It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie The Week podcast about it to a classic film

and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Scott Tobias here again with...

Genevieve Kosky.

Keith Phipps.

And Tasha Robinson.

In our last episode, we discussed the hit Zucker Abram Zucker spoof, The Naked Gun from 1988.

Now a humbling 37 years later,

the naked gun has made an improbable return with a new cast and a new director, Akiva Schaffer,

best known for his involvement in the comedy troupe, The Lonely Island, and for directing films like Pop Star, Never Stop, Never Stopping, and Chippendale, Rescue Rangers, both of which we covered here on the next picture show.

And the new Naked Gun, Liam Neeson takes over the Leslie Nielsen role, or rather succeeds him as Frank Dreven Jr., a leader of a modern age yet similarly wacky L.A. special unit called Police Squad.

Alongside his partner, Captain Ed Hocken

Jr., son of the George Kennedy character from the first film, Drebben investigates the fallout

from a bank robbery he foils in the opening scene. As it happens, the heavily armed crew that

committed the heist was there merely as a ruse for one high-tech item, literally called

plot device, to be slipped

out the back door and handed to Richard Kane, an evil tech mogul played by Danny Houston.

The purpose of the plot device is revealed a bit later, but it's enough to move the story forward

as Diven bumbles his way through the case and hooks up with Beth, played by Pamela Anderson,

...