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Features Live Action Movies

The Naked Gun
(2025)

Director – Akiva Schaffer – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 85m

*****

Frank Drebin, the bumbling, self-confident, incompetent, cop and son of Frank Drebin, the bumbling, self-confident, incompetent cop sets out to solve a case involving a self-driving car and a P.L.O.T. Device – reboot of the classic comedy franchise is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

Sequels and reboots are often questionable, and can so easily be made for all the wrong reasons. The Naked Gun franchise started out as the six-episode, L.A. police procedural TV series spoof Police Squad! (1982) which spawned three features under The Naked Gun moniker (1988, 1991, 1994). The TV series is both extremely funny and groundbreaking in its use of the format. The three movies cleverly translated the humour to the big screen, and had the good sense to quit while still ahead. Both the TV series and the movies were well received at the time and are fondly remembered today.

The humour derives from a combination of ridiculous gags and non-comedy actors playing it straight. At the centre of the franchise was Lt. Frank Drebin, who despite a general cluelessness possesses a determination to follow through that means he always gets his man.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

How to Train Your Dragon
(2025)

Director – Dean DeBlois – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 125m

****

Instead of fighting dragons like other viking teenagers, Hiccup shoots a dragon out of the sky then secretly trains it as his steed– live action remake of animated classic is out in UK cinemas from Monday, June 9th

Following in the footsteps of Disney, who are slowly but surely turning their back catalogue of animated features into live action movies, Dreamworks have taken the plunge and turned the first of their three animated How To Train Your Dragon movies into live action. Director DeBlois previously directed the three animated outings, and clearly cares a great deal about the franchise because he has made a live action equivalent of the first film with the same plot, dragons that look near identical, and locations that feel like those in the original.

If you’re an admirer of the first film, which I am, as you’re watching this new one, you feel like you’ve seen it all before. Except, this is in live action. It’s enjoyable enough, and avoids the obvious trap of trying to redesign its classic animated characters for live action (the trap that Disney’s Snow White remake (Marc Webb, 2025) walked straight into with its hyperrealist dwarfs).… Read the rest