leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Thriller

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) – One Final Adventure

Released: 17th May
Seen: 25th May

The Mission: Impossible franchise has been a part of the cinematic landscape since 1996. Some people who were conceived on the opening night are now weeks away from turning 30, that’s a staggering amount of time for us to have been watching the ever-growing world-ending adventures of Ethan Hunt and his pack of associates who are as expendable as they are available for the shooting schedule required. No matter what your stance is on the franchise, it’s hard to deny that it’s been an iconic action franchise the likes of which we will not see again for quite a long time. Partially we won’t see it because we just will never see another star like Tom Cruise again who, despite how you might feel about him deciding to be a spokesman for one of the most evil organizations ever to exist on Planet Earth (WHERE IS SHELLY!?), is an undeniably charismatic superstar who can make even the flimsiest of action premises enjoyable thanks to his utter devotion to the craft. So here we are, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which is allegedly the final film in this franchise… I’ll believe that when I don’t see it but if this is the note that the franchise is going out on, I’m not gonna be mad about it.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review

Screamboat (2025) – Oh Boy!

Released: 2nd April
Seen: 26th May

On the 28th of December last year, I subjected myself to the absolutely horrific piece of garbage known as The Mouse Trap which had the distinct honour of being the first horror film to take advantage of the fact that Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. That film was so god awful that it made it to the top of my worst of the year list, an honour it would’ve gotten even if last year was a normal year for me where there were 10 films on such a list. It was a truly putrid film that was the perfect example of a film made to cheaply cash in on something being public domain. No cleverness, no joy, just a shitty generic slasher with a Mickey Mouse mask on because you could legally get away with it. At the end of my review of that “film” I pointed out that the next film that was going to play with the idea of Mickey Mouse as a killer would be called Screamboat and all I wanted was for it to be somewhat better than The Mouse Trap was…well, Screamboat is the exact film I was hoping for when I heard that they were making a horror movie about Steamboat Willie.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Netflix, Review, Thriller

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) – Down With Prom

Released: 23rd May
Seen: 24th May

In 2021, a horror film event happened that really showed the potential for what could be done with a streaming platform that wanted people to notice what it was releasing. Over the course of three weeks Netflix released the Fear Street Trilogy, a set of horror films inspired by the R.L. Stine books that all took place in different time periods, played around in different eras of the horror/slasher genre, and all connected to create a grand overarching story. It was dark, twisted, queer and just a ton of fun. I even named the entire trilogy as one of the best films of 2021, which is a choice I stand by because every single entry did something truly great within the slasher genre. They were films that understood what makes the genre fun and their success as an event pretty much guaranteed that there was going to be more. When they announced that we were going to get a new entry with the subtitle Prom Queen, this reviewer was excited at the prospect… never be excited about things, it leads to disappointment.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) – Dead Perfect

Released: 15th May
Seen: 24th May

The Final Destination franchise has straight up ruined an entire generation of people. Don’t believe me, find a person born roughly around 1985-1990 and put them on a highway with a single log truck within their field of vision and I can guarantee you they will have a panic attack and pull the car off the road because they vividly remember the opening of the second movie. For years the Final Destination series was a Horror movie joyride, a franchise built around the idea of one person having a premonition of a major accident with a death toll in the hundreds and getting their friends and a few strangers out in time to avoid it. Naturally, death would take out those remaining victims in a very specific order using Rube Goldberg devices of death that would end in some truly insane sequences. For 5 films between 2000 and 2011, audiences were treated to a glorious wave of catastrophic carnage but it felt like that was going to be it. Sure there were talks about reviving the franchise for years but it never happened so it became a nostalgia property for a specific generation of people… and now thanks to Final Destination: Bloodlines, this campy little franchise is back for more and it’s truly glorious.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Another Simple Favour (2025) – Meh-mbo Italiano

Released: 1st May
Seen: 13th May

In 2018 a little film called A Simple Favour came out to rapturous applause. A fun, extravagant murder mystery thriller with a pair of female leads at the top of their game that delivered on every single front, it was a smash hit all around. I personally loved it so much that I named it the best film of the year that it came out and it came out in the same year that Avengers: Infinity War came out so the bar was high. That was 7 years ago, with the additional time and looking back on their cultural impact I have to admit that maybe I put it too high on the list (lists of that nature are never perfect, merely reflecting the critics belief in the moment they create the list) but I still stand by it being an absolutely brilliant movie that probably should’ve had a sequel years ago. We finally have got one, but was the wait too long for another favour?

