“Challengers” is a bit of a tease. That’s what makes it fun.

There is plenty of skin, sweat, close-ups of muscly thighs and smoldering looks of lust and hate in this deliriously over-the-top psychodrama. But get that image of Josh O’Connor, Zendaya and Mike Faist sitting together on the bed out of your mind. Most of this action takes place on the tennis court.

It’s still a sexy tennis movie about friendship, love, competition and sport set to a synth-y score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — it just might not contain exactly what you think it does. But remember, Luca Guadagnino is the one who filmed Timothée Chalamet with that peach, perhaps more memorable than any actual sex scene from the past decade. Manage expectations, but also trust.

And like “Call Me By Your Name” did for Chalamet, “Challengers” is one of those rare original big-screen delights that firmly announces the arrival of a new generation of movie stars. Zendaya and Faist already had a bit of a leg up. She has played significant supporting roles in some of the biggest movies of the past few years, from “Spider-Man” to “Dune,” and he had had his big cinematic breakthrough as Riff in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story.” But it’s O’Connor who really comes out on top, effectively shedding any lingering image of him as a whiny, dweeby Prince Charles in seasons three and four of “The Crown.” In “Challengers,” his Patrick Zweig is the cocky, flirty, slightly mean, slightly dirty and slightly broken bad boyfriend of our fictional dreams.

Written by playwright Justin Kuritzkes (who is married to “Past Lives” filmmaker Celine Song) “Challengers” is a prickly treat, about fractured relationships, egos, infidelity and ambition. Set during a qualifying match at the New Rochelle Tennis Club, outside New York City, the intricately woven story reveals itself through flashbacks that build to a crescendo in the present-day match.

O’Connor’s Patrick and Faist’s Art are old boarding school roommates turned tennis teammates. It’s a relationship that’s at turns brotherly, erotic and competitive. Whatever it is, they are definitely too close and not remotely prepared for Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan to enter the mix.

Tashi, in high school, is well on her way to becoming the next big tennis superstar. Art and Patrick watch her play, mouths agape at her technical form and physical beauty. Later, they both ask for her number, leading to a revealing night in a grungy hotel room. She promises her number to the one who wins the singles match the next day. Tashi just wants to see some good tennis, she says, but she also knows how to motivate and manipulate.

Because of the fractured timeline, we know that Tashi in the present day does not play tennis anymore. She was injured at some point and never recovered, unlike her husband, Art, who is now one of the most famous players in the world. The two of them are wildly wealthy, living in a ritzy hotel and fronting Aston Martin ad campaigns. At night, Tashi uses Augustinus Bader cream to moisturize her legs. Guadagnino, who likes to wink at and luxuriate in wealth signifiers, enlisted JW Anderson designer Jonathan Anderson to do the costumes, which will surely populate summer style inspiration boards the way his “A Bigger Splash” and “Call Me By Your Name” have in the past.

But while they are technically at the top, Art is also on a losing streak, so Tashi sends him to a low-stakes tournament where he can get his confidence back. That’s where they encounter Patrick, who has not been so fortunate over the years and who has fallen out with his old friends. Of course, it’s all building to Patrick and Art playing one another in the final match, a part of which is so wildly and comically drawn out that you can almost envision the “Saturday Night Live” spoof.

“Challengers” is a drama, but a funny and self-aware one. It doesn’t take itself very seriously and has a lot of fun with its characters, all three of which are anti-heroes in a way. You might have a favorite, but you’re probably not rooting for anyone exactly — just glued to the screen to see how it all plays out on and off the court.

“Challengers,” an MGM release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity.” Running time: 131 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

Many anime films are adapted from manga and Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction is no exception. Usually, a film will cover a single arc of the greater plot—giving the story on screen a solid beginning, middle, and end. However, this is not the case with the first Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction film. Clocking in at 120 minutes, this film covers two arcs. And given that these arcs differ wildly in both tone and story, it feels like two, tangentially related one-hour movies rather than a single cohesive one. That said, both arcs in this movie are fantastic in their own rights.

The first half of the film is basically District 9 meets O Maidens in Your Savage Season. There is a UFO in the sky, and things are happening in the background as the military ups its aggressiveness toward the unseen aliens but this is of no real concern to Kadode and Ouran—a pair of high school seniors getting ready to graduate.

This is a story about a group of teenage girls entering the world of adulthood. The life they’ve known is about to change. In a few months, they’ll either be in college or working—their normal school life will be over and they won’t see each other every day. On the one hand, this makes them worried for the future. On the other, it makes them want to stop coasting through their senior year and make every moment count.

But as much as this is a coming-of-age story, it’s also a thesis on how people can get used to anything—how our myopic problems still fill our worldview. Kadode has lost her father and the military attacks against the aliens keep causing collateral damage—regularly killing an innocent civilian or two. Even when her mother decides to move out of Tokyo with a new man to escape this life, Kadode doesn’t seem to see the bigger picture. It’s all just “normal” to her and she has no want or need to change things beyond the changes she is already being forced to make simply by growing up.

The second half of the film, couldn’t be more different. Rather than focusing on high-school Kadode and Ouran, we get a flashback to them in elementary school. The pair of unlikely friends, the bullied-yet-stubborn Kadode and shy-yet-somewhat-popular Ouran find and befriend an alien—years before the arrival of the UFO.

This becomes a dark deconstruction of Doraemon as the alien gives the two girls one gadget after another—ranging from an invisibility cloak to a sonic screwdriver. After all, what does a bullied girl with a strong sense of justice do when suddenly given superpowers—and with no adult oversight? It’s depressing, disturbing, and psychologically horrific—even more so in contrast to the much more lighthearted tone of the first arc—and it leaves you with a lasting impression for days following.

While both story arcs shown could easily be separate, unrelated films, there is a simple theme that ties the two together: humans are the true monsters. In both parts, we never see an alien harm a human. Rather, it is always the humans unilaterally attacking what they don’t understand—what they have no interest in understanding in the first place.

The military wants the nationalistic ego boost that comes from defeating the “invaders.” The scientists thinking up new weapons look forward to the fame and money they’ll soon receive. The people in the media and online keep drumming up fear—normalizing the idea that killing the aliens is the “right thing” to do—for their selfish reasons.

And this isn’t just directed towards aliens. Kadode in the flashback story has no problem attacking anyone and everyone she deems as “evil.” Everyone is the hero of their own story. In the absence of objective good or evil, even the most horrible actions imaginable can be rationalized away.

It’s a heartbreakingly pessimistic (though all-too-realistic) take on the nature of humanity. But in the face of it, we have the counter-example in Ouran. She’s not perfect nor is she some beacon of virtue. However, she does try to avoid directly harming anyone—even if she fails a bit at times. If the whole world were like Ouran, we’d still have our problems but we wouldn’t be dead set on genociding a race of aliens for no reason other than that they parked their ship in an inconvenient location.

On the visual side of things, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction doesn’t look like most anime—especially in the character designs. None of the main characters have the typical pretty anime face and hourglass figure. Some characters have buck teeth, others are permanently blushing, and still others have perpetually watery eyes. Yet, despite these exaggerated character designs more commonly seen in anime aimed at young children (or perhaps because of them), the whole story feels much more grounded. The fact that the backgrounds and sci-fi technology are highly detailed also contributes to this.

As for the music, the only thing that truly stands out is the ending theme song. It starts cute and generic but eventually devolves into something harsh and discordant—much like the film it’s attached to. It’s a spot-on choice.

All in all, this first Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction film is simply fantastic. While it doesn’t feel like a single movie due to its two separate, vastly different stories, the stories themselves are told beyond well. And lurking behind them is a constantly explored theme about the darker side of human nature and our obsession with the idea that, no matter what we do, we are the ones in the right. Honestly, I feel blessed that I only have to wait a month for the second film to come out.

We went and saw The Long Game today. It’s an adaptation of a true story about the golf team from San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas, set in the 1950s. I’ll keep spoilers out of it, but they’re a group of Mexican-American boys who all caddied at an upscale private country club in their community. They aspired to play golf themselves but weren’t allowed on the course except to caddie, so they built their own crude practice course in the middle of the South Texas desert. They’re brought together as a golf team under their coach (JB Peña), who has just taken a job as an Assistant Superintendent at the high school and is an avid golfer. He also aspires to membership at the (all-white) country club where the boys work, but is denied because of his ethnicity.

They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays “Pollo”, a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They’re also helped by Frank Mitchell (Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments.

It’s a great story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It’s a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy equally (my non-golfing wife was actually the one who found it and wanted to go see it, and she enjoyed it a lot). If you’re looking for a movie to go see, it’s worth your time.