Jeff “jmunney” Malone watches every new episode of Saturday Night Live and then reviews all the sketches and segments according to a “wacky” theme.
Let me let you in on a little secret (which is in fact not a secret at all, but rather publicly available information): reigning NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson was the official host of the Season 52 premiere of Saturday Night Live. It was an understandable booking, considering that 2026 was the first time that the New York Knickerbockers won the NBA championship since SNL has been on the air.
As for the musical guest that Brunson introduced, that’d be internationally flavored girl group KATSEYE. They don’t have any particular affiliation with the Knicks that I’m aware of, but they do seem to have achieved a noteworthy level of popularity.
Regarding the Review Gimmick for this episode, it will of course be Basketball-themed, so I’ll say things like “Baller,” “Slam Dunk”, or “4 out of 5 Basketballs.”
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–Forgotten Island (Theaters)
–Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (Theaters)
–Heart of the Beast (Theaters)
–Primetime (Theaters)
–The Stunt Driver (Theaters)
–Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (Theaters)
TV
–Bucks County, USA (Check your local PBS listings) – Docuseries about a purple county in a purple state.
–Saturday Night Live Season 52 Premiere (September 26 on NBC) – Jalen Brunson and KATSEYE will be their guests
-MTV Video Music Awards (September 27 on CBS, MTV, and Paramount+) – Hosted by Snoop Dogg.
–Grimsburg Season 3 Premiere (September 27 on FOX)
–The Simpsons Season 38 Premiere (September 28 on FOX)
–Scrubs Reboot Season 2 Premiere (September 30 on ABC)
Music
-Leon Bridges, Happiness Anytime
-M83, I Wrote You a Letter
-Mastodon, Marrow Deep – This dropped at the end of August but somehow I missed it.
-Tom Morello, Everyone Gets Everything They Want
-Nothing But Thieves, Stray Dogs
-Soft Cell, Danceteria – Reputedly their last album.
-Tinashe, Popstar
-Ann Wilson & Tripsitter, Consecrated Ground
What would you do… if this happened to you? (CREDIT: Screenshot)
Starring: Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour, Andy Nyman, Emma Tate, Simon Greenall, Dani Dyer, Roman Kemp, Nina Sosanya, Paul Whitehouse
Directors: Steve Cox and Matthew Walker
Running Time: 81 Minutes
Rating: PG
Release Date: September 18, 2026 (Theaters)
For my money, the most important lesson to be gleaned from Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is that baldness is no big deal. I’m saying this as someone who quite enjoys his facial hair and body hair, but has made peace with a recession on top. Although, not to undercut my point immediately, I actually think The Farmer’s adventure as an outrageously hirsute monster actually looks kinda fun. I can’t be the only one who would like to be a Sasquatch for a day! But he also needs to know that he didn’t need to feel like he had to grow back his hair to impress the veterinarian, as I think she was digging him anyway.
Deion Sanders does NOT appear in this movie. (CREDIT: A24)
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers, Matthew Maher, Bokeem Woodbine, Anna Faris, Jonathan Lipnicki, Tony Revolori, Alex Winter, Eric Rahill, Sean Bridgers, Jeff Zucker, Creed Bratton, Caroline Hebert, Jessica Hecht
Director: Lance Oppenheim
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: R for Some Graphic Nudity, Violence, and Language, All Within the Milieu of a Disturbingly Graphic Premise
Release Date: September 25, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: It’s the mid-aughts, and Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) is dead-set on making television history. His NBC true crime reality show To Catch a Predator is a bit of a phenomenon, but it’s also controversial, not to mention stressful for everyone involved. His producer Andie (Merritt Wever) remains steely while working around Chris’s mercurial nature, and everyone else on the crew makes their own compromises to survive a show whose premise is luring into sting operations men who are trying to have sex with minors. Emerging into this scenario is aspiring actor Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo), who’s hired to play decoy underage boys in the stings. He just wants to kickstart his showbiz career, but he clearly hasn’t fully registered what he’s signed up for. Indeed, with Chris as the increasingly obsessive ringleader, a looming disaster threatens to become more and more inevitable.
