‘I would find it hard to bypass a Twix': NI writer Colin Bateman on 30 years of literary success and Liam Neeson's commitment to his roles
"It's hard to get some of those images of Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun reboot out of my head,' says Colin Bateman of the Hollywood star wearing a mini skirt and strawberry underpants.
One of Northern Ireland's most successful and popular fiction writers, Colin reflects on the actor's ability to choose diverse roles.
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Times
6 hours ago
- Times
The naked truth? Hot new films leave me cold
The hot comedy of the summer is The Naked Gun, so, obviously, I went to see it, at the cinema, in a heatwave. When people ask, 'So, Hilary, what do you think of the hot film of the summer?', as they surely will, I need to be ready with something pithy yet pertinent. Instead, I'm baffled. It's amiable nonsense, but is it funny? I never even cracked a smile, yet the critics raved. I love the idea that the on-screen romance between Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson is now real, but the film? I don't get it and this isn't the first time. Barbie irritated me. Oppenheimer bored me. I've struggled with all of George Clooney's films except Ocean's Eleven, even though I've been a true believer since his ER days and know that Amal is only a stepping stone on his road to me. The trailers at the cinema this week left me equally baffled. The Roses, a remake of The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, looked epically dreadful, so I look forward to critics hailing it as Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch's finest, funniest work. Another trailer, billed as a comedy, featured someone named Hutch thumping someone else while saying, 'I am on vacation.' To date, no one's asked me what I think of the hot film of the summer. It's probably just as well. • Feeling gloomy? Hollywood has a so bad-it's-good comedy for you! Flip-flops are obviously not the solution to anything except a beach and yet still, inexplicably, people wear them around town, apparently just because it's hot. The fact that there's a market for three-figure designer flip-flops is proof that the heat has gone to your head and the only sensible person around here is me. With Burberry flip-flops costing nearly 500 quid and Balmain's £300, at least my Manolos have sides and a sole. But 2025 is clearly the summer of the city flip-flop because they're on the Tube, in supermarkets and shuffling through airports. You're mad, the lot of you. Naturally, your feet are foul to look at and I bitterly resent that you're flaunting them, but that's my problem, not yours. Your problem is different. Do you want your bare skin touching supermarket tarmac, the filthy floor of a Tube train or a plane? All that clammy rubber, with no cushioning or support, will play havoc with your arches. And if you don't believe me, believe Tom Ford, who is always right about everything. 'Flip-flops and shorts in the city,' he once said, 'are never appropriate.' My eightysomething mother is getting a new car and she's not messing around. Her current wheels are a Smart car so old and asthmatic you have to kick your heels and say 'giddy-up, Dobbin' to get it up hills. I assumed she'd go for something solid, not too fast and high up for ease of access. What she's actually getting is a sporty little low-slung Mini Cooper with a top speed of 146mph that does 0-60 in less than seven seconds. Her very first car was a Mini, she says gleefully, and this Mini will be her last. Not so much 'giddy-up, Dobbin' as 'whoa there, Granny'. Getting to the cinema took me through Borough Market, where the big tourist attraction isn't artisan sourdough because tourists have about as much use for artisan sourdough as they do for a pork chop. I sometimes wonder who buys all the pork chops in that market, but presumably someone does or they wouldn't sell them. What they do sell, in their thousands, are £8.50 plastic pint pots of Instagrammable strawberries covered in chocolatey gloop. The queue for them is around the block, but you would wince if I told you what the lads on the fish stall opposite say about that chocolatey gloop.
The Independent
3 days ago
- The Independent
Liam Neeson offers his verdict on The Naked Gun sequel
Liam Neeson 's new comedy, The Naked Gun reboot, has received positive reviews from both critics and audiences. The film has earned over $42m (£31m) globally in its first two weeks and achieved a 91 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest for the franchise. Despite the film's success, Neeson, who portrays Frank Drebin Jr., expressed doubt about a sequel, suggesting it is likely a one-off. The movie also features Pamela Anderson, Kevin Durand, and Paul Walter Hauser, and was directed by Akiva Schaffer with Seth MacFarlane as producer. The Independent's review notes that the film subtly shifts its parody from self-serious cop shows to the self-seriousness of police officers in a contemporary context.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
The Guide #203: Has Hollywood rediscovered the joy of the 90-minute movie?
