Challengers (2024)

You’ve never seen her, man. She’s in another league. 2019: married tennis power couple former player Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and currently injured star Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) have a young daughter Lily (AJ Lister) who likes to stay in hotels. Under Tashi’s coaching, Art has become a top pro. He is one US Open title away from a Career Grand Slam but he is struggling to regain his form after an injury. Hoping to return him to form, Tashi enters Art as a wild card in a Challenger event in New Rochelle, New York to boost his confidence by beating lower-level opponents. His former best friend Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor) and Tashi’s ex-boyfriend is now an unknown player living out of his car, scraping by on the winnings from the lower circuit and also enters the New Rochelle event. 2006: high schoolers and childhood best friends Patrick and Art win the junior doubles title at the US Open. Afterwards, they watch Tashi a highly lauded young tennis prospect make mince meat of the opposition on court. Then they meet her at a party later that night. Usually their attractions are separate but Tashi is the first person to whom Patrick and Art are both attracted. The three make out in a motel room but stop short of having sex. With the two boys playing each other the next day, Tashi says she will give her phone number to whichever of them wins. Patrick wins the match and later signals to Art that he had sex with Tashi by placing the ball in the neck of the racket prior to serving – a tic of Art’s. Tashi and Art go on to play college tennis at Stanford University, while Patrick turns professional and begins a long distance relationship with Tashi. A jealous Art questions Tashi about whether Patrick loves her, and Patrick, recognising Art’s jealously, playfully reassures him of his and Tashi’s connection. Patrick and Tashi fight when she gives him unsolicited tennis advice and he says he views her as a peer, not his coach. In the next match which Art watches without Patrick, Tashi suffers a severe knee injury. Patrick returns to comfort Tashi but she demands he leave, with Art taking her side. Art aids Tashi in her recovery but she is unsuccessful in resuming her tennis career. I want you to join my team because I want to win. A few years later Tashi reconnects with Art and becomes his coach and the two begin a romantic relationship. He reveals that he and Patrick have not talked since Tashi’s injury. In 2011, Tashi and Art are now engaged and Art’s career is on the up. Tashi and Patrick run into each other at the Atlanta Open and have a one night stand, which Art secretly notices. 2019: Starting at opposite ends of the seeding, Art and Patrick advance through the brackets at New Rochelle until they find themselves facing each other in the tournament’s final match. In a sauna the day before the match, Patrick attempts to reconnect with Art but Art rejects Patrick by saying his career is over and he, Art, will be remembered. Patrick secretly asks Tashi to be his coach and lead him to one last winning season, sensing she is unhappy with Art and that Art is tired of playing but she rejects him … Which one is which? Take three highly charismatic young actors, place them in competition with each other sexually and professionally, complicate things with a love triangle and the monotony and sacrifice of life as sportsmen and women and you have the ingredients for a cracking drama. Director Luca Guadagnino returns with a tennis story – a surprising fact particularly given that there haven’t been any good ones but the screenplay from Justin Kuritzkes is multi-faceted. Not just a sports film but a romance, a thriller and a portrait of generalised anxiety erupting from having to sustain a career, creating monetising opportunities from every win, enduring pain, dealing with catastrophic injury, burnout, a friendship contained within the rise and fall narrative that all sportspeople experience over time and driven characters playing at marriage. Using the New Rochelle Challenger event as a framing device intensifies the pressures of the relationship past and present – we see where they are now and how they got there with the catalysing event an almost-threesome that prefigures everything else in their destiny. And as Tashi explains, Tennis is a relationship. What an impressive cast. Faist is the dazzling actor who was by far the best thing about Spielberg’s West Side Story remake – awards should have come his way but the film fell foul of COVID lockdown release schedules just as this one was delayed from Fall 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Here he’s the walking wounded and he plays tender and vulnerable so well. O’Connor is the talented Brit who has created so many great performances and powers his way through this with a life in freefall and a smirking swagger, never fully out of love with Tashi. Zendaya is finally being allowed to act nearer her age (27 at time of release) and is so famous she’s currently on the covers of both UK and US Vogue, such is her pull for advertisers and the youth audience, a combination of Euphoria and Spider-Man fans with a monster sci-fi epic under her belt following Dune 2. Watching the guys watch her on court at the 2006 US Open and later at a party, open-mouthed and lustful like heat-seeking missiles, is highly amusing and sets up the relationship’s eventual complexities with her at the fulcrum, literally calling the shots. Aren’t you everybody’s type? It also sets in motion the director’s familiar focus – young people and their romantic travails – although we know the starting point is the end point, or thereabouts, which is a little like watching Titanic and knowing the outcome but now we get to invest in the characters as they encounter each other 13 years later with everything that has gone on since that first fateful encounter. You typically fall apart in the second round. As the guys get reacquainted with their game and Tashi is turned off Art because his game is off and she lives through him, Patrick sees his chance to upset the applecart, pointing up the performative aspect of all their public lives. Thus the scene is set for Round Two in their lives, rivalries intact. It’s about winning. And I do. A lot. For a sports movie love triangle this fun and sexy we have to go back in time to 1977 and Semi-Tough with Burt and Kris and Jill. That was smart and screwball-y too but set in the world of football. How are you going to look at me if I still can’t beat Patrick Zweig? This is tense and exhilarating and wonderfully played by a cast that is exceptionally well matched and hot for each other. Love all? Not quite. But this is a smash, with a zippy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Who wouldn’t love you? MM#4545

