leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Beautiful Wedding (2024) – Annulment

Released: 8th March
Seen: 12th March

Beautiful Wedding Info Directed & Written By: Roger Kumble Starring: Virginia Gardner, Dylan Sprouse, Libe Barer, Austin North

In 2023 the film Beautiful Disaster was unleashed onto an unsuspecting and unwilling public. It’s part of this weird era of film where everyone wants to do their own Fifty Shades AKA Take a shitty fanfiction, file off some serial numbers and make a movie about it. This gave us the awful After series, the rapey 365 Days series and a series that exists, Beautiful Disaster paired a bad boy boxer and an innocent young woman who made a bet with each other that they wouldn’t sleep together for 30 days, which naturally led to the both of them starting a relationship because that’s how these movies go. It was certainly not the worst version of this kind of movie, but it was pretty bad (I named it the 8th worst movie of 2023, something that I stand by) so knowing that a sequel was coming out made my blood run cold. I thought the After series was done, maybe I’d be free from this crap for a while but no… Prime Studios have other plans for me, bad plans.

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

Past Lives (2023) – Living

Released: 31st August 2023
Seen: 25th February 2024

There’s a pretty standard formula when it comes to romantic dramas about childhood sweethearts who split apart and then bump into each other as adults. The cute childhood couple ends up blowing up their adult lives because the connection they had decades ago is still so strong and it’s cute, it’s romantic, it’s a cliche story choice for a reason because it’s got a feel-good charm to it, but it’s also not realistic. Being willing to blow up your life to be with someone you knew as a kid is not something people really do that often, but it happens all the time in movies. You never see a story of people who used to have a relationship, reuniting and realising that things actually turned out kind of OK in the long run… at least, you didn’t until Celine Song came along and created a realistic and truly touching romantic drama called Past Lives, 

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leebutler Biography, Biopic, Drama, History, Music, Review, Romance

Maestro (2023) – Play Me Off

Released: 20th December 2023
Seen: 15th January 2024

With the Oscar nominations being announced just a few days ago, the time has come to tackle the annual tradition of playing catch-up on every nominated film that I somehow managed to miss throughout the year. Sometimes a film just isn’t released down here before the nominations (That’s happening with over a dozen films that I could see), sometimes a film is released but falls past the radar of must-see (how the hell was I meant to know that The Creator would be an Oscar nominee) and sometimes a film just seems like it’s going to be something I’m going to hate trying to review and because this is an unpaid hobby I avoid it until absolutely required… my dislike of biopics put Maestro firmly in that category and while I can admit it’s great, it’s still not my cup of tea.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance, Sci-Fi

Poor Things (2024) – RICH!

Released: 18th January
Seen: 23rd January

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those directors who you can guarantee will deliver a film that’s so different from everything else in the cinema that it’s hard to describe it as anything other than “A Yorgos Lanthimos Film”. Even when he does something close to a regular period piece like in his last film The Favourite there is something just beneath the surface that creates a strange experience. He’s one of those filmmakers that we’re lucky to have because he keeps things interesting and allows the audiences who see his work to experience something truly unique. Once again, with his latest film Poor Things, Yorgos has delivered something truly fascinating to behold.

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Good Grief (2024) – Grief, It’s Good

Released: 5th January
Seen: 7th January

Telling gay stories in film is kind of a landmine sometimes. It seems more often than not those stories deal with immense tragedy, loss of family or just having one of the leads getting a specific fatal illness and dying for a dramatic conclusion. It’s rare to see a film about gay joy or even just gay resilience, it feels like more and more films are just kind of depressing in tone and it’s kind of sad… so it takes someone pretty damn talented to take a film about a gay man dying and turn it into a charming, funny and also emotional tale that feels somewhat hopeful by the end. Fortunately, Dan Levy is just that damn talented and has brought us Good Grief, something so charming and sincere that it’s just so soothing to watch.

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

After Everything (2023) – Death To All Of Them

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 6th October
Seen: 6th October

The After franchise has become a nemesis of mine, a franchise I have a deep and profound hatred of that will never die. Every single time a new entry is released, the sound of my wail of pain can be heard around the block because it’s almost predetermined what is going to be put on the screen. Every film is an hour and a half of a depressingly demented toxic relationship with a blank sheet of paper that answers to the name of Tessa (Josephine Langford) and an abusive piece of excrement meant to resemble one of the biggest pop stars of our generation who answers to the name Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). Every time it’s a film of two people who shouldn’t be sharing time zones having an absurdly toxic and awful time, arguing constantly and breaking up their arguing with lackluster sex set to music chosen by a DJ who is high on ketamine and every time it’s just a bad time for anyone watching that has half a brain. 

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leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Love Again (2023) – Think Twice

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th May
Seen: 30th August

Celine Dion is arguably one of the world’s best singers, even if you don’t enjoy her music it’s hard to deny the raw power of her voice. She was one of the biggest artists in the 90s for a reason and has managed to maintain a huge fanbase for almost 40 years because when she’s in her element there are few who could compare. What’s kind of surprising is that despite her voice accompanying some of the biggest films of all time, she’s done very little on-camera work in the film world. Before now it’s been a couple of cameos in TV shows and singing backup for Miss Piggy in Muppets Most Wanted, that’s kind of been it until Love Again came along and said “What if we took our cute little romcom and made it have several scenes dedicated to exclaiming how great Celine Dion is?”

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leebutler Drama, Review, Romance

Beautiful Disaster (2023) – Ugly

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 29th August
Seen: 29th August

Since this blog isn’t a job so much as it is a very silly hobby, the idea of “morality” comes into deciding what films to watch/review. Sometimes a film will come out surrounded by controversy that just doesn’t feel like it’s worth dealing with (hence why Sound of Freedom isn’t getting a look, feels like no matter what I say about that film could end in an uncomfortable reaction for me), sometimes a film’s promotion will make it seem like it’s not something that would be fun to deal with (Notice there was never a Cuties review? Didn’t wanna dive into that set of landmines) and sometimes it’ll come out that a major person involved in the process is a complete asshole who doesn’t deserve the money. 

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) – Charming

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 11th August
Seen: 28th August

Not too long ago, I started making a spreadsheet. Not the most exciting thing in the world to begin a review with I’ll admit but I promise this is relevant because the spreadsheet takes every single film that has been reviewed on this blog and keeps track of how many LGBT characters are in it. Over the course of the last 6-7 years of writing reviews I have seen about 966 films, most of them fairly mainstream. Now obviously each year there has been some fluctuation but in total since the start of this blog, 36 of those films have featured a lesbian woman, 86 have featured a gay man, 23 had a bisexual in them and a whopping 24 had a trans person in them at some point.

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leebutler Comedy, Review, Romance

What’s Love Got To Do With It (2023) – Fine

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 26th January
Seen: 11th August

Sometimes a film title is so strongly tied to the content of the film that the title enters a list of titles that probably should never be used again. Some titles just draw certain images to your mind, for example, a film could never reasonably be called “Philadelphia” again because everyone’s going to make a horrific AIDS joke about it. Some titles just have a link to a topic to them that can’t be ignored… this was the thought process I had when I heard that a film was coming out called What’s Love Got To Do With It? because that is the title of the legendary 1993 Tina Turner biopic and using that title for a silly little romcom felt like an insane choice. Having seen the film, it turns out that it’s not a big deal because something tells me that no one’s going to really remember that this one exists in a few years so there shouldn’t be any confusion happening.

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