CAPSULE REVIEWS: 8-1-25
- 5 days ago
- 14 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, August 1st, 2025.
There are some cinematic revivals you hope for. The Naked Gun isn't one of them.
I was leery, very leery, about a reboot of The Naked Gun, especially one being billed as a legacy sequel. This is the fourth entry in the film series that spun off from the short-lived but utterly brilliant 1982 TV show Police Squad!, a show I still believe is the funniest series in television history.
Police Squad! was whip-smart, loaded with blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gags, puns, surreal humor, and an anarchic disregard for sitcom conventions. It aired without a laugh track, expected you to pay attention, and trusted your intelligence.
Of course, ABC in its infinite wisdom killed it after six episodes, airing it opposite Hill Street Blues, no less.
Six years later, the show got reborn as The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and Leslie Nielsen's pitch-perfect turn as Lt. Frank Drebin became iconic.
That first movie was hilarious. The sequels? Funny in places, but less inspired, leaning more into slapstick and crude humor than the surreal brilliance of the original. And now, nearly three decades later, we get The Naked Gun reboot. Or, more specifically, The Naked Gun: Now With More Bodily Fluids!
Liam Neeson, who has dipped his toes into comedy in recent years with surprising success, steps in as Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the legendary detective. It's a thankless task, trying to follow Leslie Nielsen, and to his credit, Neeson does his best.
He delivers deadpan lines well, commits to the absurdity, and beats the living hell out of dozens of bad guys in some ridiculous, over-the-top fight sequences. He even eats a gun. Literally, that's the tone we're working with here.
The plot? Something about a tech billionaire villain (Danny Huston, who is legally required to play bad guys now) trying to take over the world with a gadget literally labeled Plot Device. You either groan or laugh. I groaned.
There's also a secret base for billionaires in a mountain, a scene where Pamela Anderson sings jazz and scats incoherently, and, of course, Weird Al Yankovic, because no Naked Gun movie is complete without him. He's one of the best parts of the film. No surprise there.
What's not funny are the endless sex jokes. Bodily fluids, semen gags, farting, pooping, peeing, every orifice is exploited for a laugh, and none of it is particularly funny.
The original Police Squad! and the first Naked Gun movie may have been zany, but they had class. This reboot trades subtle satire and clever misdirection for relentless raunch and crass misunderstandings.
There's an extended scene where someone spies on Neeson and Anderson with infrared goggles and thinks they're having sex, complete with a dog involved. It's a gag ripped straight out of Austin Powers, which itself was derivative trash. When your Naked Gun movie is stealing jokes from Austin Powers, you've lost the plot. Literally and figuratively.
It's not all bad. Some jokes land. A recurring bit about coffee cups gets some early laughs until it's driven into the ground. Paul Walter Hauser (as Capt. Ed Hocken Jr.) has a few amusing moments. The voiceover work by Neeson echoes the classic Nielsen narration, and at times it's genuinely funny.
A throwaway punchline involving a Bon Jovi t-shirt made me laugh out loud. And the cameo at the end of the credits? Pretty damn hilarious.
But for every decent gag, there are five that fall flat. And the satire, what little of it there is, aims at big action franchises like Mission: Impossible (the opening credits mimic it exactly, no surprise since both are Paramount properties), but doesn't land any significant punches.
Instead, the film tries to modernize itself with raunch and spectacle, forgetting what made the original material great: smart satire, visual inventiveness, and surreal deadpan weirdness.
Akiva Schaffer, who previously directed the excellent Hot Rod and the underappreciated Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, feels entirely out of place here. Without his Lonely Island cohorts and as a hired gun, he seems lost, trying to recapture lightning in a bottle with inferior tools.
The writing team, with credits in sitcoms and animated films, doesn't have the chops or inventiveness of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, the true legends who gave us Airplane!, Top Secret!, and of course, Police Squad!.
The tone is scattered. The satire is weak. The running gags get tired. The romantic subplot between Anderson and Neeson is a weak retread of the Priscilla Presley relationship from the earlier films.
And when the movie isn't boring you with generic action or exhausting you with poop jokes, it's trying too hard to be relevant, without actually saying anything worth satirizing.
The Naked Gun (2025) is not horrible. There are a few big laughs. Liam Neeson tries. A couple of sight gags work. Weird Al rules. But overall? It's a disappointment.
A lazy, derivative, uninspired attempt to resurrect a franchise that should have been left alone the moment Leslie Nielsen passed away.
Watch Police Squad! instead. All six episodes. They're short. They're brilliant. And they're the purest example of this kind of comedy ever made.
