Review: Challengers

Image courtesy of MGM.

Luca Guadagnino's "Challengers" is concerned with three people whose competitive drive fuels their near-ruthless desire for winning on both the tennis courts - where they are pros - and in the bedroom, where their abilities vary. The film is an intense, fast-paced sports drama and romantic triangle picture that moves propulsively forward to the beat of Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch's relentless electronic score.

"Challengers" jumps around in different timelines, but its framing device is a tennis match in 2019 at what should be a low-stakes tournament in Long Island where tennis star (Mike Faist) is facing off against Patrick (Josh O'Connor), his former best friend who was once the better player but whose career never took off and has now fallen into a somewhat disreputable state. In the present, Patrick is trying to woo an older female hotel manager into letting him crash there for free during the tournament. Art is there with Tashi (Zendaya), his coach and wife.

In the past, we meet Art and Patrick when they played as "Fire and Ice," a tennis duo on the rise. They meet Tashi, another rising star with a fierce competitive streak, at a party to celebrate her latest win. All three are prone to some colorful behavior on the court. 

After convincing Tashi to drop by their hotel room, one of the many competitions between the two men ensues. Whoever wins the match they have the following day against each other will win a date with Tashi, who senses an attraction between the two men during a group make-out session from which she extricates herself, seemingly without drawing the attention of the other two.

Patrick wins the match and, as a result, Tashi. But Art, driven by Patrick's conquest, fails to give up so easily and the competition continues on and off the court. Several years later, Art bumps in Tashi, the two get together, and a marriage and children come later.

But in the present day, Art has lost his drive. He has won all of the major tennis competitions except the U.S. Open and, due to his age, his wife believes that this might be his last shot. Meanwhile, her career was ended early after breaking her leg on the tennis court, leaving her to act as Art's coach (he's her only client). 

When they find out that Patrick is playing in the Long Island tournament, which Tashi hopes will enable Art to get his confidence back after a string of losses, the old games and competition start back up. Will playing against Patrick again renew Art's competitive streak?

Guadagnino is known as a director of what might be called hot and heavy dramas - the acclaimed LGBTQ romance "Call Me By Your Name," for example - although he's also a director of films in which erotic romance is struck up in the strangest of places - among cannibals in "Bones and All" and, to a less grizzly extent, among tennis players in his latest picture.

"Challengers" is the best piece of pure entertainment I've seen so far in 2024. It's a skillfully made and acted sports drama with incredible photography during the high-intensity tennis matches, and its use of editing and Reznor's score greatly enhance that atmosphere.

Both Faist and O'Connor are great as the two men competing for Tashi's attentions - while also, perhaps, harboring something for each other - but it's Zendaya who drives the picture. I'm not sure that someone as famous as the actress could have what might be called a breakout performance, but her work here is certainly the best showcase of her talents to date. While she was good enough in the "Dune" and "Spider-man" movies, her portrayal of Tashi is on a whole other level.

The final tennis match is as intense as something one might expect to see at the end of a big budget action movie, but the outcome of the match isn't exactly clear. But here's something to ponder: Which of the three characters do you believe win at the end of the film? This is a movie about competitive people, and typically in competition there's only room for one winner - which is what makes the delirious finale of this film so interesting. "Challengers" is very well made and a lot of fun.

Review: The Beast

Image courtesy of Janus Films.

Henry James' 1903 short story "The Beast in the Jungle" features a character who tells a friend that he lives in constant fear of an unknown catastrophe that he believes will upend his life. It is not the beast that paralyzes him, but rather his fear of it. Fear itself may not be the only thing that the characters in director Bertrand Bonello's mesmerizing new film, "The Beast," may have to fear, as plenty of catastrophes befall the two lead characters during three different time periods. But fear has undoubtedly immobilized them.

Using James' concept - but certainly not the story itself - as a jumping-off point, Bonello's film is a surreal, unsettling, and visually and conceptually dazzling story about two people's inability to connect over a period of about 130 years. The two characters are played by Lea Seydoux and George MacKay, and the nature of their relationships in the various time periods vacillates greatly.

