This Film Is Not Yet Watchable – August 2025

Two items of business to address right up front. First, my financial/employment situation has not improved, so as you’ve no doubt already noticed, coverage of new movies is down severely at this point, and will likely continue for the foreseeable future. I’ve only reviewed one film for July, and I have one more in the chamber that I’ll probably put out tomorrow. Otherwise, yeah, I basically skipped the last month at the cinema. I’m trying to find alternative ways to keep this up despite massive constraints. I may even have to finally get rid of my AMC account, which sucks, but it could ultimately be for the best, as their idea of “making movies better” now involves self-service at dine-in theatres, a full 30 minutes of trailers before the flicks start, putting ads in the middle of the trailer block, putting yet another trailer after Nicole Kidman’s bullshit, raising prices, and as I’ve recently learned, hiring via AI chatbot that makes you race against a clock for fewer interview time slots than there are candidates that they contact about said interviews. It’s disgusting.

Second is that, as you’ll see further down, there’s no “Worst Trailer” video this month. Like February, I will still designate a picture as “earning” that title, but I decided not to playfully mock it this time around. This is mostly because, like several other potential recipients of this dubious honor, the movie clearly looks bad, but the preview itself just didn’t lend itself much to straightforward jokes. Last August I had to forego doing a video because I was sick. This time it’s just a lack of usable material.

If there’s a bright spot to be had this time around, it’s that for once, this doesn’t appear to be a pure dumping ground like August usually is. There are 31 entries this month, with just under half of them appearing in the column. However, not all of them are truly terrible. Some just raise a few red flags that are worth addressing. And the fact that 16 movies actually pass the initial smell test is actually kind of impressive. So often my birthday month is just the wasteland where the worst of the tentpole and popcorn fare are left to die, and you have to go out of your way to find true quality. Here, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Given everything else that’s been going on lately, that’s damn near miraculous.

This is the August 2025 edition of “This Film Is Not Yet Watchable!”

The Naked Gun – August 1

I am incredibly torn on this one, you guys. On the one hand, I love the Naked Gun movies, and I love Liam Neeson. I’m also a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane, who’s producing this, and would give just about anything to work for the man. Further, I miss shtick. Just pure, unadulterated silly shtick in movies, which the Naked Gun trilogy provided in droves. Pretty much the entirety of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker catalog does.

At the same time, though, clearly the main joke here is that Neeson is playing his normal late-stage hard-nosed action star with Naked Gun gags around him, essentially rendering this as two different forms of nostalgia baiting, and I’m not sure that can be properly pulled off. I’m also not enthused about having Pamela Anderson in this, and I certainly don’t care that she and Neeson are reportedly dating in real life.

From what I’ve seen, some of these bits are okay, and the fantastic Angie Tribeca program proved that the more modern, gritty, crime entertainment aesthetic can still be given the goofy treatment. I just wonder if this is going to be a worthy successor or a cheap knockoff. Early reviews put it at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a great sign, but I remain wary.

In addition to the standard trailers, the studio put out a fake PSA starring Neeson about the importance of “rescuing” theatrical comedies, sort of like shelter dogs. It’s mostly on point, and it does shed light on a real problem with Hollywood, that everything has to be epic dramas or franchise IPs (ignoring the fact that this movie is itself a recycled IP) rather than putting out fun comedies, with the genre dwindling almost to nonexistence over the past few years. Studios make fewer and fewer of them, and what they do create almost universally gets relegated to streamers these days. It’s a salient argument, though sadly it’s undercut by having the spot end on a fart joke. Did you ever stop to think that, just like flatulence itself, the whole thing is getting a bit stale? Why not make something NEW rather than relying on a brand for once?

I’ll probably see this, and I will pray it lives up to the series legacy, because we do need to have more goofball comedies as part of our theatrical diet. But if you really want to revive the cinematic comedy, you have to come up with something original rather than simply calling back to what’s already succeeded. Then again, this is a MacFarlane property, and as much as I love the guy, you can easily argue that references are his bread and butter, to a fault.

Also, this should be called Naked Gun 444 1/4: The Next Denigration. Just sayin’.

The Bad Guys 2 – August 1

The first movie sucked. The short that preceded Dog Man earlier this year was idiotic in the extreme. So naturally, here we are yet again with yet another animated heist movie. It’s gotten good reviews early (currently at 87% on RT), but it got good reviews last time as well, because we as a society have no standards anymore, so I simply don’t believe the numbers on this one.

This time, the now-good “Bad Guys” are kidnapped and recruited by the “Bad GIRLS,” because as we all know, if you just do it again with female characters, that somehow equals progressiveness and creativity. Never mind that the “Bad Guys” already have a female member… and were bested/joined/saved by a superior thief who was also a woman… and their comic foil is a woman, THIS is somehow the mark of feminism that we so desperately need. Fuck off.

So yeah, the team is abducted and “forced” to help the Girls do “one last job.” I want a 20-year moratorium on that fucking cliché. Surely Sam Rockewell’s Wolf can just call Zazie Beetz’s Diane Foxington – you know, his girlfriend, the “Red Paw,” and the fucking GOVERNOR – to intervene and put a stop to this before it starts, but that would require functioning brain cells. She does play a role in this movie, but she only appears in a half-second of the trailer, so God only knows what convoluted way the greatest criminal of all time will be somehow handicapped out of being useful until the script calls for her to deus ex machina the whole thing.

And oh look, they took Billie Eilish’s ripoff of the song from Plants vs. Zombies and gave it a Middle Eastern flair. INNOVATION! ARTISTRY! TOTALLY NOT BULLSHIT!

It’s almost certainly bullshit.

My Oxford Year – August 1

How do you undo decades of progress in female characterization in a mere two and a half minutes? Watch the trailer for My Oxford Year, an adaptation of yet another middle-aged housewife diddle book, this one about a smart, successful girl from New York who gets to study at Oxford, and instantly falls in love with her teacher. Oh and she also gets to have a sassy gay friend! She loves “being around those dusty, old First Editions.” In other words, no minorities or poors!

The 160 seconds that comprise this preview perform a sort of magic where it can somehow cram 160 years’ worth of tired rom-com tropes into itself and leave you dumber for it. It’s a fling, until it’s not. She wants to change him, but he doesn’t want to change. This is about affirming life and love… for a 20-year-old who’s never actually experienced life. Surely she’ll be the one to fix his womanizing ways, but is it worth the pain of getting attached to someone who doesn’t want to be attached? Kill me.

If I worked at Oxford University, I’d use every means at my disposal to find a way to sue Netflix and the makers of this movie for defamation. Oxford is one of the most historical institutions of higher learning in the world, yet My Oxford Year seems dedicated to destroying the very notion of intellect.

The Pickup – August 6

One of the most ironically named people working in the film industry is Tim Story. An active director and producer since the late 90s, he has given us such cinematic hallmarks as Ride Along, Think Like a Man, and the first two Fantastic Four films. He has exactly two quality pictures under his belt, those being Barbershop and The Blackening, and even those are admired for their jokes rather than their plots. In short, Tim Story knows nothing about telling an actual story.

So what is his latest opus? Pete Davidson and Eddie Murphy in a standard-issue armored truck heist. Clearly the switch has still not turned on.

Also, please stop getting Pete Davidson laid in movies. It’s bad enough we have to listen to him talk, we shouldn’t have to picture every woman who’s hit their own personal rock bottom by fucking him.

Freakier Friday – August 8

We really are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to legacy sequels, aren’t we? I understand that the original had some limited appeal when it came out, even though body swap pictures had already been done to death by then. Jamie Lee Curtis was game for everything, Lindsay Lohan hadn’t become a walking punchline yet, and the Disney aesthetic worked up to a point. But Freaky Friday is very much “of its time,” and there was never any real desire for a sequel, be it in the immediate aftermath of the first film’s success or in the two decades since.

And yet, here we are, only now we’re ruining another generation by bringing Julia Butters into the mix. Oh hamburgers (sorry, couldn’t resist)! If you had told me 20 years ago that we’d have a threesome on screen with Lohan and Curtis, I’d be super hyped, and then massively disappointed by my inability to understand the meaning. Now I’m just sad. Jamie Lee Curtis has a fucking Oscar now. She doesn’t have to lower herself to attempting to rehabilitate Lohan’s long-fallen star. Even the studio backing offers no hope, as Disney has spent the intervening years largely mutilating itself into a remake/sequel factory where imagination goes to die, so all of this just smacks of desperation and attempts to wring blood from one more stone.

I’m sure it’ll make a ton of money off the nostalgia from fans of the original, which Disney will use to justify something equally asinine like a legacy sequel to the Christina Ricci version of That Darn Cat. That doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t assuage an objective observer from seeing this as the craven exercise in late-stage capitalism that it actually is.

Nobody 2 – August 15

I liked the first Nobody film, but it had some major issues. It took a long time to get to the bloody point (figuratively and literally), the barrage of toxic masculinity clichés were painful even four years ago, and Hutch Mansell is still quite possibly the dumbest character name ever devised. I enjoyed it, but not incredibly so, especially since it came out right after theatres reopened post-COVID, and there was this really obnoxious MMA-wannabe looking alpha fucker who berated the staff for a) telling him to wear a mask, and b) not accepting cash at concessions, which he tried to force despite numerous signs saying it was card only so as to prevent unnecessary contact. Given that he ended his diatribe by telling the teenagers running the counter that “real Americans” wouldn’t stand for this for long, and given that he spent the first half of the movie loudly calling Bob Odenkirk a pussy in the auditorium, I suspect he’s probably an ICE agent now.

The movie itself didn’t need or warrant a sequel, we got one anyway. This was one of the candidates for “Worst Trailer in the World” status, as the premise – Hutch runs afoul of a super-cartel while on vacation – is beyond stupid, and I’m guessing all the best action moments are montaged in the preview itself. However, the video’s best and worst element prevents me from doing my own parodic takedown. The violence is set to Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” the theme song from National Lampoon’s Vacation, and is meant to both evoke memories of that 80s gem and present an ironic alternative. The timing in the edit is well done, but it ties my hands, because there’s no way I can cut around it without using the music and thus risking a copyright strike.

Further, by licensing the track for this longform joke, the studio ends up shooting itself in the foot, because it’s all but impossible for THIS film to live up to the standards set by the 1983 comedy classic. It’s an all-too-common sin in film and its advertising nowadays. Universal wants you to associate this with something you once loved and enjoyed, but it has no desire to actually earn its own independent affection. Thus, the use of “Holiday Road” becomes an unintentional crutch and a petard with which the flick will likely ultimately hoist itself. Even if Nobody 2 turns out to be a hit, it’s not Vacation, and it never will be.

Night Always Comes – August 15

Yet another crime “drama” where the poor and downtrodden are basically turned on one another in order to pull themselves out of poverty, demonstrating everything wrong with our society while simultaneously blaming them for not magically being wealthy. ONLY IN AMERICA!

This looks like run-of-the-mill garbage. But on the plus side, it’s got Zack Gottsagen in it. I’m glad to see he’s still getting work, and that The Peanut Butter Falcon wasn’t a one-off. He wants to be a legitimate actor, and I’m happy for him.

Witchboard – August 15

This is a remake of a cult horror film from 1986 about a bunch of supernatural shit that happens when a girl plays with her Ouija board. Somehow, this is separate from the god-awful Ouija movies, but by all accounts, not by much. It looks pretty standard and lame, but like A Breed Apart from earlier this year, there somehow seems to be a desire to redo cult flicks while not even bothering to improve on the previous cheap gimmicks or make it appealing to a wider audience. So I ask, what’s the point?

If you’re looking for answers in this preview, there are none. The only proof you need is in the on-screen text declaring director Chuck Russell a “Master of Horror,” and then proceeding to list The Mask as one of his achievements. Personally, I love that movie, but it’s about as far from horror as possible (to the consternation of fans of the comic on which it was based, I’m sure). The other major listed credit is A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That is one of the better entries in the franchise, but like Aliens, it was more action than horror, just set within a horror universe, and before long the series would settle in to slasher comedy.

So does Russell have any real horror chops? Does the 1988 remake of The Blob count? How about Eraser? The Scorpion King? No? You mean that’s just a bunch of nonsense that no self-respecting horror fan would take seriously? Surely you jest!