Inbetween Girl (2021)

That’s where we’re at, Future Angie! After her parents, Chinese father Fai (KaiChow Lau) and American mother Veronica (Liz Waters), suddenly get divorced, high school student and teen artist Angie Chen (Emma Galbraith) records her thoughts for a video diary and turns to secret hookups with her private school’s most popular jock Liam (William Magnuson). They keep the relationship secret from their friends and Liam is already dating the whitest person Angie could ever imagine, popular blonde influencer Sheryl White (Emily Garrett). Angie and Liam hook up after school in her bedroom and Angie thinks he feels about her how she does about him but at the same time gains empowerment from a gradual mastery of sex, which briefly engenders fantasies about other boys in school. Then she discovers her father has moved on from his family with a new woman in his life, another Chinese, Min (ShanShan Jin) whose daughter Fang (Thanh Phuong Bui) is Angie’s age. When Angie has to contend with being paired in class with Sheryl for a literature project she discovers appearances can be deceptive because Sheryl’s life is far from perfect. The girls have a lot in common. Angie realises that Liam is playing them both when he refuses to split with Sheryl and Angie confesses to Sheryl about their relationship. Then Min teases Angie about her inability to speak Mandarin and Angie causes a quarrel at her father’s house. Her life seems to be falling apart then her mother realises Angie has been having sex … I really like driving you home and sometimes it’s the best part of my day. A portrait of the artist as a girl, Mei Makino’s funny and affecting debut feature as writer and director debut is complex, smart and true. It’s like real life but you get to control everything. That’s what Angie tells Liam about playing Sims but it’s how she’d like her home existence after her father leaves and her hard-working lawyer mom leaves bagel bites for dinner. I know Liam is sort of an asshole but he’s MY asshole. The best looking guy in the school also appears to have it all but when he and Angie get together he tells her things she thinks are real revelations. When he’s with me in my room he’s not just the hot guy at school. When he seems to regret telling her about his life and bolts early one morning, she figures it’s just reluctance to be open but he still has Sheryl and keeps Angie his secret. But she too is complicit in this hidden relationship. Can we just have a Coke and a smile? he pleads when Angie wants to learn more about him. They are vulnerable to each other but it remains within the four walls of her bedroom. Is that love? Angie ponders. Don’t you want to soak up all life has to offer? he asks, offering her a spliff. This is a hedonist in the making. Maybe Min and Fong give him something that Mom and I never could. The issue of Angie’s biracial identity is horrifically exposed when Sheryl’s mom (Jane Schwartz) compliments her on her Asian-ness – Sheryl’s humiliation is beautifully expressed. The hit is twofold when Min shames Angie over her inability to speak her father’s language. The cultural gap is now a gaping chasm. The maturity that Angie experiences is achieved through empathy – with Sheryl and with her father. She recognises that other people have different outlooks and lives. Of Liam she concludes, It’s funny how he was this mythical presence in my life. When I look at him now he’s just a boy. That’s quite the take home lesson from teenage love: guys will be guys, no matter how they’re dressed up. Wonderfully performed, this is simultaneously obvious and subtle, just like teen life. Angie’s artwork is by Texan illustrator Larissa Akhmetova, as playful and delightful as the film’s protagonist. Okay Future Angie, I can feel your judgment!

