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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One Night In Miami (2021) – Miami is Nice

Released: 8th January
Seen: 22nd January

One Night In Miami Info

Sometimes an idea doesn’t have to be complex to be effective, it can be as simple as “Let’s throw a bunch of people in a room and see what happens” and it’ll create something fascinating. We’ve seen this in film all the time, one of the first examples I remember is a little film called Murder by Death which asked what’d happen if a bunch of fictional detectives were thrown together and tasked with solving a murder. It’s a fun way to work, to try and figure out what would happen with big personalities being put into a pressure cooker and having to interact. Of course, this can also be used to create a serious work that’s designed to grab the audience and shake them up a little bit… enter One Night In Miami.

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If Beale Street Could Talk (2019) – Let Them Talk

Released: 7th February
Seen: 18th February

If Beale Street Could Talk Info

In America today, one of the major issues is the way people are shuttled through the prison system, specifically people of colour. Thanks to a large amount of systemic racism that poisoned the prison system, African Americans now make up over a third of the prison population while only making up roughly a tenth of the American population. For me to go further into the details of what this means would be a pointless aside, though if you want the full context you’re going to need for this film then I suggest watching the amazing (and should’ve been Academy Award winning) documentary 13th on Netflix. The story of the prison system and what it has done to black American’s is the backdrop for If Beale Street Could Talk and while you might not need that bit of knowledge, it will make the film a richer experience.

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