by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
Challengers | 2024
One need not be particularly interested in sports to find Luca Guadagnino's new tennis drama, Challengers, compelling. Guadagnino frames his tennis matches as either gladiatorial blood sports or sex, and sometimes both at the same time. Tennis is a relationship, Zendaya's Tashi Donaldson explains; and indeed, the tennis matches here are often thinly veiled stand-ins for dialogue the characters are either unwilling or unable to have.
I've seen a lot of bad movies. Call it an occupational hazard, but I couldn't even guess how much bloated, bland, pretentious, and downright incompetent slop I've seen on screen. Yet, I can't remember the last time I saw a film so soulless and dispiriting as The Electric State - the latest "this can't possibly be real" Netflix mockbuster from Joe and Anthony Russo (Avengers: Endgame).