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

There is no whole thing. You have to make it work. Divorced thirtysomething recruitment agent Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson) begins a romantic relationship with glamorous sculptor Bob Elkin (Murray Head), aware that he’s also intimately involved with lonely middle-aged Jewish doctor Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch).  Bob takes off from the weekend babysitting for Alex’s friends the Hodsons (Vivian Pickles and Frank Windsor) in order to spend time with Daniel. The younger man represents a break with the pasts of both Bob’s older lovers, and neither is willing to let go of the love and vitality he brings to their mundane lives although he’s planning to leave for New York … I know you’re not getting enough of me but you’re getting all there is. Film critic Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay, suggested by material she plumbed in her novel One by One, is a deep delve into the compromises and deceptions people make in order to have a little happiness. The North London setting with its population of slightly boho middle class types conceals the fact that the story is told rather cleverly, through the shared answering service, tales that Daniel is told by his patients, the insights of the precocious children Alex is minding and her mother’s truisms about marriage. The autumnal scenes carving out a season of political unrest hint at the melancholy truth that these are people who live in fear of rejection, hesitant about commitment, afraid to make a permanent display of emotion in a film which wears its protagonists’ pathology on its shirt sleeve, a patina of loss.  It’s amusing to see both Alex and Daniel cruise past Bob’s flat late at night, fearful there might be yet another person claiming his affection. Alongside the brilliant performances of the leads, with Finch a standout, there’s legendary silent actress Bessie Love as an answering service operator; Tony Britton in search of a job and winding up with a one night stand; and a very young Daniel Day-Lewis as a car vandal. How apposite for Jon Finch to be hustling his namesake, narrowly avoiding a late night arrest in Piccadilly Circus. Directed by John Schlesinger, whose best film this is, about a world he fully inhabits. He also contributed to the screenplay for this landmark in gay representation, along with David Sherwin and Ken Levison, who are thanked for their assistance in the credits. Some people believe something is better than nothing, but I’m beginning to believe that nothing can be better than something

Zee and Co. (1972)

Aka X, Y and Zee. Quite frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a shit! Middle-aged London architect Robert Blakeley’s (Michael Caine) angry wife Zee (Elizabeth Taylor) finally gets even with him for his affair with young widowed boutique owner Stella (Susannah York) by first attempting suicide and then having a go at seducing the woman herself. And Stella’s past threatens to engulf them all … Come back here, you! I haven’t dismissed you yet! This is Irish novelist Edna O’Brien’s first original screenplay and it was published in advance of the film’s release, with some evident alterations to the source material. Worth watching as an incredible time capsule of the ageing Swinging London set hiccoughing their way into the new decade and with gems of performances from the cast.  Taylor’s flamboyant bisexual complete with Cleopatra makeup flames into violence when provoked by her sly puss of a husband, recalling the best moments of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in this raunchy iteration of the woman scorned. She’s dressed horribly, matched only by fag hag Gladys (Margaret Leighton in an astonishing pink frightwig) who shows up in a gold see-through number. Caine excels as the man who finds himself cuckolded by his victim and goes off the rails pondering whether it’s possible men have nervous breakdowns, chastened by reminders of his wideboy background;  while York gets to have another tilt at the kind of  plaything part from The Killing of Sister George but with a taint of something else – as she says, I’m sick of serenity. It often tips into camp particularly in the with-it party scenes but there’s a truth about the relationships that shears through the trashy affect and all three rise to meet the perversity that haunts them. It’s nicely shot around London by Billy Williams and there’s a sharp score by Stanley Myers which acknowledges the slide back and forth from uxorious romance to self-parody. Look out for a young Michael Cashman as Gavin, York’s design assistant. Filled with sex and spite, this is highly entertaining. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, if you can believe it, in a total change of pace from Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes. But of course! I think I know what she is. She practically told me herself

Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)

I was going faster than I ever went in my whole life, then I fell off. Pro motorcycle racer Halsy Knox (Robert Redford) runs into amateur Little Fauss (Michael J. Pollard) after a race held near Phoenix, Arizona. They strike up a friendship as Fauss is attracted to Halsy’s carefree lifestyle. But Fauss’s father Seally (Noah Beery Jr.) regards Halsy as a bad influence and refuses to help Halsy when his truck breaks down. Halsy tricks the admiring Fauss into repairing his motorcycle for free at the shop where he works. When Fauss breaks his leg, Halsy, who has been barred from racing for drinking on the track, proposes that they form a partnership in which Halsy would race under Fauss’s name with Fauss serving as the mechanic. Fauss joins Halsy on the motorcycle racing circuit despite his parents’ disapproval. Fauss is constantly confronted with his inferiority to Halsy, both on and off the racetrack. Their partnership is finally broken when wealthy drop-out Rita Nebraska (Lauren Hutton) arrives at the racetrack and immediately attaches herself to Halsy, despite Fauss’ keen attention. Fauss returns home to find his  beloved father has died.  Halsy later visits him and attempts to ditch Rita, who is now heavily pregnant. Fauss refuses to let Halsy pawn her off on him and informs him that he plans to reenter the racing circuit. They race against each other at the Sears Point International Raceway. Halsy’s motorcycle breaks down. As he watches from the side of the track, he hears the announcement that Fauss has taken the lead… Well if that’s friendship, I’m aghast. Screenwriter Charles Eastman is now probably better known for his sister Carole aka Adrien (Five Easy Pieces) Joyce, than anything he himself wrote, including this, one of the more obsure biker flicks despite its big-name star. And yet Redford could say of it, That was the best screenplay of any film I’ve ever done, in my opinion. It was without a doubt the most interesting, the funniest, the saddest, the most real and original. He seems born to play the shirtless, feckless, ruthless handsome womaniser leaving a trail of destruction in his wake who only loses his shit-eating grin when things don’t go his way. I make it a rule to never make promises. Beery and Lucille Benson as Pollard’s parents are like a new generation’s Min and Bill. They’re so good they deserve a whole story of their own. Charles and Carole were Hollywood kids, if hardly upper echelon – their father worked as a grip at Warners while their mother was Bing Crosby’s secretary. Eastman was actually one of Hollywood’s most reliable script doctors through the Sixties, helping out on productions as diverse as Bunny Lake is Missing and The Planet of the Apes. He was something of an eccentric in that brotherhood of writers who wanted to be directors, inspiring people like Robert Towne with one of his unfilmed works which circulated in the Fifties, Honeybear, I Think I Love You. Towne remarked, For me, it was quite a revelation because it was the first contemporary screenplay I had read that just opened up the possibilities of everything that you could put into a screenplay in terms of language and the observations of contemporary life. It was a stunning piece of work, and I think it influenced a lot of us, even though it wasn’t made. Everybody tried to get it made, but Charlie was very particular about how it was going to be made, and in some ways I think he kept it from being made. Charlie was an original, that’s all. He used language in a way that I hadn’t seen used before. Towne speculated that his sister’s acclaimed screenplay for Five Easy Pieces was actually about Charles. Charlie was just one of those shadowy figures that I think cast a longer shadow over most of us than was generally recognised. Eastman would finally make his one and only foray into directing three years after this production with The All-American Boy, a boxing film starring Jon Voight. This is distinguished not just by the performances of opposites (a sexy opportunistic louse taking advantage of an ordinary decent rube) but by the evocative feelings it inspires – you get a real sense of character, predicament and place, indicating what Towne might have seen in Eastman’s writing – a kind of poetry, perhaps. That’s great screenwriting. It ain’t how you do, it’s where you’ve been. It feels as though it’s minting new archetypes it’s so fresh, vivid and affecting. It hits home even further in the special soundtrack of songs performed by Johnny Cash and written by him, Carl Perkins and Bob Dylan – arguably their on-the-nose content is the only thing that dates this, if at all. An unsung Seventies film and Pollard is just fabulous as Little. Sumptuously shot in Panavision by Ralph Woolsey on location in Antelope Valley, Sonoma County and Sears Point Raceway in San Francisco. Produced by Al Ruddy, Gray Frederickson (they would make The Godfather in a couple of years) and actor Brad Dexter – it was one of four films he produced. Wonderfully directed by Sidney J. Furie. What else is there to do?