But first, the film opens on what appears to be Bonello himself directing Seydoux, possibly playing herself. She stands in front of a green screen and the director tells her to imagine something that has paralyzed her with fear. Seydoux lets out a bloodcurdling scream and she suddenly breaks up into thousands of pixels as we fade into the first of the three stories.

One story in particular - set in 2044 - acts as the framing device, in which we start and gradually come back to every once in a while. In that story, AI has seemingly taken over after humanity nearly destroyed itself with a catastrophic war. Seydoux's character in this story is in the middle of a process during which AI helps her undergo a "DNA purge," which removes negative memories of the past or even, in this case, past lives. Hence, the two different time periods of previous lives in which Seydoux's character seemingly existed as different people.

The first time period is 1910 during the Paris floods. Seydoux plays the unhappy wife of a doll manufacturer - once again giving Bonello the ability to play around with one of his favorite visual motifs: dolls and mannequins - who gets involved in what is at least an emotional affair - if not more - with an Englishman (MacKay). The film's first hour operates at a measured pace as these two begin to see more of each other. The story culminates in a tragedy during a fire at the doll factory during which the pair must flee by swimming through a flooded basement, a visually stunning sequence that features dolls floating by as the pair try to find an escape route.

A creepy talking doll pops up in the second story, which is set in Los Angeles in 2014, where Seydoux is an aspiring actress/model who is house sitting for a rich person in the Hollywood hills. At night, she goes out alone to nightclubs, which are the most eerily shot sequences at such places in recent memory. There's some beautiful nighttime photography in this sequence as Gabrielle (Seydoux) drives alone down the Sunset Strip and haunting overhead shots of the city go a long way in creating atmosphere.

In the first story, Seydoux went to see a medium to talk about her paralyzing fear, and was told that a pigeon entering her home could be seen as a bad omen. Sure enough, not only does one enter her home in 1910, but it also attacks her. In 2014, the bird makes an appearance and its brutalized carcass is later found in the driveway. 

In the 2014 story, Gabrielle enlists the help of an online psychic, an unsettling woman who appears to think something bad is heading Gabrielle's way. Sure enough, that bad thing is MacKay's Louis Lewansky, a 30-year-old incel who hates women because of his belief that they never give him a chance. He has taken to stalking Gabrielle throughout L.A., often parking his car and sitting on the lawn outside her home.

If the film's first hour is intentionally languid, its second is unbearably intense. Bonello makes great use of Los Angeles as a noir epicenter. The neon-tinted nighttime scenes are frighteningly dreamy and there's a long sequence toward this story's end in which Gabrielle believes an intruder is in the house that is among the scariest scenes I've seen in some time.

Bonello has long been a director of surreal arthouse thrillers such as "Zombi Child" and "Nocturama," and he doesn't attempt to hide his influences in "The Beast." These include everything from giallos and "Titanic" to, naturally, David Lynch. The 2014 story draws some obvious inspiration from Lynch's masterpiece "Mulholland Drive," from its portrayal of Los Angeles as a terrifying dreamscape to a scene in which Gabrielle obsessively watches a TV karaoke show in which someone lip syncs to Roy Orbison's "Evergreen."

Beyond that, "The Beast" is Lynchian in that rather concerning itself too much with the details of plot, it often feels as if it's following dream logic, and there's a free-floating atmosphere of doom throughout the film that reminded me of other L.A.-set Lynch films, namely "Lost Highway" and "Inland Empire." A scene toward the end is set at a bar that gave off "Twin Peaks" vibes and the film's culmination might have been inspired by that TV show's third season finale.

It's during the final sequence - in which we're back in 2044 - that Seydoux's character again speaks with the latest iteration of MacKay's character. He broaches the subject of their love - in the present as well as in past lives - and it results in Seydoux letting out a bloodcurdling scream similar to the one at the beginning in front of the green screen. Is it love itself that's the subject of her foreboding? Is the beast simply living in fear of truly connecting with someone else - or rather, being unable to connect?