This reboot? It's a copy of a copy—and not a very funny one. - ⭐️⭐️
When The Bad Guys came out in 2022, it was a pleasant surprise, a slick, witty, visually clever animated caper that took a kid-friendly spin on Ocean's Eleven and actually pulled it off.
DreamWorks, which can be a wildly inconsistent animation studio (for every How to Train Your Dragon you get a Shark Tale), managed to churn out one of its better efforts of the past decade. And now, in 2025, they've gone and done the unthinkable: made a sequel that actually outshines the original.
Directed once again by Pierre Perifel, with JP Sans joining as co-director, The Bad Guys 2 does what any good sequel should do, it deepens the characters, expands the world, ups the stakes, and crucially, it looks and sounds incredible.
The animation is dazzling. Clearly taking notes from the Spider-Verse playbook, this film mixes 3D modeling with 2D textures and wild color design that makes the whole thing pop off the screen. It's energetic, it's stylish, and it's got a visual personality that most animated films can only dream of.
Set after the events of the first film, our crew of former criminals: Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), are now trying to go straight. But rejoining society proves to be a challenge when your résumé includes multiple felonies and your last gig involved toppling a villainous guinea pig.
And just when they're trying to clean up their act, the universe pulls them back in. A new gang, The Bad Girls, led by snow leopard Kitty Kat (a badass Danielle Brooks), swoop in and blackmail our reformed animals into doing one last job. It's the oldest trope in the heist playbook: the one last job. But here, it's delivered with enough self-awareness and cleverness that it feels fresh again.
Oh, and did I mention the job involves stealing all the gold in the world using a giant space magnet powered by an element literally named "McGuffinite"? Yeah. We're in full-on James Bond mode here, and the film leans into it beautifully.
There's also the Phantom Bandit, an unknown masked criminal terrorizing the city and threatening to destroy whatever good reputation The Bad Guys have managed to rebuild.
Add in some political intrigue involving Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), Mr. Wolf's growing crisis of identity, and the slow-burn relationship between Snake and the raven Doom (a perfectly cast Natasha Lyonne), and you've got more than enough meat on the bone here.
What really sets The Bad Guys 2 apart is its character work. This is a surprisingly emotional movie. There are themes here about identity, redemption, trust, and acceptance, all explored with more depth than most live-action adult dramas. And yet, it never loses its edge or sense of fun.
The film is loaded with jokes, many of which land hard. And not just for the kids in the audience. This is one of those animated films that parents will actually enjoy watching.
It doesn't talk down to its audience, and it avoids the obnoxious, wink-wink pop culture gags that plague lesser family films. Instead, the comedy is rooted in personality. These characters have real quirks, motivations, and relationships, and the humor springs naturally from that.
The voice cast, once again, is stacked and delivers across the board. Sam Rockwell is still pitch-perfect as the conflicted Mr. Wolf. Craig Robinson brings warmth and absurdity to Mr. Shark. Maron's Mr. Snake continues to be one of the franchise's secret weapons—a cynical, deadpan foil who steals scenes with minimal effort.
And Natasha Lyonne is a brilliant new addition, giving Doom a wonderfully dark edge and a weird chemistry with Snake that's oddly compelling.
There are a couple of set pieces in this film that are just beautiful. A climactic rocket launch sequence and a showdown in a space station are visual stunners, with crisp editing, great sound design, and loads of kinetic energy.
And the humor? Relentless, but never overwhelming. A lot of it works thanks to solid direction and the filmmakers trusting their characters.
This is a film that understands the rules of the heist genre and lovingly subverts them. Yes, we've got "the one last job." Yes, we've got betrayal, redemption, and moral dilemmas. But it's done with a wink and a cleverness that makes even the most overused clichés feel fresh again.
The Bad Guys 2 is a blast. It's smart, funny, gorgeously animated, and driven by compelling characters you actually care about. It's that rare sequel that feels like it was made by people who cared, people who understood what worked in the first film and who actually had something more to say.
So, if you're looking for top-tier summer animated entertainment for the whole family, yes, but honestly? Even if you don't have kids, you should check it out.
This is one of the best animated films of 2025, and an absolute win for DreamWorks. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Together is one of the best movies of the year. Period. It's a deliriously funny, profoundly disturbing, viscerally gross, and emotionally insightful slice of body horror brilliance, and it also happens to be the most romantic movie of 2025.
Yeah. You read that right. It's a love story. A very twisted love story, but a love story all the same.
This is the feature debut from writer-director Michael Shanks, and it's an absolute knockout. Confident, sharp, assured, and full of ideas, Together works both as outrageous Cronenbergian horror and as a heartfelt (if demented) meditation on long-term relationships, intimacy, fear of commitment, and codependency.