What Made an Impression?: The Impression That I Get: The main attraction in Primetime is of course Pattinson’s compelling performance, which feels like an alien pretending to be a human, or maybe a human purposefully trying to be off by acting like an alien pretending to be a human. And yet, he clearly wants to be authoritative, so it doesn’t make sense for him to be so off like that. I’ve never watched a full episode of To Catch a Predator, so I’ve only caught the real Hansen in bits and glances. But no matter what your familiarity with the Real McCoy, this is still a fascinating feature-length case study of “What’s this guy’s deal?” (Just as compelling is one scene when Gisondo impersonates Pattinson as Dan finds himself slipping into Chris’s persona.) Caught in the Maelstrom: Director Lance Oppenheim was definitely happy to put his auteurial stamp on this effort. He leans into the harshest visual aspects of the technology of the era, favoring close-ups of AIM chats and hidden camera feeds, as well as the reflections on the faces of the characters poring over those screens. There’s also a recurring motif of a web of a red laser-like display. It all combines to create the effect that the TCaP tean is caught in their own personal Twilight Zone, an aberration within an aberration of Hollyweird. Way Back Yesterday: You know you’re starting to get old when 20 years ago feels like a completely different era. But part of the fun of Primetime is that we get to revisit the messiness of the 2000s with a fresh set of peepers. It’s certainly a hoot to see former NBC President and CEO Jeff Zucker as himself sorting out where To Catch a Predator belongs on his network’s schedule. That moment also hits so sweetly because it’s nice to encounter someone who has a sense of humor about himself, which is decidedly not the case with Hansen and his cohorts. And let’s not let go of that levity, because this movie ultimately delivers us to a pretty dark place and leaves us to our own devices to figure out what to do with that.
Primetime is Recommended If You Like:To Catch a Predator but feel conflicted about that
Rating: R for Stylish Bloody Violence Captured by Stunning Cinematography, and Some Sexual Content
Release Date: September 25, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: A Houston man named Latif (Mahershala Ali) has been able to support his family with his work as a hitman. But when his wife dies, his current situation immediately proves to be a lot more untenable than it used to be. That’s because he now actually has to be physically present for his teenage daughter Fathia (Adia), pre-teen son Kadir (Jahleel Kamara), and newborn baby, who urgently needs new breast milk as the supply that Mom left behind quickly dwindles away. He’s spiritually prepared to give up the killer-for-hire lifestyle, but his fellow mosque attendee Mike (Laith Nakli), the one who’s been giving him these deadly assignments, has another job for him, and this one is quite a doozy. The target is Pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho), an anti-pornography crusader who is particularly offended by Mike’s influencer nephew (Abubakr Ali) and his brand of so-called “Habibi porn.” Latif isn’t really interested in any of that tangled mess, but it’s unavoidable while he’s hustling to feed his baby.
What Made an Impression?: Slicing and Dicing: If you’re still disappointed over the cancellation of the Mahershala Ali version of Blade, then Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is probably the closest we’ll ever get to that, what with a sword being Latif’s preferred weapon of choice. His combat style is so similar to that of Marvel’s Daywalker that I couldn’t help but wonder if writer-director Bassam Tariq was explicitly trying to make that connection. And then I found out that he was actually hired to direct Blade, so yeah, I imagine there was some intentionality. If you’re familiar with the Elevated Horror trend, then I guess we can call this Elevated Superheroics. Probably Unforgettable:Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is the kind of movie that makes me go, “Is this excellent, or just unusual?” What Tariq asks of his cast requires a lot of trust, and they certainly give it to him. One character declares that he’s “Team Butt”, while John Cho sports some gold grills. I mean, can you even imagine?! I witnessed the whole thing, and I still barely can. I have to give it up for the boldness, even though I’m not entirely sure that I’m stunned for the best reasons. He’ll Make You Believe: Let’s bring it back to Ali, because if this movie works at all, it’s thanks to his grounding central performance. That’s not to say that the veterans and newcomers surrounding him aren’t also worthy of praise, because they certainly are. But as everything in his world becomes more and more outrageous, he never lets go of making us see the recognizable human crisis that he’s enduring. That’s his acting superpower: he’s the calm in the storm that elevates it all with his steadiness.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is Recommended If You Like: Exploitation flicks, Religious yearning, The Righteous Gemstones
My hypothesis is that plenty of people will watch this movie (CREDIT: Prime Video/Screenshot)
Starring: Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay, Arty Froushan
Director: Claire Scanlon
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: R for A Notable Deficit of Shyness in the Bedroom
Release Date: September 23, 2026 (Amazon Prime Video)
What’s It About?: It’s hard to think straight in an academic setting. Olive Smith (Lili Reinhart) can certainly attest to that. She’s a biology PhD candidate at Stanford who cares about two things above all else: finding a cure for pancreatic cancer, and her best friend Anh (Rachel Marsh). Regarding the latter, she attempts to convince Anh that she’s over their mutual crush Jeremy (Nicholas Duvernay) by impulsively kissing a random guy in a hallway. Unfortunately, that random guy turns out to be Dr. Adam Carlsen (Tom Bateman), the professor with the most hardass reputation in their department. But somehow, he’s actually willing to enter into a mutually beneficial arrangement with Olive: they’ll pretend to date each other so that her friends can date without feeling guilty and so that Stanford can be convinced that he’s sufficiently committed to his current location for them to release his research funds. Olive might think that she’s objective enough not to catch feelings, but it can get a little slippery when you’re your own test subject.