"There must be beautiful things in this chaos," says Gabrielle to her stalker. But can we recognize these beautiful things if we live paralyzed by fear, something that seems all too real in 2024 and beyond as we possibly face a future similar to that depicted in the film's 2044 section, where AI requires that mankind blot out all that is human? I'm not sure "The Beast" is a film that can be - or is even meant to be - truly comprehended. Regardless, it's the first great movie of the year.

Review: Civil War

Image courtesy of 

Alex Garland's brutal and intense "Civil War" is a film that deserves praise for its accomplished filmmaking techniques, but left me a bit perplexed due to its lack of context or perspective. It's a well-made movie that wants to have it both ways by stoking the fire but hoping that the flames don't get out of control. 

The film is filled with footage of bloody carnage depicting Americans carrying out violent acts against one another over politics, but it doesn't explain how the fictional version of the nation got to this point and it provides little way in the way of commentary, which in our current moment feels like a missed opportunity.

That being said, there's still a fair amount to praise. It's well shot and the cast - which includes Kirsten Dunst as a seasoned photographer, Stephen McKinley Henderson as her mentor, Cailee Spaeny as a novice photographer, Wagner Moura as a thrill-seeking reporter, Jesse Plemons in a chilling turn as a murderous member of one side of the conflict, and Nick Offerman as an imperial president - is uniformly solid.

The film opens with a riot that turns deadly in New York City, where Dunst's Lee and Moura's Joel are planning a road trip to Washington D.C., where they hope to get an interview with Offerman's president before he's assassinated by an insurrectionist group comprised of the states of California and Texas - a plot element that could only exist in a movie and, in this case, one made by an Englishman - that is moving in on the capitol. Henderson's Sammy is a veteran New York Times reporter who tags along for the ride, while Spaeny's wide-eyed and occasionally callous aspiring photographer Jessie begs for Lee, one of her heroes, to let her come along as well.

It's honorable that the film wants to pay homage to journalists - and their adventures reminded me of old-school journalism thrillers set in war zones, such as "The Year of Living Dangerously" or "Salvador" - but it also ironically makes the mistake that so many print and broadcast journalism outlets have made in recent years: engaging in both sides-ism under the guise of being fair and balanced. 

The film does this by having no mentions of politics or religion - which I found to be an odd choice - but also giving each side traits that could be found in our modern political landscape. Offerman's president is Trumpian in that he has refused to leave office after his second term, while the insurrection looking to oust him is, well, you know. There's no mention of how the country got to this point.

So, while I was impressed by the film's technical feats - the sequence with Plemons' fascistic soldier is the film's most frightening, while the final raid on the White House is handled expertly - the film wants to have it both ways, most likely to sell the most tickets. 

It's an odd conundrum: On the one hand, while I can recommend the picture as a skillfully made dystopian thriller, I also found it odd that a film on this subject in the year 2024 would have no political opinion on the matter. And the few tidbits that are included - video footage from far-right influencer Andy Ngo and a reference to the "Antifa Massacre," which felt like a loaded expression - only further muddy the waters.

Garland previously wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," another fraught film about societal collapse that is among my favorite horror movies of the 21st century. That film left nothing wanting, whereas "Civil War," while effective as a genre film, feels incomplete. It's worth seeing, but all of the technical prowess on display felt a little like empty calories.

Review: The First Omen

Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

"The First Omen" is a horror prequel that nobody probably thought they needed, but it's a surprisingly gripping - especially considering that we know how it turns out - and often frightening (and occasionally disreputable, which in this case isn't a critique) prelude to Richard Donner's 1976 horror classic. It has breathed new life into a horror series that hasn't had an outright good entry since the original.

The film is set in 1971 Rome, and director Arkasha Stevenson from the start creates a creepy vibe, from a sweaty discotheque where two soon-to-be nuns go out for a night on the town to overhead shots of the city that fill the viewer with dread every time they appear.

As the film opens, Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) has just arrived in Rome, where she is to work at an orphanage prior to taking her vows. She has been brought there by a Catholic bishop with some power (Bill Nighy), and it's clear from the start that Margaret has a checkered history. Growing up an orphan, she bounced from place to place and was somewhat, we learn, of a problem child. The visions that plagued her in childhood occasionally pop up to provide a jump scare or two.

