A Remake Worth Watching

Film: The Naked Gun (2025)
Format: Streaming video from Paramount on The Projector

I’ve had a number of different methods to watch films over the last 16 or so years of this blog, but now and then I get to add a new one. Through a series of events, I now have access to a device that projects streaming channels on a blank wall. Long story, and I may reveal it some time in the future. Anyway, this weekend, I’ve spent some time with a cousin, his wife, their son, and their son’s partner, and we watched the remake of The Naked Gun. So, while this is not entirely unique for me, this review will also come with the necessary context of seeing this with a group of people, and frankly, that is the way to watch this movie.

For those uninitiated (and why would you be uninitiated in this), The Naked Gun is based on the movie of the same name, which came from a short one-season television show called Police Squad. This is a film done in the style of Airplane! with hundreds of jokes tossed at the screen at the same time with the hope that a few of them will stick. This is the sort of comedy that rewards rewatching, since there are often multiple jokes happening at the same time, and you have to work to catch them all.

He Loves Me...Not

Film: Heart Eyes
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

If you are perpetually online, you have almost certainly seen clips of shows from the Dropout Network. One of the shows, Make Some Noise, is an improv show that frequently features the talents of Josh Ruben, known for some impressive impressions and the ability to make odd animal noises. I bring this up because Josh Ruben also directed the horror/comedy Heart Eyes. I know nothing about Ruben beyond what I’ve seen online. The comedy seems right on for what I know; the horror seems surprising.

Heart Eyes is an attempt to create a new slasher villain, a character with an iconic look. Our killer, naturally known as the Heart Eyes Killer or HEK, has had a two-year reign of terror. The gimmick is that HEK kills happy couples on Valentine’s Day. The first year, he killed couples in Boston; the following year, he attacked Philadelphia. Since this movie takes place in Seattle, you can guess the city that will be struck this year.

What I've Caught Up With, August 2026 Part 2

I did better with television shows in August. I watched the final season of Good Omens, which was really just a movie-length episode of the show. I also finally finished The Sopranos as my workout show and have moved on to 12 Monkeys, which is surprisingly intense. I watched the second season of Fallout as well. I also watched the DC animated show Harley Quinn. It was fun for four seasons and went one season too long. Last and absolutely least, I watched the Harley Quinn spin-off Kite Man, Hell Yeah, which at a single season also went one season too long.

What I've Caught Up With, August 2026 Part 1

As seems to be the case lately, I go into the month with plans of catching up on movie watching and I simply fall further behind on my goals. I watched 26 movies in August; three rewatches and 23 new-to-me films. It’s almost a full week’s worth off the pace of just watching one movie per day. So, it seems likely that I won’t hit the year’s goal for movies this year, either. Ah, well.

The Bride Wore Red

Film: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I love a good subgenre, the more obscure or personal, the better. When I say I love a good subgenre, I’m including things like “zombie” of course, but I’m really talking about subgenres that are more about finding connections between movies that are otherwise unrelated. “Good for her!” is one such subgenre—movies where the female protagonist overcomes something terrible. It includes movies as diverse as Swallow and Happy-Go-Lucky. One of my current favorite subgenres like this is “Samara Weaving covered in blood.” Based on that, you should realize that we are talking about Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (which I will be referring to as Ready or Not 2 from this point forward).

There is no way to discuss this movie without discussing the original film. So, while I’m not going to offer up any spoilers for this movie I am necessarily going to have to at least mention important plot points from the original Ready or Not. If you don’t want that movie spoiled, you should stop reading at the end of this paragraph. Or, just skip the next two paragraphs—I’ll keep the spoilers limited to that.

Burning for You

Film: Is God Is
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’ve got a lot of feelings about Is God Is, and I’m not sure exactly where I should start with them. So let’s start with the fact that this is director Aleshea Harris’s debut film as a director. Harris is a playwright and this movie started as a stage drama, but that’s not at all obvious from the way this is filmed. Discovering that this is her first movie is not unlike learning that Get Out was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut. Is God Is is a mature effort that feels like Harris has been sitting in the directors’ chair for a decade.

This is a revenge movie through and through, but this is not like an ‘80s revenge movie where Arnold Schwarzeneggar tracks down the guys who left him for dead and kills them one by one with a quip for each death. This is an old school revenge movie, one that feels like the natural child of every Western in history where a man hunted down the gunslinger who murdered his family.

No Exit

Film: Warfare
Format: Streaming video from HBO on Fire!

I’ve been trying to post reviews about more current movies lately. If you look at what I have been posting in general, I’ve been watching movies from this year and last year, at least in terms of what I’m putting up as full reviews. Part of this is because I want to have a more or less consistent posting schedule, even if I don’t always keep to it. Part of it is also that it’s a sort of self-defense. The more I watch from these current years, the less gets added to the list later. So, today it was the turn of Warfare to be the film of the day. This is a film that comes from Alex Garland, so I was interested based on that going in.

The truth is that you have already seen this in large part. While the events of this film come from the experiences of the men who lived through this event. In fact, co-director Ray Mendoza is a survivor of the battle in question, and is one of the only characters in the film depicted with his actual name. Warfare is every bit a modern war movie, though. There is no tearful scene where some kid from Brooklyn talks about his girlfriend before being killed by an errant shot. This is brutal, and violent, and vicious. The issue is that there’s not a lot here that feels any different from Black Hawk Down.