What Made an Impression?: Getting to the Revelations:The Love Hypothesis is based on Ali Hazelwood’s beloved 2021 novel of the same name, which I bought and devoured just a couple weeks before the movie’s release. When I’m reviewing a movie that’s an adaptation, I don’t always (or often) focus on its fidelity or deviation from the source material. But in this case, it’s the perfect opportunity to do so. With that in mind, I’ll highlight that there’s a major revelation that’s treated as a climactic moment at the end of the book, but in the movie, it’s treated as a more casual revelation as the first act transitions to the second. And honestly, I think it makes sense to reposition in that way. It was kind of drawn out on the page, and it’s ultimately not the biggest deal in Olive and Adam’s journey (though it is meaningful in its own way). Adaptational Flexibility: To quickly sum up the rest of the changes from page to screen: a few supporting players are dropped, some conflicts are compressed, and certain moments of character development are subtly but significantly shifted. These alterations will certainly stick out if you’ve read (or re-read) the novel as close to watching as I have, but none of them fundamentally change what this movie is all about. Instead, they feel like alternative scenarios that Hazelwood herself very could have considered when writing the book. Think of them as shifting puzzle pieces instead of chemical reactions resulting in a new substance. The Passion Can’t Be Denied: There’s an effort to characterize Olive as a demisexual, a fairly new term used to refer to people who can only experience sexual attraction upon developing a strong emotional bond with someone. It’s a little bluntly stated in the screen version, though we certainly do see that bond being formed. The moment of consummation is a lot more intense than you might expect from something with such a frothy premise and color palette. I don’t know how much Lili Reinhart was focusing on the demisexuality of it all while calibrating her performance, but she and Bateman certainly forged the requisite connection. Looking for Meaning in a Meaningless World: During a sequence at a campus picnic, there’s a random shot of an extra chowing down on some food. I don’t know if the editor was having a bit of fun, or if that was just more or less unintentional. But either way, it made an impression on me. Shrinking: With the built-in audience that a beloved book provides, one would think that The Love Hypothesis would be a slam dunk proposition as a theatrical release instead of the straight-to-streaming arrival it’s been fated to. Perhaps that lack of immersion is why some of the scenes that should have had my heart singing at full volume instead fell a little flat. Thus, I must recommend that any of you who are planning to watch must do your best to recreate the theatrical experience at home. So invite a whole bunch of friends, project it on the wall, set up a full-service concession stand – whatever you can manage! And then hopefully we’ll have some more evidence regarding my hypothesis that all movies should be released in theaters.
The Love Hypothesis is Recommended If You Like: AO3
Here’s Mr. Onslaught (CREDIT: Richard Foreman/A24)
Starring: Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Biehn, Blake Kennedy, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey, Rebecca Hall, Jacob Scipio
Director: Adam Wingard
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Rating: R
Release Date: September 4, 2026 (Theaters)
Onslaught is a pretty satisfying genre exercise, and there’s plenty that can be said about its blend of approaches and ideas. But mostly I just want to say: hell, yeah, Reginald VelJohnson is still alive and kicking! Who knew that Carl Winslow still had this much left in the tank? Anyone willing to think about it for just a minute, that’s who. And what a treat to see him team up with Eric Wareheim. I mean, Adria Arjona may play the lead, and she’s great and all, but for my money, this is the Reggie & Eric Show above all else.
