leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Music, Musical

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025) – Perfection

Released: 20th June
Seen: 10th December

We are officially at the point where the K-pop genre has hit critical mass, probably been there for a while thanks to supergroups like Blackpink or BTS showing how dominant they can be on the pop charts. This is part of an era that, according to my research, is known as the Korean Wave and hopefully when we talk about the absolutely insane rise of K-pop and the Korean wave in general in the future, we need to take the time to mention Kpop Demon Hunters, which feels like the kind of movie that can only exist now that K-pop has become such a massive element of pop culture that it has the incredible mass appeal that this work of art has.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Crime, Family, Mystery, Review

Zootopia 2 (2025) – Sssensational

Released: 27th November
Seen: 8th December

In 2016, Disney released Zootopia, which told the story of a society made entirely of animals (as in lions, tigers, bears, oh my) that was dealing with the disappearance of the predator class of animals. A buddy cop mystery movie told with just a ton of adorable animals in people clothes was basically a license to print money for Disney, which would rake in over a billion dollars from this one movie alone, and that still only made it the 4th highest-grossing movie of the year, which really says a lot about how insane the box office was only a decade ago. In the years since Zootopia has remained a very popular property, even getting a TV show on Disney+ in 2022, but it’s taken until now for Disney to get around to making a sequel, and it was absolutely worth the wait.

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leebutler Documentary, Review

Strange Journey: The Story Of Rocky Horror (2025) – Sweet

Released: 5th December
Seen: 6th December

The first time I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show was on a VHS tape while at home sick from school. For a long time I had been aware of the VHS tape that sat in the house, an impossible to miss set of ruby red lips on the cover, hovering wickedly under the words “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” printed in slightly-raised silver writing. Like everyone else on earth, I’d heard of the film before, indeed my school even taught us how to do the Time Warp at one point so elements of the film had entered my consciousness but the film itself hadn’t, so in my sickly state, I watched the film for the first time and was soon transfixed by it. It’s brilliant songs, completely mental performances and strange references that flew over my head just washed over me in that living room. Even on a crappy VHS tape, the magic of Rocky Horror worked on me, as it does for most people who see it. At that moment I joined the cult, the cult that has kept Rocky Horror in theatres and in the public consciousness for 50 years. Now seems like the perfect time to celebrate this truly insane film with a documentary and Strange Journey: The Story Of Rocky Horror is the exact kind of documentary that this classic deserves.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) – Uggh

Released: 4th September
Seen: 6th December

Ed and Lorraine Warren were complete and utter con artists whose damage to the people they claimed to help won’t be fully known for years to come. For literally decades they would go from town to town and “investigate” strange goings-on and somehow come to a “scientific” conclusion that this meant they found some form of demon. All the time just a whole mess of demons, it’s never mental illness or epilepsy or strange coincidences… nope, always demons. I’ve said this before, literally verbatim because I copied that opening section from my review of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It which I still regard as the worst mainline Conjuring movie (The spinoffs are somehow worse, but none fill me with as much actual rage as The Devil Made Me Do It). One might hope that they would stop this franchise at some point, Horror as a genre is in a new era that’s not exactly suited to what The Warren’s and their lies could inspire but nope, we now have The Conjuring: Last Rites and my god, I hope this is the end because even the lies are getting repetitive and dull.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

The Roses (2025) – Thorny Fun

Released: 28th August
Seen: 6th December

In 1981, William Adler released his eighth novel, The War Of The Roses, about a couple who slowly feel their marriage falling apart and go through an absurdly horrific divorce. This story got adapted into a film of the same name in 1989 which was a massive hit, making $160 million on a $26 million budget. As a pitch black comedy, the chances of it being remade probably seemed unlikely (remaking comedies is rare enough, remaking pitch black comedies about couples who divorce and almost torture each other to death is something that was almost never going to happen) but here we are in 2025 with The Roses coming out and honestly being funnier than you might expect it to be.

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leebutler Uncategorized

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (2025) – Upgrade

Released: 4th December
Seen: 4th December

In 2023, the long-awaited movie adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s came out to a pretty harsh critical reaction (myself included, I was not the biggest fan of it for a myriad of reasons) and a box office take that most films would kill to get. It was truly a sensation, bringing in about 300 million on a 20 million budget which makes sense because this franchise is basically review-proof. That’s the kind of return on investment that guarantees a sequel. It was inevitable that one was going to come out and probably quickly and sure enough, here we are with the second film, and to give the filmmakers credit, they seem to have paid attention to the problems that people had with the first one and have vastly improved things. 

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leebutler Thriller, Review

Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) – Go Away Now

Released: 15th May
Seen: 2nd December

In 2023, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye decided to try his hand at acting with the miniseries The Idol and the reviews for that series were absolutely scathing on a level that very few shows could get. It had an infamously bad production history, and every episode was met with brutal vitriol as it became apparent to everyone paying even a little bit of attention that Abel was not a good actor. Honestly, the reviews were so bad that it seemed like it should stop him from ever being asked back to try and do anything even close to acting again… but alas, lessons were not learned and someone decided to give him a movie where he confirms he can’t act and his co-stars prove that even their incredible talents can’t save this crap.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Review

Fight or Flight (2025) – Gloriously Silly

Released: 4th September
Seen: 1st December

In 2022, a little film called Bullet Train came out that asked the logical question, “What would happen if you put Brad Pitt on a Japanese bullet train full of assassins?” The answer was a pretty fun movie with a lot of wild over-the-top cartoon characters, a lot of inventive action scenes with stunts by a guy who did a lot of Marvel work and the director of Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2. It was the kind of film that was just balls to the wall fun, at times those balls made their way through the wall because they were slammed against it with such velocity. It was also a pretty big hit, and like a lot of big hits, it’s almost required for someone to try and make a knockoff version of it. Enter Fight or Flight, which takes Brad Pitt and replaces him with Josh Hartnett and jams some wings on the train to turn it into a plane. With that, you have another pretty damn fun movie.

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leebutler Action, Comedy

Playdate (2025) – Detention

Released: 12th November
Seen: 30th November

Sometimes a film just rubs you the wrong way and it’s really hard to explain why. Sometimes there is just something about the tone and performances in any given film that, for some reason, triggers something deep in the hate-filled portion of your brain that makes you want to scream in anger and yet it’s hard to fully pinpoint what it is about that film that gets you going. This is a problem for someone reviewing a film that has this kind of issue happen because the entire point of a review is to pinpoint what exactly it is about a film that does or doesn’t work and explain that in a way that can be understood… but here we are, Playdate just seemed to rub me the wrong way and now I’m going to spend the better part of a few paragraphs trying to put my finger on what its problem is because “It sucks” is just not good enough an explanation, even though it does absolutely suck.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Caught Stealing (2025) – Steals The Show

Released: 28th August
Seen: 30th November

Darren Aronofsky is the kind of director who seems to revel in polarising the audience, in making a film that’s going to get an extreme reaction no matter if it’s positive or negative. There aren’t really any films in his catalogue you could say are just good or well-liked; you either love his stuff or hate it. In recent years, even though I’ll admit he’s obscenely talented, I just wasn’t into his work on films like Mother! Or The Whale, but in the past, he’s delivered truly breathtaking work like Black Swan so undoubtedly there was a chance that he was going to win me back at some point with one of his works. It feels like Caught Stealing seems to be the first time that Darren has tried to make a film with a strong mass appeal (hilarious to say in retrospect since it bombed at the box office), and honestly, it’s just a damn good time.

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