leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review

A Real Pain (2024) – Hauntingly Hilarious

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 24th Feburary 2025

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a phrase that we really need to say more often nowadays because it feels like people have chosen to intentionally not remember the past and are actively trying to repeat it. One of the things from our past that it feels like we’re currently getting a bit of a refresher course on is the horrors of Nazi Germany, because for some reason we thought that could only happen in Germany. It was a true horror, one that people have tried to ensure they never forget for nearly 100 years and this includes people making trips to the actual camps so they can get a better sense of what their ancestors went through. This is the kind of trip that should be an emotional one that’s designed to connect people with their history but it’s become something of a commercial venture and that strange feeling is the subject of A Real Pain which is a really fascinating experience.

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leebutler Biography, Fantasy, Music, Musical, Review

Better Man (2024) – A Different Man

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 24th February 2025

Biopics in general have never been my thing, mostly because they’re pretty much all the same. A performer gets famous, does a lot of drugs, pisses off a lot of people before finally pulling through and becoming the superstar that was worthy of making a biopic about. It’s all the same and only ever becomes interesting based on the lead actor’s performance. It’s such a predictable formula you can almost guess what song will be performed after each drug-taking montage if you know enough of the main musician’s hit songs. The only biopic in recent memory that was actually good enough to make me enjoy it would be Rocketman which took the life of Elton John and turned it into a lavish musical that ignored the constraints of linear time to present the story of Elton’s life. I’ve been genuinely waiting for someone to look at that movie and steal what made it work to see if it could be replicated, imagine my surprise when Take That bad boy Robbie Williams did that exact thing and threw in a CGI monkey just for the fucking hell of it.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) – Brave And The Bold Choice

Released: 13th February
Seen: 16th February

In 2018, Thanos snapped his fingers and destroyed half of the universe. By doing so, he simultaneously created a point we could mark as the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the gift of time, we can pretty much state that Phase Three (AKA the era between Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Far From Home) has been the best phase of the MCU, but its absolute peak can pretty much be pinpointed to Infinity War and Endgame, two films that felt like the end of a cinematic crescendo that had been building for a decade up to that point. They were great movies, truly proof of what this genre could be like at its absolute best and probably one of the dumbest moves that Marvel made in terms of story because the problem is that once you hit a high like that, what happens afterwards?

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Alien: Romulus (2024) – Shocker

Released: 16th August 2024
Seen: 9th February 2025

Alien Romulus Info

2017 is the last year that we had a new instalment of the Alien franchise, a film that made about 250 million worldwide but didn’t get the best critical reception. It still made money and still had its fans (I counted myself among them at the time of its release) so it was almost inevitable that we would get another sequel where another group of people would happen upon a xenomorph colony and get their shit fucked up by the iconic acid-blooded creatures. Sure enough last year we got such a film with Alien: Romulus, the 7th entry in the long-running franchise which dared to ask the question “What if a bunch of people found the original ship from Alien and there were still aliens on it who would like to face fuck them all to death?”.., an important question that the film deftly answers.

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leebutler Drama, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Conclave (2025) – Oh Lord

Released: 9th January
Seen: 2nd February

When a pope dies there is a process that has to be done in order to select a new pope known as a Papal Conclave. The basic idea is that all eligible cardinals come to Rome where they are sequestered in a large room and vote on the next pope. They do this repeatedly over and over again until someone has a two-thirds majority and then they become the new pope. The cardinals are not meant to interact with the outside world during this process and each time a vote happens the votes are burned and the colour of the smoke tells the outside world that there’s a new pope. This feels like the kind of thing that was meant to be turned into a political thriller and thanks to Conclave it has been… it’s good, it’s very good, honestly, there’s not much more that can be said than that but I’ll try.