A roommate, Luz (Maria Caballero), takes her out to the aforementioned nightclub, where the two women meet some men and have a few drinks. The next day, Margaret can't remember what happened the night before and as she awakens a small spider seems to crawl out of her eye. Ick!

Things at the orphanage seem odd, to say the least, especially the treatment of a problem child named Carlita (Nicole Sorace). The nuns at the orphanage tell Margaret to stay away from Carlita and even lock her up on occasion in a place known as the bad room.

Margaret meets an excommunicated priest (Ralph Ineson) who tells her of a nefarious plan involving a group of powerful church officials. With belief in God on the decline - and, therefore, power in the church's hands dwindling - this group has concocted a scheme to help birth the antichrist with the intention of controlling him, which they believe will draw believers back to the church out of fear.

A plot twist occurs late in the film regarding who the birth mother of the antichrist will be, although it's pretty easy to see coming. Not so easy to predict is the gruesome birth ceremony involving a Caesarean section operation late in the film, which follows a series of gruesome deaths throughout the picture - the effect of a piece of glass on a head, an act of self-immolation, and a traffic accident that is particularly grotesque.

"The First Omen" is what one might call a blasphemous good time. The picture is occasionally outrageous, pretty spooky, and atmospheric - naturally, its Italian setting is utilized for giallo-esque touches (the nightclub especially). I may not have thought another "Omen" film - prequel or otherwise - was necessary at this point, but "The First Omen" is a surprisingly effective one.

Review: Monkey Man

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Dev Patel's ultra-violent and semi-mystical "Monkey Man" is a "John Wick" type of action film set in modern day India to the extent that when the lead character, played by Patel, finds a dog to feed in an alley, I briefly wondered if the pup would be killed, thereby sending Patel's unnamed fighter on a killing rampage.

The dog goes unscathed, which is more than can be said for virtually everyone else in the picture. The film is inspired by the legend of Hanuman, which I won't recap here, but suffice it to say that Patel's character bears some similarity to that legend in that he's a kid from the slums who rises up to challenge the elites.

As the film opens, he is getting paid to lose fights in boxing matches at the behest of a sleazy promoter played by Sharlto Copley, who gets so into his role that saliva often flies from his mouth whilst speaking. In the ring, Patel's "Kid" - as he's known in the credits - wears a monkey mask and is good at taking a punch and a fall. As it turns out, he actually can fight.

Some years before, the Kid watched his mother get murdered by a corrupt police chief (Sikandar Kher) and intends to exact revenge on him as well as the sinister guru (Makarand Deshpande) who is to blame for the death as he was ordering the city's poor to be ordered off their land to make way for a factory. A question that occurred to me while watching the film: Is it typical for a yoga-practicing spiritual guru to be running a factory? 

Regardless, the Kid puts himself in proximity of these corrupt figures by working at a restaurant run by the foul-mouthed and mean spirited Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar) where the baddies tend to flock. The film's final prolonged fight sequence - which utilizes all manner of kitchen utensils and pots and pans - is set in this restaurant, where the leaders of the Sovereign Party - a MAGA-type group that oppresses the city's trans inhabitants, Muslims, and the poor - are holding a pre-election banquet.

For a first time director, Patel does a decent job at crafting a tense and kinetic action picture. That being said, it's not without its flaws. The fight scenes have a near-frantic nature and there are multiple scenes in which the Kid is fleeing from crowds of villains. The camera work is herky jerky almost to the point where it's difficult to see who's doing what. Also, while the film has a mythologizing element, from its use of the Hanuman legend to the mysteries surrounding the Kid's personality and background, we learn little other than that his mother was wronged and that he's pretty pissed off.

As a result, "Monkey Man" isn't quite on the level of some of the films it's mimicking - namely, the "John Wick" movies - but it's better than some other obvious influences (the overrated "The Raid" pictures). Patel is a fine actor and has talent behind the camera, but I'm hoping next time he tackles something that feels a little less like a mishmash of influences from other genre movies.