It's about marriage, and it's about merging. Literally. Metaphorically. Fleshy, bloody, impossible-to-escape merging.
Oh, and it stars real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who are not only perfectly cast but bring an intimacy and vulnerability to their performances that absolutely sells the insane concept.
Their chemistry is electric. Their commitment to the material is fearless. Their willingness to physically and emotionally fall apart on screen is what makes this film transcend its genre roots and become something truly special.
The setup is deceptively simple. Tim and Millie are a couple that's hit that terrifying dead zone in the relationship, no sex, no excitement, just muted disappointment and quiet dread.
He's a musician who never made it. She's a schoolteacher who uprooted their life to move to the countryside. He's disengaged, aimless, and terrified of marriage. She's fed up but still hopeful, proposing to him at a party while he freezes like a deer in headlights.
Then comes the cave.
They fall into it during a storm. Tim drinks from a weird underground pool. And the next morning, things get… sticky. Literally. Their legs are fused together.
And that's just the beginning.
As the days go on, they keep fusing, at first during weird sexual episodes, then randomly, painfully, permanently. Their bodies rebel against their individuality, dragging them (and their arms, and their genitals) back together.
They fight it. They try to medicate it. They try to saw their way free. But the pull is too strong. The symbolism is on-the-nose, yes, but it's also grotesquely beautiful.
This isn't just a story about supernatural horror. It's about what happens when love becomes obsession. When emotional dependence becomes physical entrapment. When the fear of becoming someone else, of giving up your self in service of "us," takes on a terrifyingly literal form.
Now, let me be clear: this movie is gross. In all the best ways. There are scenes that will make you squirm. Hands fusing into ribs. Faces merging. Wounds that pulsate and drip and throb. There's a bone saw moment that had people groaning in the theater. It's proudly practical, viscerally textured, and completely unapologetic.
But here's the thing, none of it is gratuitous. It all means something. It's about something.
This isn't gore for gore's sake. It's not body horror just to freak people out. Shanks uses every grotesque image to make a larger point about relationships. About love. About fear.
About losing yourself in another person, literally. Every wet, sticky, disgusting moment in this movie carries emotional weight. It's Cronenberg with even more heart. The Fly with a wedding ring.
Together dives deep into the psychology of relationships, especially the terrifying space where you're "supposed" to commit but just can't. The idea that love, real love, comes with the loss of self is explored in ways that are both horrifying and deeply empathetic.
Tim's reluctance to marry Millie isn't just immaturity; it's fear of obliteration. Millie's frustration isn't just romantic disappointment; it's the anguish of giving and not receiving. And once the supernatural element kicks in, those metaphors are made flesh. Literally. Like, their flesh.
The movie also pokes at the cultish aspects of relationship ideology, the "you complete me" cliché, and the expectation to fuse into one entity once you say "I do." Well, in this movie, they do. And it's not romantic. It's horrifying. And then… somehow, it is romantic. And funny. And beautiful. And completely insane.
Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who are fantastic actors on their own, do something kind of miraculous here. They bring real emotional depth to an absolutely ridiculous premise.
They're vulnerable. They're raw. They're funny. They scream, they cry, they twist and moan and saw limbs apart. And through it all, you believe them.
You believe this couple has been together for years, that they've lost each other, and that maybe, just maybe, they can find each other again, even if it means becoming a grotesque pile of goo in the process.
Their real-life chemistry adds layers to every scene. You feel their history. Their affection. Their resentment. Their quiet longing. Some moments hit harder because you know they're a couple in real life, it blurs the line between performance and reality in a way that makes every twisted beat of the story feel more intimate and more disturbing.
There's a cult subplot here, too (led by a creepy teacher played by Damon Herriman), but it doesn't distract. It enhances. It's part of the lore. It gives us just enough backstory to justify the body-fusing supernatural stuff without ever spelling too much out.
The movie trusts the audience to put the pieces together, and that makes it all the more satisfying.
Also, this is one of the few horror movies in recent memory where the sound design actually stands out in a good way. The squelching, the stretching, the creaking of bones and nerves as they fuse, it's all nasty and beautiful and perfectly timed.
The editing is tight. The tone is consistent. And the score balances dread, romance, and comedy in all the right places.
If you're squeamish, stay far away. But if you're a fan of body horror, or twisted love stories, or movies that actually have something to say underneath all the blood and guts, then Together is absolutely for you.
It's The Fly meets Marriage Story. Possession with more jokes. Annie Hall with more dismemberment.
It's disgusting. It's tender. It's hilarious. It's romantic. It's one of the smartest horror movies I've seen in years.
