leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy

How To Train Your Dragon (2025) – Reproduction

Released: 12th June
Seen: 16th December

In 1998, Gus Van Sant remade Psycho. He had just come off the monster hit that was Good Will Hunting and used the reputation he had built to get Universal to foot the bill. The remake is infamous, a largely shot-for-shot remake that puts the film in colour and uses modern actors while replicating the original visual style as much as possible. The idea was to basically make fun of remakes, to show how it’s truly impossible to copy a film exactly as it originally was and have the same impact. That film definitely proved Gus Van Sant’s point because his remake of Psycho was a box office bomb and a critical punching bag. One would hope that maybe Gus’ experiment would’ve stopped others from trying to do the same thing again but no, we’ve lately been inundated with remakes of classic Disney films and now How To Train Your Dragon gets the same treatment and while it might be better than Psycho (1998), that doesn’t mean it deserves to exist.

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leebutler Horror, Review

Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) – Gifted

Released: 14th August
Seen: 11th December

In 1984, Silent Night Deadly Night was released right at the height of the slasher boom of the 80s. It was made pretty much for the same reason a lot of horror films were made then, namely “Oh Halloween was popular, so pick a holiday and stick a killer on that date and we can print money” and sure enough they made a silly little horror film for just under a million dollars and expected it to do good business and that was that. What happened instead was that it became one of the biggest controversies of that era, the poster sparked massive protests, and critics tore the film to shreds for the crime of making Santa Claus a murderer. The film was pulled from cinemas due to those protests and in that moment, the protestors inadvertently gave Silent Night Deadly Night a place in horror infamy, which in turn resulted in the franchise becoming a cult hit. It would end up getting four sequels, one of which gave us the legendary “GARBAGE DAY” clip that was a hot meme for a while, and the film was remade back in 2012 because every slasher film got a remake in that era. Now once more it’s time for them to throw an axe in Santa’s hand and see what he does… and this time, it’s actually pretty good!

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Influencers (2025) – Like

Released: 13th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2023, Shudder released Influencer which was immediately a critical hit and got pretty good viewership numbers, at least good enough to warrant making a sequel. Now, at the time I was one of the few who didn’t love the film, I thought it had good ideas but I wasn’t a fan of the execution. Upon a recent rewatch I’ve slightly changed my mind, mostly because the central performance of the character CW grew on me. It still felt a little bit lackluster to me, but it moved to just being generally good so I was hopeful about the sequel… and sure enough, Influencers turned out to be absolutely brilliant.

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leebutler Comedy, Review

Oh. What. Fun. (2025) – Meh, Humbug

Released: 3rd December
Seen: 13th December

Oh. What. Fun. opens with a voiceover by the main character lamenting that the history of Christmas movies ignores the hard work of the mother and to be fair, it’s got a pretty good point. For all the work that they do around the Holidays, there are more films about husbands and kids desperately trying to make it home than there are about mums in general. Any film about Christmas will focus on the husband or eldest son, relegating the mother to a supporting role. This is emblematic of a general problem in Hollywood that not only lacks a lot of good roles for women but is especially bad for women over the age of 40. With an opening like that, one would hope that maybe Oh. What. Fun. might have something about it that could really show off what a good female role would look like… instead it makes me consider cancelling Christmas.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) – Miraculous

Released: 12th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2019, Rian Johnson released Knives Out to an unsuspecting public, and the world embraced and fell in love with his all-star cast and murder mystery. It was a true masterpiece, a definitive work in the murder mystery genre that had people salivating for more. That’s when Netflix did one of the few truly cool things that they’ve done in a long time and gave Rian Johnson 400 million dollars to make two new entries in the franchise, the first one of those was Glass Onion in 2022, which was also absolutely brilliant and proved that Knives Out had genuine franchise potential. Now we’ve been blessed with Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in the Knives Out Franchise, and I’m fully at the point of insisting that Rian Johnson continue making these films until either he or Daniel Craig is no longer with us, because once again he’s made an actual masterpiece.

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

The Life Of Chuck (2025) – Oh Life

Released: 14th August
Seen: 11th December

When you think of a Stephen King story, you inevitably think of some weird horror story with a terrifying concept and a probably less than satisfying final act. You might also think of his sci-fi work, his grandiose epic The Dark Tower or The Stand. What might be thought of less are his dramatic works, despite them being adapted into truly grand movies. Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, movies that can genuinely surprise people when they learn it’s a Stephen King adaptation (I’ve literally seen this happen, I’ve shocked people by saying “The Green Mile is based on Stephen King). He doesn’t really get to flex his dramatic writing muscles as much because everyone generally wants a Stephen King book to be scary, but back in 2020 he released a novella called The Life of Chuck. The novella caught the eye of Mike Flanagan, who is one of the modern horror heroes, and he adapted it into a film of the same name which is certainly heartwarming but… well, let’s begin the review before I go into that.

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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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