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leebutler Biography, Biopic, Drama, History, Review

The Apprentice (2024) – Dump Trump

Released: 10th October 2024
Seen: 28th January 2025

Donald Trump is one of the worst human beings ever to set foot on planet Earth. He’s a racist, a sexist, a bigot, a fascist, a probable tax cheat, an adjudicated sexual abuser (I want to call him a rapist but apparently you can’t call him that because, according to the civil suit, he only forcibly penetrated E Jean Carol with his fingers and not his penis so we’re going to stick with sexual abuse), a man responsible for the spread of so much covid misinformation that we will never be able to put an end to that disease even though we had the tools to stop it and that’s just referring to the stuff he’s done in the last 5 years. History books are going to write about this man in the same tones that we now talk about a certain German man who also had a really shitty hairstyle… but unfortunately for all of us, this absolute scumbag piece of shit got to be president because enough idiots fell for his scam which means his life actually has historical importance and so, like a lot of other presidents before him, Donald Trump gets to have his own biopic… fortunately, it’s a biopic that shows him for what he is: SCUM! (and yes, I put this up the top of the review because if this paragraph upsets you because of me insulting Trump, the film is going to do worse so you are warned… you’re welcome)

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Drama, Musical, Review, Thriller

Emilia Pérez (2025) – Oscar Bait

Released: 16th January
Seen: 26th January

Throughout my time writing this blog, I have made a point to champion when a film presents a minority group in its narrative – even if the film itself is not particularly great, it still deserves praise for breaking the mould and showing people as they are. This has been particularly notable when it comes to a film that presents members of the LGBTQ+ community since, as a member of the G part of that acronym, it’s nice to see those in your social group represented. Even subpar representation is still, on some level, representation and deserves to be brought up. It also feels important to bring this up in regards to films that are getting Awards nominations, particularly at the Oscars who have a bad history related to this. Enter this year’s biggest Oscar nominee Emilia Pérez which might be the most high-profile story about a trans woman in cinema this year… and sadly it’s just not a good film, to the point that it’s baffling that it’s become this awards darling.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

Vengeance Most Fowl (2025) – Splendid

Released: 3rd January
Seen: 5th January

Wallace & Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl INformation

In 1989 the world was introduced to a lovable cheese-obsessed inventor named Wallace and his silent sentient super-smart dog named Gromit in the Oscar-nominated short film A Grand Adventure. Little did anyone know at the time that they had created a pair of cultural icons who would go on to be a major part of British pop culture for the next 35 years and counting. The charming little claymation characters and their somehow both subdued and wacky adventures would end up being the stars of a well known trilogy of shorts that included The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave (the last two getting Oscars) and eventually made their way to the big screen with the 2005 film The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. It’s been almost 20 years since then and apart from one more short it’s been very quiet for Wallace & Gromit but now they’re back with their new film Vengeance Most Fowl and once again they’ve proven that charm and a little bit of clay is a match made in heaven.

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leebutler Comedy, Horror, Review, Thriller

The Mouse Trap (2024) – ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH

Released: 31st October
Seen: 28th December

This year, the leader of the club that’s made for you and me entered into the public domain. That’s right, Mickey Mouse is now officially available for use by anyone for any reason that they want as long as they only use things associated with the version of Mickey Mouse that can be found in the Steamboat Willie short (or in the two other shorts that came out that year, but the version you know is the Steamboat Willie version). This is a huge deal in terms of copyright laws, the reason that the public domain has been so empty for so many years can pretty much be explained by the reality that Disney never wanted Mickey to be in the public domain so they fought hard to keep him out of it but eventually, it had to happen, Mickey can now be put into any film or video game that you would dare to put him. As is tradition when big things like this enter the public domain, someone has to take it and turn it into a horror film as a symbolic gesture to show that no one owns this toy anymore, no one can stop you… someone should’ve stopped this, what the fuck did I just sit through?

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leebutler Fantasy, Musical, Review, Romance

Wicked: Part One (2024) – Green With Envy

Released: 1st August
Seen: 24th November

On October 30th 2003, the Gershwin Theatre presented the opening night performance of a little musical about a woman with green skin battling adversity and learning her true power through friendship with a hyperactive floating Barbie… that show was Wicked and to this day that show has captured audiences around the world. As of writing this sentence, it’s the second highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time, the fourth longest-running show in Broadway history and has been toured around the world so many times that it would be impossible to calculate just how many people have seen the show. It is a genre-defining artwork, one that has been talked about being turned into a movie since approximately 47 seconds after a movie producer heard Idina Menzel sing Defying Gravity for the first time and knew that this show needed to be captured on film… it’s taken them 20 years, it’s not the cast that they expected to get and it’s split a 2-hour-long stage show into two movies of 2+ hours each, but it looks like they absolutely nailed it.

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