Mariska Hargitay hosted the Emmys, can you believe it? (CREDIT: NBC/Screenshot)
Aunt Beth, Jeff, and Returning Guest Bob Malone noticed that Mariska Hargitay emceed an awards program, and naturally they had some things to say about it.
(Sorry for any audio miscues! This episode was recorded on a cellular phone instead of our usual fancy studio equipment.)
Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.
Movies
–The History of Concrete (Theaters)
–The Love Hypothesis (September 23 on Amazon Prime)
–Resident Evil (Theaters)
–Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (Theaters)
–The Weight (Theaters)
–You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (in a Canadian Kind of Way) (Theaters)
TV
–Best Medicine Season 2 Premiere (September 20 on FOX)
–Celebrity Name That Tune Season Premiere (September 21 on FOX)
Music
-Anthrax, Cursum Perficio
-Beabadoobee, Pylon
-Beck, Ride Lonesome
-Carly Rae Jepsen, Day and Night
-Echo & the Bunnymen, Apples for Isaac
-Miley, Bass Persuades – The “Miley” in this case is Cyrus.
-MNEK, Bulldozer!!
-Rodrigo y Gabriela, OurHome
-Roger Taylor, Violence Insane in a Beautiful World
-Tove Lo, Estrus
-Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts, Second Song
Which one’s Resident and which one’s Evil? (CREDIT: Dušan Martinček/Columbia Pictures)
Starring: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser, Johnno Wilson
Director: Zach Cregger
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Rating: R for Monstrous Violence and the Profanity It Provokes
Release Date: September 18, 2026 (Theaters)
What’s It About?: A scrappy medical courier named Bryan (Austin Abrams) is ready to call it a night after getting through his shift of organ deliveries. But then he’s enticed by one more high-paying dropoff that will require traversing through snowy, mountainous terrain on his way to Raccoon City General hospital. It’s a dangerous enough journey during even the most ideal conditions. But it soon becomes clear that the conditions are pretty much the opposite of ideal, as Bryan encounters a series of infectious, mutated human beings (and a few animals). So he spends the rest of the night running for his life, while also doing his best to get that package to where it belongs, which might just be the key to ensuring that the entire world doesn’t start looking like Raccoon City.
What Made an Impression?: Oops, He Did It Again: This latest adaptation of Resident Evil is at its heart a slapstick adventure. But if you’re confused because you came here to be scared out of your boots, don’t fret! It’s possible to be hilarious without undercutting the terror, and director Zach Cregger nails that balancing act. That’s what happens when survival instincts team up with lack of experience, after all. Bryan has no idea how to make sense of this nightmare, but he undeniably wants to make it out alive. So sometimes, he successfully blasts away zombies, while other times he shoots his own car. Sometimes he lures zombies into splatting against each other, and other times he just falls over a fence. Abrams has the perfect jittery energy for all of this, and my theater just lapped it up. What’s That Hiding Around the Corner?: When you direct a couple of the most acclaimed horror movies of the past few years, as ZachCregger has, it creates certain expectations for your subsequent fright flicks. In Cregger’s case, more than anything else, it’s his knack for mid-act reveals that recontextualize everything that came before. That’s easier to pull off with an original screenplay than it is with a property with a decades-long cultural footprint like Resident Evil. But it’s not impossible! While there’s nothing quite as massively world-flipping here as there was in Barbarian and Weapons, there are plenty of smaller moments that had me gratefully cheering, “Hoo boy, I was not expecting that!” He’s quite the magician, this Cregger fellow, always orienting our attention where it needs to go for maximum effect. Great Care Was Taken: The makeup crew and visual effects artists also deserve plenty of direct praise. I’ve never played any of the RE games, so I don’t know what percentage of their designs were recreations and how much were original. But I do know that it was all effective! Leonardo da Vinci would’ve been quite proud if he were alive today. Give Yourself Time to Recover: This Resident Evil runs a brisk hour and a half, seemingly more or less in real time. You’ll be thrilled at all the chills and spills packed into that efficient duration, and grateful for the extra minutes to devote to the rest of your day. I recommend spending a chunk of it re-listening to Ryan and Hays Holladays’ score while mulling over what you’ve endured.
Resident Evil is Recommended If You Like: Screaming + Laughing + Cheering
