leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

Anora (2024) – Anora-ble

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 22nd February 2025

When it comes to film, stories about sex workers are often played badly. Be they stories about strippers, porn stars or escorts there’s always this vibe that the person doing the sex work (usually a woman, let’s be honest) requires saving from the industry. She might be tough but she’s also a damsel in distress who is only doing this job because she has no choice. Recently there have been some films that are at least trying to improve how they portray people in that industry, films like Hustlers make them into a charming gaggle of powerful women who control their destinies, films like X or Maxxxine present porn stars as whole beings (albeit beings that end up being victims of killers but still, they’re people who deserve dignity) and then there’s Anora. One of the big Oscar darlings of the year with 6 nominations, Anora presents a sex worker with rough edges who is still a human being that doesn’t deserve the shit she’s put through and it’s a wildly fascinating time.

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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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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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