episodes of Defending Jacob, I have yet to complete it (because Apple+ was so bad guys… so bad!)

Chris Evans has had what you might call a monster of a year. He starred in Avengers: Endgame AKA the biggest movie of 2019, followed that up with critical acclaim in Knives Out and has now well and truly broken away from his image as Captain America with his brand new series Defending Jacob on Apple+, a streaming service that no one likes… but they might want to give it a shot for this series. 

One quick note before we begin, I’m basing this review on the three episodes that were available on April 24th. A new episode will be released weekly, anything said here is based on the opening trilogy of episodes so take that for what it’s worth.

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leebutler Review

THE BIG SHOW SHOW: SEASON 1 (2020) – It’s a good show show

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 16, 2020

I have a theory. It’s a simplistic theory, it’s a bad theory, but it’s a theory. Every single wrestler who tries acting will, at some point, make an average-or-worse children’s film. Hulk Hogan basically made a career out of them in the 90s, The Rock did a whole bunch of bad kids films in the 2000s, John Cena recently joined the club with Playing With Fire and so did Dave Bautista with My Spy. If you can name any other bad kids films by wrestlers, please do so in the comments.

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leebutler Uncategorized

LOCKE & KEY: SEASON 1 (2020) – Great For Locke Down!

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 15th, 2020.

In 2008 IDW Publishing released the first issue of Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez. The book gained a cult following pretty quickly and was actually optioned to be a TV series back in 2011. They even shot a pilot for Fox TV which would’ve starred, not kidding, Jesse McCartney AKA that kid who sang Beautiful Soul (I don’t know why this amuses me, I thought I’d share that info anyway). 

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leebutler Review

October Faction: Season 1 (2020) – Thinking of watching it? Don’t.

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 1st, 2020.

In 2015, IDW Publishing released the first volume of The October Faction, a series that revolved around retired monster-hunter Frederick Allen and his family. Netflix, always hungry for content, scooped up the rights for this comic and decided to make it into a Netflix original series… a series that they dropped on the 23rd of January and I suspect you heard nothing else about it because it didn’t catch anyone’s attention. Turns out there’s a reason for that… It’s genuinely one of the worst shows on Netflix.

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leebutler Uncategorized

CURSED FILMS SEASON 1 (2020) – Docuseries featuring all the Horror Greats

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on April 1st, 2020. This was the first of several reviews regarding episodes of Cursed Films

Every fan of genre cinema has a favourite cursed films story, one that they would gleefully pull out at the drop of a hat to show how much they love certain films. Legendary cursed horror films like The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, The Crow and Twilight Zone: The Movie have been sources of fascination for fans who want to talk about just why certain films seemed to be magnets for sorrow.

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leebutler Review

Altered Carbon Season 2 (2020)

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on March 17th, 2020. This is from when S&T gave out percentage scores on a fancy layout and I somehow kept track of that

Altered Carbon first popped up on Netflix on the 2nd of February 2018. Based on the 2002 novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan, the series made waves before a single episode aired by being one of the most expensive shows to be created by the streaming service. Once the series hit the internet it turned out to be very popular, popular enough to get a second season that dropped on the 27th of February and an upcoming anime film on the 19th of March. The first season of this cyberpunk noir detective series was certainly one that required your full attention but rewarded you for it with some of the best characters on TV and some incredible action scenes that made it stand out. Season two certainly started that way, but it stumbled right near the finish line.

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leebutler Review

Re-Displacement (2020)

NOTE: Here is my review from Soda & Telepaths that was posted back on February 6th, 2020.

Opening on a therapy session set in a calm-seeming office, Re•displacement starts off very quietly. We get a quick little introduction to Leo (Nico Mirallegro), a sympathetic soul seeking help from Doctor Michelle (Nathalie Cox) who has an experimental treatment. The treatment is similar, in many ways, to a virtual reality simulator that allows Leo to walk through his own memories to come face to face with a trauma that he’s been desperately trying to keep buried for years. This is quickly explained within a few minutes of the short beginning, allowing us to relax and enjoy this ride.

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leebutler Review

Bad Boys For Life (2020)

NOTE: So for the last 2 years I’ve been producing reviews for Soda & Telepaths who sadly closed their doors at the end of 2021. Thus, I now have a large amount of assorted reviews from the last 2 years that need somewhere to go and so they will be put here… slowly, on days I don’t have a new review to put up so I won’t flood anyone’s page/emails with a dozen reviews.

These are as close to how they were over on S&T, though that site had a different layout and style I had to work within so it might not be exactly 1 for 1. Also, in some cases, old reviews might have been deleted from the site before I got to them (like this one) and I have to rely on old notes I took.

With all that in mind, here is my first review for S&T that was posted back on January 16th, 2020.

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