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

Under the big top only two days count – today and tomorrow. Brad Braden (Charlton Heston) is trying to keep the world’s biggest railroad circus on the road but the backers want to curtail the current run to ten weeks. He has to demote his girlfriend trapeze artiste Holly (Betty Hutton) from the centre ring to make way for returning high flyer The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) who immediately sets out to seduce her, ignoring former lovers Angel (Gloria Grahame) from the elephant act and Phyllis (Dorothy Lamour) who’s in a South Seas performance. Concessionaire Harry (John Kellogg) is duping the customers while Buttons the Clown (James Stewart) hides behind his cosmetics but a visit from his mother in the crowd suggests he is a former doctor who mercy killed his young wife ten years earlier even if he explains away his first aid skills as wartime experience. Elephant trainer Klaus (Lyle Bettger) is fired when jealousy gets the better of him and he nearly kills Angel during his act. He decides to take revenge when the circus is travelling again … I send her for a doctor and she comes back with an elephant. Sly banter, fantastic characterisation and plain old-fashioned good against bad make this splashy Cecil B. DeMille spectacular an evergreen entertainment that mixes romance, action, crime and disaster storylines with panache. Extraneous attractions to the main narrative are real-life performers from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus’ 1951 troupe, obstinately glum children in the audience and the tent being raised, a high-wire act in itself. There’s Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in one shot, presumably to ogle Lamour; while Hutton gets to belt out some lively numbers amid a rousing score by Victor Young. The shifting love triangles between Heston, Hutton, Wilde and Grahame are smartly managed with nifty dialogue. Walk me off – do not rob me of my exit. The train wreck is justly famous even if it looks a bit Dinky Cars these days. They’ll never find me behind this nose. The mystery with Buttons is nicely sustained with a terrifically ironic payoff and Heston gets to go on with the show. Lawrence Tierney has a nice supporting role and there’s a satifsying reveal at the end, showing us exactly who’s been narrating this tall tale. Expertly written by Frederic M. Frank, Theodore St. John, Frank Cavett and Barré Lyndon aka Alfred Edgar with uncredited additions by Jack Gariss. You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll hurl! Classic. The only net I use is in my hair

Threesome (1994)

No matter what happens somebody’s gonna get screwed. Shy Eddy (Josh Charles) finds he’s rooming with brash Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) when he arrives on a new campus. They learn to tolerate and even like each other despite being diametric opposites. When Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) is accidentally billeted to the single room in their dorm suite she has to stay put because she can’t prove she’s female. She wants to have sex with Eddy but he’s inexperienced, while Stuart comes on to her too strong. The guys gang up on her when she brings home another guy. Then Eddy confesses he’s not exactly heterosexual but has never slept with either a guy or a girl and things get complicated when he realises he likes Stuart. A car trip and a naked swim bring out feelings between the three that they finally act upon  … You were just about ready to tap into something savage and emotional and you ruined it by trying to be something you’re not. Filmmaker Andrew Fleming occupies a peculiar space in cinema – an auteur in mid-range movies, mostly writing sympathetically from the point of view of young people finding their way in the world. This 90s production has a personal dimension, as it’s apparently based partly on his own college experiences. It’s beautifully shot (by Alexander Gruszynski) and filled with contemporary songs that land thematically. Alex’s attempts to seduce Eddy are initially played for comedy, as are Stuart’s attempts to sleep with Alex. They then agree to disagree and form a mysterious triangle that elicits comment on campus including from the Lobby Lizards (Martha Gehman and Alexis Arquette) but are still trying to figure out how they can sustain a friendship while dealing with the lustful feelings they are failing to manage. I love Freud, unfashionable though he may be. It’s shrewd and funny, with some great character detail and never swerves the issues even if they’re delivered in comic bits rather than serious exchanges – they’re soulful and heartfelt. I understood the moral of the story. Two’s company. Three’s pathetic