leebutler Action, Biopic, Drama, History, Sport

The Smashing Machine (2025) – Oh, Smashing

Released: 2nd October 2025
Seen: 9th February 2026

Over the last several decades, one of the biggest names in cinema has been The Rock, AKA Dwayne Johnson. His films have grossed billions of dollars; he is currently the 10th-highest-grossing actor of all time, and he did all that without having to appear in a Marvel film or anything involving Avatar. He’s one of the highest paid, most recognisable and most beloved film stars of recent years… but he’s not a great actor. Let’s be honest, no one’s ever accused him of giving a transformative performance in his entire career; the man is a personality who effectively plays himself in every single film he ever appears in. Now this isn’t a bad thing per se, a lot of very famous actors are kind of known for playing themselves in every film that they do (Ryan Reynolds, Jack Black, Will Ferrell just to name the first three that come to mind). With Dwayne Johnson, however, it comes with the fact that he not only plays the same character, but he’s doing it at a time when his wrestler-turned-actor contemporaries John Cena and Dave Bautista are delivering genuinely great, layered acting performances that demonstrate a range that Dwayne just hasn’t been able to do. What Dwayne’s been needing for quite some time is a chance to show off his skills, to stretch himself and prove that he isn’t just a one-trick pony… The Smashing Machine does kind of prove that, but in a way that also really shows off his limitations

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leebutler Drama, Review

Sentimental Value (2025) – Intriguing

Released: 25th December 2025
Seen: 28th February 2026

It’s often hard to figure out how to open these reviews; the style developed almost a decade ago out of an understanding that a single paragraph would be placed above the fold, and I’ve just carried that on like it was a standard element of writing. Something that just happened several years ago for no particular reason is now locked in, will probably be standard until something dramatic changes, and I’m forced to re-evaluate how things are done… You could consider that process to be something of an imperfect metaphor for Sentimental Value, a film that revolves around the idea of how things that happened in the past can still have a massive impact on people several years later. Is it the best metaphor out there? No, is it the best I could do for this opening paragraph that inevitably means nothing other than tone setting for the rest of the review? Also no, but it’s what we’ve got.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Thriller

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) – Rosy

Released: 7th August 2025
Seen: 27th February 2026

We all know the famous phrase “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That phrase feels more relevant today than ever, where everything just feels constantly overwhelming. Burnout is real and is not only happening in people’s professional lives but in their personal ones. Day-to-day events just pile up in a way that feels insurmountable and unfixable because the people who could fix them are unavailable. That’s a feeling that we’ve all had before and it’s the kind of emotional destruction that could make for a fascinating film, or at least a fascinating performance, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fortunately both of those things.

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leebutler Biography, Drama, History, Review, Romance

Hamnet (2026) – To Be Or Not to Be

Released: 15th January
Seen: 13th February

In the history of the English language, there are few playwrights as revered as Shakespeare, it is often suggested that he is the greatest playwright in history and almost certain that his work has been adapted more times than any other writer. His work includes 39 plays, over 150 sonnets, 3 narrative poems, a few other verses and I’m sure someone will claim he also wrote the McDonald’s jingle at some point. He’s credited with creating several well known phrases (some have been misattributed to him, for more on that look up the fantastic Brows Held High video about Shakespeare that came out a while ago) and in general is just a major figure in history that will be remembered long after the rest of us are put on the compost heap and eaten by worms… oh, and also he had a wife who, hilariously, was named Anne Hathaway, but the movie Hamnet changed her name to Agnes because having a main character of your drama named after the star of The Princess Diaries would probably take away some of the potency of it.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Sport

Marty Supreme (2026) – Ping Pong Boy

Released: 22nd January
Seen: 7th February

In the history of cinema, the genre of the sports movie has presented us with some truly great films that stand the test of time. From A League Of Their Own to Air Bud, all genres and levels of prestige have been the subject of a good sports movie. Almost every sport you can think of has had a film focused on it, including table tennis. Of course, up till now, most table tennis films haven’t exactly been the most well-known; perhaps the biggest one would be Forrest Gump, but that’s not so much a table tennis film as it is a film where someone played table tennis at some point. Honestly, the sport of table tennis hasn’t had its big, sweeping, dramatic epic until now, and Marty Supreme is undeniably the ultimate in table tennis cinema.

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leebutler Editorial

Best Performances of 2025

Every year, I try my best to put together a list of the 20 best performances of the year, though last year I was only able to make a 10-person list due to personal reasons. This year, I more than made up for it with a 20-person list of performances that were the best of the year. Now, as usua,l I wish to bring up that “Best” is a marketing term which really just means “Shit that I liked a lot”, these aren’t going to be the award winners or things that might be considered the height of the craft but they are the most fun, interesting or jaw dropping performances of the year that I just couldn’t stop thinking about. Of course, every list needs some honourable mentions, so here’s mine with no explanations for why they’re here (Ask nicely and maybe I’ll explain them… or not)

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Worst Films Of 2025

2025 has been another one of those years where it feels like everything is going wrong; we’ve had a lot of those lately. It’s just one hard hit after another, and there’s no real end in sight. Personally, this year I ended up leaving the job that caused me to not do this properly last year (long story but hey, maybe employers shouldn’t treat their employees like shit!), which meant I was able to actually catch up on films at a more reasonable pace and… I don’t know, maybe I just got worse taste but this year it was actually kind of hard to find 10 worst films to put on a list because everything I saw was either good or better… but don’t worry, I found 10 pieces of shit, let’s scream about them to get the bile out. The rules for these lists are back in the Best one (go read it, I picked some wild ones this year)

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leebutler Editorial

The Top Ten Best Films of 2025

You know, I have to admit, 2025 has been a pretty great year for movies. Maybe I was just lucky and kept happening upon the cream of the crop but this year it’s honestly gonna be harder to pick the best movies than the worst ones. Little behind-the-scenes info here, as the year goes on, I keep a list of the films I’ve seen and make a “Best” and “Worst” shortlist going just to try and help me out at the end of the year. This year, the worst shortlist was 15 titles long, almost every title I didn’t like could be brought up in that list… the best list? 29 titles long, every single one a film I actually loved which was absolutely gleeful to watch. Half that list won’t even be printed because there’s just too many to go through and cutting it down to a top 10 has been hell… but I did it, but first we need to lay out the ground rules:

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leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Review, Thriller

One Battle After Another (2025) – Great Battle

Released: 25th September
Seen: 21st December

As the year draws to a close, the time is soon approaching when we’re going to learn what the big awards contenders are. The ones that will sweep the upcoming ceremonies that will go down in history as one of the few films every year to get the title of “Oscar-nominated”. It’s always a little hard to guess exactly who the nominees are, hence why every single year there are articles printed about a couple of major snubs and surprises that no one saw coming. Other films, however, are pretty much guaranteed to be in the conversation from the second they turn up on the scene, and one such film that’s absolutely dominated any discussion about upcoming awards is the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not very hard to see why.

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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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