Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra dealt with some microphone-monkeying that had gone on before Levora and Pitra climbed aboard and got on with it. They discuss the family Shyamalan, with M Night’s daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan’s forthcoming directorial début The Watchers. Will Ishana be hobbled by the defects of her familial predecessor, Manoj Nelliyattu? God, let’s hope not.

And here, now, the reviews.

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• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun, Cary Elwes, Til Schweiger, Henrique Zaga, Roger Snipes, Danny Sapani, and Freddie Fox. Stupid Nazis whose stupidity makes you wonder how their real-life counterparts could have ever been a threat to anybody, and a bunch of English charm-pushers whose travails lack any urgency or suspense to justify a film. Given the film is based on real events, that’s a harsh indictment of Ritchie’s cinematic storytelling skills. Add to it the continuing dilemma of what to do with an actor like Cavill, who looks like he has charisma, but then he opens his mouth and — gone.
  
• Abigail, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and starring Alisha Weir, Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, Angus Cloud, Matthew Goode, and Giancarlo Esposito. If you didn’t know this was a vampire-ballerina film, you’d be better off. Best forget you read this and watch it. Or not. This outing, as with the other films, was a “meh” affair.
  
• Sasquatch Sunset, directed by David and Nathan Zellner and starring Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, and Christophe Zajac-Denek. “I didn’t get it,” Schulz concluded. The cast bark at one another under heavy latex makeup, but none of it amounted to what one might construe as a comedy.
  

As for previews:

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• Challengers, a romantic sports film directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Darnell Appling, AJ Lister, and Nada Despotovich. Soapy-sounding premise, but Guadagnino’s directing, so it’s got that going for it.
  
• Boy Kills World, a 2023 action comedy-thriller film directed by Moritz Mohr and starring Bill Skarsgard, Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Famke Janssen, Sharlto Copley, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, and Andrew Koji. Skarsgård is Boy, a deaf-mute killing machine whose inner voice is furnished by H Jon Benjamin. Apparently, Benjamin’s telling Skarsgård that he’s gotta kill, kill, and once more kill. As Richard Hickock said to Perry Smith before they went about their business, “Plenty of hair on them walls.”
  
• Unsung Hero, a Christian drama directed by Richard Ramsey and Joel Smallbone and starring Smallbone, Daisy Betts, Kirrilee Berger, Jonathan Jackson, Lucas Black, Candace Cameron Bure, Diesel La Torraca (portraying Joel Smallbone — pret-ty meta, sis) and JJ Pantano. An Australian family overstuffed with children relocates to Nashville in 1991. And, somewhere, Jesus.
  
• Last, but certainly not least, is the forty-fifth-anniversary showing of Ridley Scott’s Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. Schulz has watched Alien a hundred-score and ten, but he’s excited to finally see it on the big screen. Will Scott be celebrating the film again in five years?
  

“Abigail,” “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” and “Sasquatch Sunset”