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Mystery, Review

Heart Eyes (2025) – Love

Released: 13th February
Seen: 13th May

The Holiday Slasher is an idea that basically defined the boom period of the slasher genre back in the 80s, the idea being that a producer could just pick any random holiday and make a movie around it. This simple idea led us down the rabbit hole of My Bloody Valentine, Leprechaun, Silent Night Deadly Night, Thanksgiving and about a hundred other horror films of varying quality. Of course, lately there’s been a lot less of this kind of film, mostly because every holiday was already handled by a film from the 80s, so there’s not much new territory to tread on here. If you can’t do something new though, at least do something fun, and Heart Eyes is doing something very fun.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Horror, Review

The Ugly Stepsister (2025) – Cinder-hell-a

Released: 9th May
Seen: 11th May

The story of Cinderella is one that’s been told more times than anyone would be insane enough to count. It’s been animated, it’s been turned into multiple musicals, it’s been parodied and referenced and put in every position that the insane creative mind can consider. It’s even been the subject of many horror films over the years, which makes sense considering the Brothers Grimm iteration of the story is particularly brutal. Indeed several major versions of the story lean into some pretty violent imagery, the Into The Woods version of the story has the stepsisters cutting off their heels in a direct reference to the Brothers Grimm while the Revolting Rhymes version by Roald Dahl had the prince lopping off heads, so this is a story that’s perfect for a horror retelling. The Ugly Stepsister tackles the story from the genre of Body Horror and does a beautiful job at it.

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leebutler Action, Drama, Horror, Review, Thriller

Sinners (2025) – Hellishly Great

Released: 17th April
Seen: 10th May

Ryan Coogler is one of the most surprising directors in recent years. After breaking onto the scene with Fruitvale Station, Ryan was handed the keys to two important pieces of cinematic IP. The first was Creed, a spin-off from the Rocky franchise that absolutely made him into a mainstream figure, which he then was able to use to helm Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, cementing him as a masterful blockbuster director that should not be underestimated. Of course most of his work is in known IP, in franchises people previously knew but hadn’t yet been able to actually go for broke with something original… until now, thanks to his absolute barn burner of a horror film Sinners which should cement Ryan Coogler as one of the best directors of this generation.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Thunderbolts* (2025) – THUNDER!!

Released: 1st May
Seen: 9th May

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will forever be a legendary moment in cinema, a franchise like this going for almost 2 decades with film and TV series creating this wide interconnected universe is almost unheard of and has rarely been as well executed as it has been here. Lately though, it feels like the MCU has been in a slump since the insane high of Endgame. Sure, there’ve been some bright spots, but nothing rose to the level of the MCU before Thanos snapped his fingers. It felt like everything was so spread out that it was hard to return to what made this franchise special. So here we find ourselves with another entry in the long-running franchise… and it might be the best one since Endgame and possibly in the top 10 of the entire MCU experiment, it’s that good.

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leebutler Netflix, Drama, Comedy, Review

Kinda Pregnant (2025) – Pregnant Pause

Released: 21st March
Seen: 26th April

Amy Schumer is one of those comics who always gets a bad rap and is a common target of some pretty intense online vitriol. If you ever hear some online douchebag proclaim that women aren’t funny, her name will be one of the first ones to come out of their shithole mouths. Now I believe that Amy can be a pretty funny comic performer when she has the right material, her work on the Comedy Central Roasts was universally great, her first film Trainwreck was hilarious, her TV series Inside Amy Schumer had some brilliant sketches that still hold up to this day and I’ll even say she was a good co-host of the Oscars a few years ago. She has her problems as a performer, but she is capable of being very funny… just not in Kinda Pregnant, but that’s because there’s not much about that film in general that would be considered funny.

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