Happy Saturday From the Empty Nest

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Good to see you, Saturday people. And welcome to the many new subscribers who’ve joined me recently — I’m so glad you’re here.

We’re home after our travels, but Nic is up at Mammoth, training with his high school cross country team before the season begins this fall. Every August, they go up to the elevation so they’re strong when they come down and run at sea level. The base of Mammoth is around 9,000 feet, and it is literally all uphill from there. It’s weird not having him around, and of course I miss my baby, but I know he’s having a blast.

But the movies don’t go anywhere — there are always more of them. And over the past few years, August has become a surprisingly fertile time for cool indies and daring horror. It’s no longer the dumping ground between summer blockbuster season and the fall festivals; last August brought us “Kneecap,” “Didi” and “Strange Darling,” for example. Distributors, particularly the boutique ones, are getting smart about using the whole calendar.

As for this week, though, here’s what we reviewed on our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel and podcast. Take us with you during the dog days (and maybe leave a few stars and kind words if you have a moment).

• THE NAKED GUN. Alonso liked this way more than I did, but we both had a surprisingly good time. Liam Neeson steps into the iconic, comic role of Lt. Frank Drebin (Junior, this time) to bungle his way through a murder investigation. Recreating the deadpan absurdity of those classic Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies is tough, but director and co-writer Akiva Schaffer (“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”) comes close. Pamela Anderson is better here than she is in “The Last Showgirl.” We are getting wildly disparate reactions to this movie in the comments. In theaters.

• TOGETHER. Real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie co-star as a longtime couple whose relationship gets tested and twisted when they move out to the country. This is super squirm-inducing in a way that’s very effective, so if you had a hard time with “The Substance,” this may not be for you. But it’s also unexpectedly funny. The always brilliant Tim Grierson joins me for a review. In theaters.

• HAPPY GILMORE 2. Nearly 30 years later, Adam Sandler returns to one of the key roles that forged his screen persona as an overgrown man-child. But now he’s a grown-ass man, and a media empire unto himself, so every famous pro golfer playing today joins him, as well as Bad Bunny as his caddy. This movie is terrible, but it’s also No. 1 on Netflix right now. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. “Happy Gilmore 2” has been out for about a week, but FYI: This is a spoiler review.

• HAPPY GILMORE (1996). Because we are devoted to you, our audience, we also reviewed the original “Happy Gilmore,” which somehow neither of us had seen before. Looking back, it all makes sense: Between this, “Happy Madison” and “The Waterboy,” the seeds get planted here in the mid-90s for the quintessential Sandler character. The first film has an endearingly scrappy quality that the sequel lacks. Streaming on Netflix.

Over at Ebert, I reviewed the animated sequel “The Bad Guys 2.” Apparently, I also reviewed 2022’s “The Bad Guys,” which I’d totally forgotten. This new one isn’t as easy and breezy. It goes to space, which is usually the desperate move of a franchise that’s three or four films deep and running out of ideas. The plot is needlessly convoluted, but the voice cast is enjoyable. Sam Rockwell is reliably roguish as the leader of a heist crew that’s trying to go straight. Amusingly, both this and “The Naked Gun” feature a villain who’s a tech billionaire with an electric car empire. Sound like anyone you know? Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, Awkwafina, Danielle Brooks and Natasha Lyonne co-star. In theaters.

For our Patreon subscribers, we reviewed 1994’s “Crooklyn” for this month’s Off the Menu. The theme of our July poll was Summer That Changed Everything movies, and Spike Lee’s deeply personal film was the winner. Young Zelda Harris gives an incredible performance as 9-year-old Troy, the only girl among five siblings growing up in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. During the summer of 1973, she gets sent to stay with relatives in the South, which prepares her for major changes that are about to occur back home. “Crooklyn” has a rich sense of time and place and an incredible soundtrack featuring Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Smokey Robinson, the Jackson 5 and many more. It’s almost too much music. Lee makes some bold stylistic choices here, but “Crooklyn” finds him operating in a gentler mode.

Keep an eye out for our August poll, and visit us here to find out more about the perks we offer at various Patreon levels.

The wonderful folks at Vidiots are the subjects of a big feature in The New York Times Style Magazine. This is a longtime video store/movie theater in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles where they show new arthouse films and old favorites. If you’re a fan of physical media, you can rent actual movies here. Plus it’s just a great hub for the community. Alonso and I have both hosted events at Vidiots — I moderated a Q&A after a screening of “Freaky Tales,” he showed Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” — and there’s always a warm and welcoming vibe. For example, you could see “West Side Story,” “The Cable Guy” and the Cat Video Festival today alone. We love Vidiots and we’re glad they’re getting their due. You can find out more about the inspired, eclectic offerings and great work they do here.

That’ll do it for me today. Thank you so much for sharing some of your time with me during these last weeks of summer. If you’ve enjoyed my newsletter, I’d be honored if you’d pass it along to the movie fans in your life. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.