April Movies Part 5: Abigail, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Challengers

April is finally at a close and I somehow managed to watch three more movies in the theater. Whether you're jonesing for horror, action, or sexy tennis, I've got every possible genre covered for you in this post!

Abigail: I only like funny horror and my fiance only likes vampires, so this movie was the perfect intersection of our horror movie preferences. If you've seen the trailer, you already know what to expect. A group of criminals have been recruited for one lucrative mission - kidnap a little girl and hold her in a mansion for 24 hours until her father pays a princely ransom. Each kidnapper gets a generous cut of the ransom, and the girl is returned to her father. What could go wrong?

Well, turns out the little girl is actually a deadly vampire. So...mayhem ensues. This movie is thoroughly entertaining, gory but funny, and with great performances delivered by every single actor, especially Alisha Weir as the murderous but adorable ballerina vampire. Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, who were inspired by the 1936 film Dracula's Daughter, this is a splendidly silly film that does not seem to follow much coherent logic in terms of what vampires can and cannot do, but don't let that bog you down. Just settle in for some laughs, jump scares, and buckets of blood. 

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Directed by Guy Ritchie, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, and Arash Amel, this is a heavily fictionalized account of a true story. Set in 1941, at the height of World War II, Winston Churchill needs some way to get rid of the German U-boats that keep sinking supply ships that are carrying aid to the struggling UK. He recruits a ragtag bunch of commandos to conduct a special raid on a Spanish island where a boat containing all the supplies needed to keep the U-boats running is docked. What follows is a very complicated but exciting mission where our stalwart heroes must outsmart the Nazis.

This is a Guy Ritchie movie, so you should know exactly what you're going to get. There's lots of action, lots of broad comedy, and lots of lovable rogues. The cast includes folks like Henry Cavill, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, and Henry Golding, and they are all having a whale of a time. Could this film be edited more judiciously? Of course. Is there a ton of exposition and some unnecessary twists and turns just so we can have a bit more shooting and punching? Naturally. But at the end of the day, do you want a film where you just sit back and watch a bunch of hot British men fight Nazis and look effortlessly cool while doing so? You bet!

Challengers: I walked into the theater with my arms crossed, all set to hate this movie. Based on the trailers, I thought this was going to be "Hot Threesome: The Movie" and prove to be an insufferable treatise on ethical non-monogamy or some such nonsense. However, written by Justin Kuritzkes and directed by Luga Guadagnino, I was instead treated to a remarkable character study of three very twisted people who are suffering from crippling work-life balance issues. And when the work in question is professional tennis, you get a compelling and thrilling film that is kinetic and exciting and manages to be both sexy and funny.

The screenplay is written brilliantly with a flashback structure that means we keep getting the back story of our three main characters in tantalizing bursts. We always get just enough information to advance the plot further by one more step, but it's only until we get to the very end that we finally have the culmination of everything these people have been to each other and the current state of their entanglements. In my screening, there were two men who clearly thought they were coming to this movie to watch Zendaya take her clothes off, and instead, they became markedly agitated as the movie proved to be rather homoerotic, with far more attention being paid to her sweaty male co-stars, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor. 

This movie is shot beautifully, and I have never been more engaged in watching tennis in my life. The soundtrack is genius, always providing a propulsive beat that gets you excited for the next tennis match or the next complicated sex scene where you get to see the true value of an intimacy coordinator who knows how to choreograph not just the physical act, but all the emotional complexities it represents. The actors are sublime, each representing a complex and screwed up human being with thwarted ambitions, and the evolving nature of their relationships from past to present is stunningly portrayed. This movie was a real revelation - go into it knowing as little plot as possible and you will be thoroughly rewarded.