Freakier Friday

Body swaps are comedy gold — and Freaky Friday is the gold standard. Two decades after Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna (Lindsay Lohan) exchanged lives, the chaos returns — quadrupled. This time, Anna trades bodies with her daughter Harper (Julia Butters), while Tess ends up in the body of her future step-granddaughter Lily (Sophia Hammons).

Freakier Friday is a four-way freak-out with engagements, blended families, and enough identity confusion to make a soap opera blush. For millennials, it’s a nostalgia hit. For Gen Z, it’s an introduction to the pure joy of watching people panic while speaking in someone else’s voice.

The Naked Gun

It’s been more than 30 years since Naked Gun fans last saw the late, great Leslie Nielsen make slapstick history as the bumbling cop Frank Drebin (in the third franchise film, Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult). Now, Liam Neeson picks up the baton (and the badge) as Drebin’s son, Frank Drebin Jr., who follows in his father’s hilariously clumsy footsteps to keep the Police Squad together.  
 
Against all odds, Neeson proves a surprisingly perfect fit: he’s deadpan, self-aware, and game for the gags — not that you’d have expected that from the action star. The movie took a lot of time to materialise, but for lovers of physical comedy, it’s a wait that has paid off: The Naked Gun is an entertaining homage packed with outrageous antics, sight gags, pure nostalgic fun, and a lot of heart.

Karate Kid: Legends

What started in 1984 with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita), and a crane kick that became an iconic pop culture moment has quietly turned into one of the most tangled cinematic universes this side of Marvel. We’ve had sequels, spin-offs, a Hilary Swank detour (1994’s The Next Karate Kid), and a 2010 rebooted (and later retconned) ‘karate’ movie about … kung fu in China.

Now, Karate Kid: Legends pulls the disparate threads together, revealing that Mr Miyagi and Mr Han (Jackie Chan) were lifelong pals. Teaming up with a grown-up Daniel, Han trains his great-nephew Li Fong (Ben Wang) for a high-stakes New York tournament. And yes, there’s a cheeky nod to the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai, which focuses on Daniel’s rival, Johnny Lawrence. Miyagiverse? More like Miyagi-multiverse.

Twisters

Forget aliens or superheroes — nothing’s scarier (or more jaw-dropping) than Mother Nature in a bad mood. The 1996 hit Twister made tornado-chasing cool, but it’s taken nearly three decades for the disaster drama to return.

2024’s Twisters brings fresh faces — Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos — into the eye of the storm, with a few sly nods to the original (hello, Dorothy V). No returning characters, but plenty of bone-rattling spectacle, directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung. Who knew prestige drama directors could also whip up a Category 5 thrill ride?

Mad Max: Fury Road

A legacy sequel by technicality, George Miller’s Fury Road serves as a soft reboot of Mad Max. Miller himself refrains from calling it a ‘reboot’, opting to bill it as a ‘revisit’. Potayto, potahto. Whatever the right term is, Fury Road is cinematic thunder — and that’s all that matters. After decades of delays, desert blooms, and even thoughts of going animated, Miller recast Max (Tom Hardy) and unleashed a dust-choked fever dream of roaring engines and feminist fury.

The 2015 big-screen sensation nabbed 10 Oscar nominations (winning six) and rewrote the rulebook for action movies. And in 2024, Miller roared back with Furiosa, proving the wasteland is still very much alive — and very, very loud.