Yeah, it’s a no from me, dog.

The Map That Leads to You – August 20

Eat, Pray, Love, Vomit, Die in a Fire.

Seriously, why do we have TWO hideous rom-coms about rich girls traveling and boinking overseas and suddenly realizing it’s totally true love this month? And why don’t good books apparently exist anymore?

Splitsville – August 22

Literally nothing good comes from having Dakota Johnson banging in a movie. NOTHING!

Somehow, this is the first of two flicks coming out this month about messed up divorces, and both look terrible. Having NEON as the distributor might grant this one a little bit of credibility, but not much. Can’t people just fuck normally and not have it be an entire movie?

Lurker – August 22

Producer 1: Hey, we need to make a generic, star-fucker stalker movie. What should we call it?
Producer 2: How about Stalker?
Producer 1: Nah, too obvious. Can you give me a title that means the exact same thing, though?
Producer 2: What, like Lurker?
Producer 1: BRILLIANT! THAT’S WHY WE DESERVE TO MAKE 100 TIMES THE MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME PER YEAR!

That’s what I imagine the pitch meeting was for this. Come on, Archie Madekwe, you are better than this!

Also, given MUBI’s connections to Israeli weapons contractors that just came out, maybe we don’t give them money for a while, yeah? Only thing worse than a shitty movie is one where the proceeds might go towards genocide.

Trust – August 22

Trust? I will not, Sophie Turner. Not only did you do Dark Phoenix, you willingly married and procreated with a Jonas Brother. That’s ironclad proof that you cannot be trusted. I’m glad you’re out of that mess, and I don’t want you to get destroyed or tortured Saw-style, which this trailer suggests by its vicarious ties, but that does not mean you’re back in good graces yet.

The Thursday Murder Club – August 28

If there’s one thing I absolutely despise about the “true crime” craze, it’s the absolute deluge of amateur detectives who think they’re smarter than actual trained professionals, and who posit that they can somehow solve cases that people paid to do so and with infinitely more resources cannot.

So let’s do a Downton Abbey version of that, shall we?

I am so sick of seeing great actors wasted in truly putrid films, and this is just the latest example. Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Jonathan Pryce, they ALL have to know this is the stinkiest of stinky rubbish, and yet they all signed on. This is not Gosford Park, this isn’t Knives Out. This is Granny Gets a Raging Clue. And for reasons known but to Zarathustra, not only did Netflix greenlight it, they paid Chris Columbus to direct it. This of course begs the most important question of all… how many of his kids will get cameos?

The Roses – August 29

They remade The War of the Roses.

Seriously.

They. Remade. THE WAR OF THE FUCKING ROSES!

How much farther can we sink here, people? Are we so bereft of ideas that we have to besmirch Danny DeVito’s one good achievement as a director (if you say Hoffa I will hit you)? And why the hell are Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon here? Why is Kate McKinnon playing a straight woman when she’s the most famous lesbian this side of Ellen DeGeneres? Why are we forcing that issue? Why are Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman playing the leads with the film set in San Francisco? Why not have an American couple? Or why not set the film in England? Why do the jokes border on anti-comedy? What are we even doing here?!

In case you can’t tell, this was another finalist for “Worst Trailer” status, but as I said earlier, it just doesn’t lend itself to parody. This just makes me actively angry. Normally that can make for good gag fodder, but this apparently wants to be taken seriously, and I just can’t fathom who would have ever thought that was a good idea. I can’t bring myself down from my own rage to see anything risible in this.

***

And now, at long last, it’s the real “winner” of the title of “The Worst Trailer in the World… This Month!” As we’ve seen a couple times already in this list, Hollywood is really reaching for IPs to reboot, relaunch, remake, or regurgitate for legacy sequels. This one was the most stunning of the lot.

Red Sonja – August 15

You read that right. Red Motherfucking Sonja. As in, Conan the Barbarian in a bikini Red Sonja. As in Brigitte Nielsen before she shared a hot tub with Flavor Flav Red Sonja. As in Arnold Schwarzenegger still thinking The Terminator was a bad career move Red Sonja. Are. You. Shitting. ME?!?!?!?!?!

