leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) – Four-tunate!

Released: 24th July
Seen: 7th August

The Fantastic Four might be one of those cursed properties when it comes to movies as it seems like every version that’s been attempted has fallen into some kind of major problem. There was the initial attempt to make a movie back in 1994, which was made in order to maintain the rights and was never meant to be released (Go watch Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s the Fantastic Four for more on that, but it was a fucking debacle). After that was the 2005 version, which is the version most people know but ended up being so cheesy and bad that its main legacy was to give Chris Evans a chance to reveal that he was Human Torch for a reference joke in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie. Lastly, there was Fan4stic, a 2015 gritty reboot that was so bad it made people think that the first family of Marvel just couldn’t be made into a film. Every 10 years they’ve tried and every 10 years they have failed to adapt this iconic quartet to film but now it’s time for the iconic Marvel Studios to have a try. After all, the first three adaptations were done by Roger Corman and Fox Studios, but the MCU hadn’t gotten their hands on it yet… and I don’t know what magic the MCU has that everyone else didn’t, but they finally got a version that works.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Elio (2025) – Space!

Released: 19th June
Seen: 23rd June

Original movies are becoming something of a rarity these days, either relegated to the indie circuit or they have to be made by some well-known auteur who has enough cache to get his weird original concepts past the studio system. Look at the top 10 highest-grossing films of this year, with the notable exception of Sinners, they’re all either sequels, remakes or based on a very well-known piece of IP. It’s a sad reality that audiences just aren’t going to see original films at the rate that they used to. There could be many reasons for this, a run on effect of higher theatre ticket prices meaning people want as close to a sure bet as they can get, part of the post-Covid era issues, it could be related to the rise of streaming or the saturation of the market or it could even just be a horrible self fulfilling prophecy where the big studios don’t advertise their original films that well so people don’t know about them. Case in point, did you know there was a brand new original Pixar film in cinemas right now that’s not a sequel to Toy Story or any of their other classics and that it’s also deliriously charming? Well, now you do.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Thunderbolts* (2025) – THUNDER!!

Released: 1st May
Seen: 9th May

The Marvel Cinematic Universe will forever be a legendary moment in cinema, a franchise like this going for almost 2 decades with film and TV series creating this wide interconnected universe is almost unheard of and has rarely been as well executed as it has been here. Lately though, it feels like the MCU has been in a slump since the insane high of Endgame. Sure, there’ve been some bright spots, but nothing rose to the level of the MCU before Thanos snapped his fingers. It felt like everything was so spread out that it was hard to return to what made this franchise special. So here we find ourselves with another entry in the long-running franchise… and it might be the best one since Endgame and possibly in the top 10 of the entire MCU experiment, it’s that good.

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leebutler Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Review, Sci-Fi

The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2025) – What’s Up Doc?

Released: 27th March
Seen: 29th March

The Day The Earth Blew Up

David Zaslav is probably one of the worst executives any movie studio has ever had to suffer under, at least in my opinion. Sure, there are many morally worse than him and some who should probably just die in prison for what they have done. However, in terms of how they have abused their stature in the industry to destroy the art of others, few are as reviled as Zaslav. The man runs Warner Brothers and yet seems to hate anything to do with animation, notably removing large amounts of historic Looney Tunes cartoons from the studio’s streaming service and infamously cancelling the completed film Coyote VS Acme. It honestly has started to feel like the man in charge of one of the most legendary animation IP brands of all time was going to kill it through sheer incompetence as a studio head… but fortunately for us, one slipped through his slimy fingers and made it out into the world and it’s one of the best animated films in recent memory.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

Mickey 17 (2025) – Hey Mickey

Released: 6th March
Seen: 23rd March

Mickey 17 Info Image Directed and Written By - Bong Joon Ho Starring - Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun

In 2020, the Oscars did something genuinely cool. For the first time in the history of the ceremony, a non-English language film won Best Picture, a moment that might be the last actually good thing to happen in 2020. The film in question, Parasite, took home four awards that night for Screenplay, Directing, International film and Best Picture. The director, Bong Joon ho, instantly became a major player and whatever film he made after Parasite was going to be a big deal so we all waited for over half a decade for his next big feature film. That film has finally come out after half a decade and as expected, Bong Joon Ho has delivered something truly spectacular in his latest work, Mickey 17.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Alien: Romulus (2024) – Shocker

Released: 16th August 2024
Seen: 9th February 2025

Alien Romulus Info

2017 is the last year that we had a new instalment of the Alien franchise, a film that made about 250 million worldwide but didn’t get the best critical reception. It still made money and still had its fans (I counted myself among them at the time of its release) so it was almost inevitable that we would get another sequel where another group of people would happen upon a xenomorph colony and get their shit fucked up by the iconic acid-blooded creatures. Sure enough last year we got such a film with Alien: Romulus, the 7th entry in the long-running franchise which dared to ask the question “What if a bunch of people found the original ship from Alien and there were still aliens on it who would like to face fuck them all to death?”.., an important question that the film deftly answers.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Comedy, Review, Sci-Fi

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) – Timely

Released: 25th July
Seen: 27th July

Six years ago, a little independent film called Deadpool 2 was released to cinemas, doing incredible business and cementing the legendary Merc with the Mouth as an iconic addition to the superhero genre. I know it feels like an absolute eternity since 2018, it was a different time before a plague basically upended our world and changed absolutely everything but you have to remember that 2018-2019 was probably the peak era of the modern Superhero genre, culminating in the cataclysmic cinematic event known as Avengers: Infinity War, followed a year later by Avengers: Endgame. Looking back with the gift of hindsight, Endgame marked the point where the superhero genre peaked and it’s probably never going to be that great again but at the time it felt like there would be no end and surely the next big thing would be another Deadpool movie. Surely it would be, Deadpool 2 was the 5th highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office, it was so popular they re-released it with new footage to make a Christmas movie, surely this meant that we’d get another run around with the funny red menace.

…then the plague happened, no one wanted to go to the movies anymore and Superhero films entered a slump. 

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) – Action Packed Glory

Released: 11th January
Seen: 26th April

In 2015 George Miller returned to the franchise that began his career after a 30-year break and gave us Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that many would argue (and be completely right to do so) was the best action film of the 2010s. A high-octane explosion-filled joyride through the desert, Mad Max: Fury Road revived a long-dead Ozploitation franchise and took it to Hollywood where it reminded the world that the guy who made the two Happy Feet movies used to be an absolute madman who made films where cars explode just for the fucking fun of it. What was a big surprise back then was that the standout character in the Mad Max movie wasn’t Max but a side character named Furiosa who became an instant classic character who people wanted to know more about. It might’ve taken nearly a decade but Miller has heard our cries and given us the glory that is Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Netflix, Review, Sci-Fi

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver (2024) – Scarring

Released: 19th April
Seen: 28th April

On the 19th of April an interview with director Zack Snyder dropped where he delivered this quote:

You may love or hate my movies, I’m 100% fine with that but a vote against me is a vote for the focus groups. Know by saying ‘Snyder sucks’ you’re also saying “you know what? give me more focus groups! I want Happy Meals!

As one might expect, the second this phrase hit the internet there was a group of people who took issue with it, myself being one of them. This quote kind of speaks to the arrogance of Zack Snyder, how he seems to believe that his films are something so outside the mainstream and doing something so unique that we have to support him for the love of cinema. It is, truthfully, one of the most pretentious things that has ever been said by a director of mainstream cinema… it’s also absolute bullshit because, having now seen Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver, there’s truly nothing about it that goes against focus groups because it reeks of the most pandering studio bullshit one could imagine.

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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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