Film Reviews

Challengers
Director: Luca Guadagnino

Metro Goldwyn Mayer and Pascal Pictures
In Theaters: 04.26

I’m far from a sports person, though as a writer, I find them to be a useful source for metaphors, usually about life and overcoming struggles. Clearly, so does Luca Guadagnino, as we see with Challengers, which uses competitive tennis as a compelling, if at times heavy handed, metaphor for relationship dynamics, desire and sexual politics.

Tashi Duncan (Zendaya, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dune) is a retired tennis phenom who is now a determined coach known for her dominating presence both on and off the court. Tashi’s husband, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist, West Side Story), a championship player, seems to have lost both his edge and his love of the game. Tashi hopes to help Art get his groove back by having him compete. However, this plan takes an unexpected turn when Art must compete against his fallen-from-grace former best friend, Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor, God’s Own Country, The Crown) who also happens to be Tashi’s ex-boyfriend. The story of the complicated past between these three plays out in flashbacks as the tense tennis match progresses, as the alternately playful and fierce back and forth of the games of life, love and loyalty bring into into question what it really means to win.

Challengers is easily the most mainstream film that Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All) has made to date, and it showcases many of his greatest strengths and most glaring weaknesses as a filmmaker. It’s beautifully shot and brimming over with style, though sometimes the latter element is to the film’s detriment. While the tennis matches are skillfully and creatively staged with a lot of brilliantly innovative camera work, including a dazzling shot following the ball itself back and forth through the air, there’s a maddening over dependence on slow motion throughout the film, whether it’s an endless parade of lingering shots of beads of sweat dripping down off of the players or pointless sequences of characters simply walking from room to room. This tedious and rather pedestrian indulgence makes the movie run too long by a full 15 to 20 minutes, and I found myself checking my watch more times during than Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer and Dune combined. The thumping, abrasive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network, The Power of the Dog) is so self consciously cool that it becomes ridiculous , and it’s hard to be particularly excited by one overpowering techno theme played approximately 800 times with no discernible changes regardless of the situation. It’s not underscoring, it’s overscoring, and love it or hate it, you have to lay this choice firmly on Guadagnino. The character relationships at the heart of the film and are much more nuanced, and it’s most successful when focusing on that dynamic.  Art and Patrick both fall hard for Tashi, and she finds herself coming between them, describing herself as a “homewrecker.” Tashi professes to loathe the idea of causing friction between them, but finds herself not only drawn to both of them but intrigued and excited by the power that she has over them. The screenplay by playwright and novelist Justin Kuritzkes (The Sensuality Party) is sly, and full of pithy dialogue exchanges, though the tendency to clumsily telegraph big moments betrays his background in the often too literal and spoon-fed storytelling style of the stage.

Zendaya is obviously the big draw here, and she exudes intelligence, power and sexuality in the role of Tashi. Zendaya’s performance is quite strong, though I find her to be much more convincing in the flashback sequences as the college age version of the character. Tashi’s self absorption and obsession with winning could have made her far more off putting if played by a lesser actress, and Zendaya’s undeniable appeal is critical to making the film work. Faist is terrific as Art, by far the most likable and interesting of the three characters, and his sincerity and authenticity kept me engaged by making me care about Art, even when I found myself growing apathetic toward the overall story. O’Connor is quite impressive as Patrick, a charmingly roguish and almost unbearably arrogant man child who embodies the stereotypical strutting jock who draws people to him like a magnet despite few redeemable qualities. O’Connor gives him charisma, though it’s largely up to the other two actors make us care about him simply because they do. 

Challengers is smarter than average as a piece of fluff entertainment, though it’s almost insultingly predictable and not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, falling short when measured by  loftier artistic standards. It could have benefited greatly from judicious editing and a greater emphasis on subtlety. It scores enough points to be called a winner, and it’s got style to spare, but it lacks the heart of a true champion. –Patrick Gibbs

Read More Sporty Film Reviews:
Film Review: Uproar
Slamdance Film Review: Bike Vessel

Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise is down another star.

Crystal Kung Minkoff of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” revealed she is stepping away from the cameras and will not return for Season 14 of the series. Kung Minkoff announced her departure in a laid-back Instagram video shared Monday. “It’s very bittersweet,” she said.

“Never did I think I would’ve been asked to do this show in a million years, let alone film it for three seasons,” the entrepreneur, wearing a blush-colored hoodie, told fans. “Every single year I was asked back, it was a blessing. It was an honor.”

Kung Minkoff, the wife of filmmaker Rob Minkoff and mother of two, joined the hit Bravo series when Season 11 premiered in May 2021. She became the first Asian American housewife to take the “RHOBH” spotlight. Representing the Asian American community, the Real Coco coconut water boss, 41, said in her video, was “a lot of weight” on her shoulders, but she has come to understand “what that meant for people.”

In October 2021, Kung Minkoff told The Times that she didn’t seek out the “Real Housewives” opportunity but rather was approached “during the height” of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. The rise in crimes against Asians the next year was also an impetus for her to join the show.

“When I thought about it, I was like, you know, if I don’t do it, they’re gonna pick someone else, and they might not be Asian. And then that’s one less person in the AAPI community that won’t be on TV, right?,” she said in 2021. “So then it just was this constant, like, pressure of representation that I take very seriously.”

During her “Real Housewives” tenure, Kung Minkoff traded shade with multiple housewives (including Erika Jayne), shared her experience with an eating disorder and used her platform to spread awareness about her father’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

She continued her announcement by telling fans that she has more in store, but did not reveal what was on the horizon. She added that she hopes to stay connected with them, because “that has been my biggest gift filming this show.”

“I’m so grateful for everyone’s love and support. You guys are an incredible audience, with your own unique stories to tell,” she said. “I hope you guys all one day have your opportunity.”

In her Instagram caption, Kung Minkoff thanked NBCUniversal, Bravo, Andy Cohen and “Real Housewives” executive producer Alex Baskin for the opportunity. A representative for Bravo did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Tuesday.

Kung Minkoff is the second “Real Housewives” star to confirm their exit from the franchise this week. On Monday, Robyn Dixon confirmed that she is leaving “The Real Housewives of Potomac” behind. In Monday’s episode of her “Reasonably Shady” podcast, she said Bravo did not invite her back for another season.

“I was fired, for lack of better words,” Dixon alleged. “I will not sugarcoat the situation and say, ‘Oh, I am walking away and this is a break’ or anything like this. This is a network decision.”

The roots of Toshio Matsumoto’s cinema

As I mentioned before, the Kim Hiro incident and particularly the way it was covered by the media, inspired a number of filmmakers to explore new cinematic methods that would examine the concepts of timeliness and actuality in cinema and the connection between documentary and fiction. Toshio Matsumoto, in a precursor to his feature debut, “Funeral Parade of Roses” came up with a 15-minute short which was presented through three projectors running different images at different speeds simultaneously, in an effort to mimic the visual layout of the newspaper, in a frame split in two that features completely different images.

Among the many images presented in frantic speed here, we have various of Kim Hiro, as the one with his portrait on the left side and newspapers on the right, which is held by an individual taking part in a street performance. Continuing this segment of the film, in which passerby watch several men dressed in business attire being tied in columns, the second screen shows a rapid montage of television ads, photographs of the war in Vietnam, the riot police and the television footage of Kim’s hostage crisis, in an effort, as we mentioned in the prologue, to mimic the visual layout of a newspaper.

In an overall dizzying and delirious montage that permeates the whole film, along with noisy music and occasional voices heard throughout,
Matsumoto presents a number of images that seem to have little connection with each other. A number of those involve people dancing at dark clubs under the sounds of American music, as in the case of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”. Photos of nudity and undeskirt shots are juxtaposed with people reading newspapers on the street, close ups of women smoking, while the aforementioned performance takes a significant part of mostly the right part of the screen. The majority of images are in black and white, but occasionally splashes of color do appear, as do letters on screen that pass with thundering speed.

The sound in general seems to follow the same chaotic approach, very rarely having anything to do with what is showing on screen. At times there is also reporting in English, which, is though, juxtaposed with Japanese talking, making quite difficult to discern. Comic strips also appear throughout, mostly of erotic connotations. A woman getting dressed takes a large part of the movie (considering) and is frequently combined with footage of the riot police clashing with students. Repeated images of a malformed embryos also appear repeatedly, with the repetition of images actually being part of the narrative.

Through this rather experimental and unique for the era approach, Matsumoto tries to capture the sensation and actuality of the rather tumultuous 1968, through a mosaic that also resembles that TV format, in the way spectacle and news are combined through it. At the same time, the fact that there is no coherence or any concept of narrative, makes the movie quite difficult to watch. That the whole thing is directly connected with the then topicality of the country adds to this sense. However, the value of “For the Damaged Right Eye” lies in the presentation of the roots of where Matsumoto’s work in cinema begun and how a “trend” that also involved Nagisa Oshima among others started, as much as a style of experimental cinema that is actually prevalent even today, even if in ‘calmer’ approaches.