Oh yeah, and you will never ever hear The Spice Girls quite the same way again after seeing this.
One of the very best films of the year. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Every now and then, a movie drops out of nowhere, no massive ad campaign, no buzz, no franchise bloat, and just knocks you flat. She Rides Shotgun is one of those movies. I had no idea where this thing came from.
It's small. It's stripped down. It's brutal. It's based on a novel I hadn't read (Jordan Harper's 2017 crime story of the same name), but I'm planning to grab a copy immediately because if the book is half as good as the movie, we're in business.
Directed with serious confidence by Nick Rowland (his second feature after the also-excellent Calm with Horses), She Rides Shotgun is lean, grimy, and effective.
This is a violent road movie, a revenge thriller, a gritty drama, and at the center of it all is a broken ex-con dad and the daughter he barely knows but is suddenly tasked with protecting from some of the nastiest villains you'll see on screen this year.
Taron Egerton (completely unrecognizable here, and I mean that in the best way) plays Nate McClusky, a guy fresh out of prison with a target on his back. While inside, he pissed off Aryan Steel, a terrifying white supremacist gang, and now they've murdered his ex-wife and stepfather-in-law. His 11-year-old daughter Polly is next on the hit list.
So Nate steals a car, picks Polly up from school (they haven't seen each other in years), and just bolts. It's awkward. It's messy. It's tense. And Polly (played by Ana Sophia Heger in one of the most powerful child performances I've seen in a long time) is confused, scared, and angry.
But they don't have time to sort it out. They're on the run. With nowhere safe to go and no one to trust, Nate and Polly begin a desperate journey, dodging bullets, escaping law enforcement, and unraveling the twisted web of betrayal that got them into this mess in the first place.
Egerton is phenomenal here. Forget Kingsman. Forget even Rocketman (which, let's be clear, should have landed him an Oscar). This is raw, wounded, unpredictable work. Nate is both dangerous and deeply human.
He's a violent man, yes, but also a guy trying, really trying, to be a better father, a better person, despite his demons dragging behind him like chains. It's one of the best performances of the year, period.
2025 has been an unbelievable year for child actors, and leading that charge is Heger. As Polly, she is phenomenal. Utterly vulnerable, strong, funny, heartbreaking.
Her transformation throughout the film, from confused child to hardened survivor, is gradual, painful, and totally convincing. It's an emotionally grounded, beautifully modulated performance that easily ranks among the best child acting I've seen in years.
Let's talk about John Carroll Lynch, who plays the film's big baddie, a twisted sheriff tied up with the Aryan Steel gang. He is straight-up chilling here. We've always known Lynch is a gifted character actor, but this might be the most terrifying he's ever been.
He's soft-spoken one minute and full-blown psychopath the next. Every time he's on screen, your blood runs a little colder.
The whole film has this Breaking Bad aesthetic: meth labs, desert motels, cheap diners, shady cops, but it's darker, even more unrelenting. And while the revenge/father-daughter-on-the-run structure is something we've seen before (and yeah, there are clichés), Rowland and the cast elevate the material.
There's a lived-in quality to this world, and the violence, when it hits, is nasty and real. There's no gloss here.
My one gripe? The father-daughter relationship arc feels a little too streamlined. They go from strangers to something close to bonded a little too fast. I haven't read the book, but I suspect it gives that relationship more room to breathe.
In the movie, it's maybe a bit too easy, too quick. I would've liked more hesitation, more friction, and a slower build to trust. But even with that minor flaw, the emotional core eventually lands, and lands hard.
This movie is beautifully shot. There are great tracking shots, shootouts that actually feel dangerous, and a stripped-down sense of space that keeps everything claustrophobic even when we're outdoors.
Rob Yang shows up in a strong supporting turn as a cop trying to shut down a meth operation, and Odessa A'zion and David Lyons round out the cast with solid work.
But again, it all comes back to the performances. Egerton and Heger carry the emotional weight, and they do it brilliantly. The last third of the movie builds to a climax that's both thrilling and emotionally resonant. Yes, there's blood. Yes, there's carnage. But there's also heart.
She Rides Shotgun might be working with familiar genre tools (revenge, redemption, crime, and family), but the craftsmanship, the performances, and the emotional payoff make it something special.
It's violent, it's intense, and it's definitely R-rated. But it's also moving, beautifully acted, and deeply satisfying.
This is one of those little movies that deserves way more attention than it's going to get. It's a tightly made, gritty little gem that sticks with you long after the credits roll. So do yourself a favor, skip some of the bloated reboots in theaters, and check this one out. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/
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