The sacrificial lamb this time is named Matilda Lutz, who gets epic top billing in the trailer as if she’s been in anything you’ve ever heard of. Spoiler alert, she has not, unless you were really into the second sequel to The Ring (it’s called Rings, which I guess means progress). And while the filmmakers are insisting that this will eschew the male gaze aspects of the original, we still end the trailer on a cheeky, self-aware acknowledgement of how the chainmail bikini offers no actual battle protection.

There’s not much to joke about here, but the real fascination is in the production history. Per Wikipedia (so take with requisite salt), this has languished in Development Hell since at least 2008, with Robert Rodriguez attached to direct at one point, as well as Bryan Singer before he was rightfully canceled for being a sex pest. Amber Heard and Hannah John-Kamen were also targeted to play the title role. I assume they eventually passed because they still wanted to have careers after this was over.

Seventeen years this has been in the works. For context, Matilda Lutz is 33. This has been in some stage of development since the eventual star of the flick was 16. Unless you’re Donald Trump or the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein, that just feels icky. And yet, for all the time and money pumped into this, it looks like complete shit. The stunts are lazy, the CGI is awful, the editing is all over the place, Sonja apparently sleeps in Kool-Aid, and the big monster cyclops thing just looks like an unrendered version of Ludo from Labyrinth. This is what all the jockeying and ownership-trading was leading up to? A feature-length Xena episode that looks even cheaper than the syndicated TV series from 30 years ago? Really?!

So yeah, nothing to really poke fun at, just my jaw on the floor. It really has come to this, hasn’t it?

***

Finally, as we always do, we end on our monthly high note that is the “Redemption Reel.” As I said in the preamble, normally I have to search high and low, far and wide for something to recommend in August, but this year was far easier than others. There are quite a few films that have gotten my attention in a positive way, and this one, I think, piques my curiosity the most.

Weapons – August 8

Zach Cregger won me over three years ago with Barbarian. It wasn’t the best horror flick I’d ever seen. In fact there were some glaring flaws, and I even included the trailer in that month’s TFINYW column because it looked like a generic bit of shlock where the protagonist had to be actively stupid in order for anything to happen. But Cregger surprised me and a lot of others by giving us a genuinely thrilling tale with a sympathetic monster, and the trailer’s run-of-the-mill presentation obfuscated a lot of quality and potential demonstrated in the final product. In short, the man’s earned a mulligan if this doesn’t work out.

But honestly, I think this will also be a success, as this time, the trailer is compelling, which will hopefully draw an even bigger audience. I love the way the narration sets up the premise of an entire classroom of missing kids, because the speaker is a child herself, and the story sounds so far-fetched that you would naturally doubt its authenticity coming out of the mouth of someone so young. The first time I saw this preview and heard that voice, I was reminded of the interstitial sketches from Animaniacs where this kid would tell impossible stories about his friend, Randy Beaman, and then just abruptly end by saying, “K, bye” and dashing back into his house. This narration is in its own odd way a perfect tone-setter.

From there, the back half of the preview is an almost silent affair that clues us in to the terrors that await. We get several shots of star Julia Garner (I’ve been a fan of hers since Grandma, but she’s had a string of bad luck when it comes to horror, what with the Wolf Man remake, Apartment 7A, and The Last Exorcism Part II), as well as a couple pull quotes from Josh Brolin and Benedict Wong, but otherwise, it’s just silent imagery that looks all kinds of fucked up in the best way possible. Hopefully this gives Garner the boost she’s been needing for a while (she’s in the new Fantastic Four movie as well), but even if it doesn’t, there’s more than enough in just these two minutes to raise an eyebrow in intrigue, and given what Cregger gave us last time out, he’s earned the benefit of the doubt, at least for now.

***

That’s all for this month, folks. Hopefully I’ll be able to see more in the coming weeks and regain some momentum, both here on the blog and in my personal and professional life. As always, I hope you enjoy yourself at the movies, no matter what you go see, and take care of yourselves.

Join the conversation in the comments below! Do you plan on seeing any of these films? Was I too hard on any of them? What depths will Hollywood fall to next just to reboot another property no one asked for? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!