Walking out of a 6.30pm showing of The Naked Gun a couple of weeks ago I was greeted by an unfamiliar sight: daylight. Had I gone to see the film in the upper reaches of the northern hemisphere, where daylight is near-permanent in the summer months? No I was in Leicester Square – a different kind of barren wasteland than the Arctic tundra – and there was another reason for the brightness: The Naked Gun was only 1hr 25m long. Very few modern films – aside from those of the child-friendly variety – clock in at less than 90 minutes, but even so The Naked Gun doesn't feel a total outlier. In fact, of the last three blockbusters I've seen at the cinema, only one – Superman – went beyond the two hour mark, and only by 10 minutes. The other, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, was 1hr 54m, relatively svelte for a 21st-century superhero movie. Granted, earlier in this summer we had Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, clocking in at a Brobdingnagian 2hr 49m (and boy, at times did it feel it), but looking back now, that almost feels a relic from and earlier, more indulgent time. Because, generally the blockbuster seems to be getting shorter. The average for this year's top 10 movies so far at the US box office (which seems to me the best benchmark for the health of the blockbuster given they make and consume the bulk of them), is 2hr 4m. That number (sure to be nudged up further by Avatar: Fire and Ash later this year) is actually higher than last year's average between the top 10 – 2h 01m – but way down on the 2hr 15m and 2hr 16m of 2023 and 2022 respectively. Those years admittedly featured some hefty movies like Oppenheimer (3hrs) bumping up their averages, but also some silly lengths for movies of a more disposable nature: how, for example did John Wick 4, a dialogue-light film about a man hurting other men in various imaginative ways, clock in at a whopping 2hr and 49m? Or why did The Batman brush right up to the three-hour mark? And did the live-action Little Mermaid really need to be two and a quarter hours? The animated original managed to rattle through the story in almost an hour less. Listen, we probably talk too much about films being too long these days: it's something I have definitely been guilty of in this newsletter, somewhat absurdly because I don't actually have a problem with long films at all – especially when a bladder-aiding intermission is included as part of the deal. I'm generally of the belief that films should be as long as they need to be and, in some cases, a film needs to be very long indeed. But it's certainly the case that blockbusters, once designed to provide quick, easy thrills, have tended toward bloat since the 2010s. Much of that of course has to do with the steroidal growth of the superhero movie, which, in service of the 'expanded universe model' of interlocking films, had to incorporate more and more convoluted backstories and peripheral characters into its run times. That feature soon became a bug, with endless complaints in thinkpieces and on forums that superhero films had grown too long. But there has been a sense in recent years that the superhero industrial complex has listened to the ambient noise around its films being too long. You could see those stirrings in the desire by Nia DaCosta, director of 2023's The Marvels, to make that film under two hours. She succeeded and then some: it's the shortest Marvel movie of all, at 1hr 45m. (Though given The Marvels is regarded as one of the weakest Marvel movies, such brevity doesn't always equal quality.) Equally Superman director James Gunn had to deny rumours Warner Bros had ordered him to make the film shorter: he perhaps should have listened given the movie's weakest moment is an impossible to follow city-smashing final battle that goes on for at least five minutes more than it needs to. Certainly there's a sense watching The Fantastic Four that it strives to stay under the two-hour mark. In doing so it perhaps over-corrects a little: a blossoming romance between Ebon Moss-Bachrach's The Thing and Natasha Lyonne's schoolteacher suddenly vanishes midway through the movie – or more likely was sent to the cutting room floor by clockwatchers. Still, that did probably contribute to a film that, while not without flaws, felt appealingly brisk. Hopefully more mainstream movies can follow its example, as well as that of The Naked Gun, whose 1hr 25m runtime is identical to that of the original movie in the franchise in 1988. Back then that was a little less of an outlier: the average run time of the top 10 highest grossers that year – a time Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Coming To America, Die Hard and the like reigned supreme – was a positively breezy 1hr 48m … so there's still a long way to go in films getting shorter. Sign up to The Guide Get our weekly pop culture email, free in your inbox every Friday after newsletter promotion If you want to read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday
