It’s starting to feel downright normal to say it was a strange year at the movies. But 2024 was, from beginning to end, surreal and weird. Again. Thanks to the duo of Hollywood strikes — which seem like a lifetime ago, but just ended in late 2023 — productions and releases were canceled or delayed, … Read more
Good things come in threes — at least according to these naughty New Yorkers. Aroused by warmer weather and emboldened by the new ménage à trois movie “Challengers,” many Manhattanites are setting their sights on a threesome this summer. “I wonder if it’s drilling threesomes into our subconscious,” Upper East Side resident Ruby Archbold, 27, … Read more
The most Sisyphean thing about my life, on the other hand, is the awards season; this movie was originally slated to open the Venice Film Festival last fall, which probably means it would have been trapped in Oscar discourse pretty fast. Flung out into the spring movie calendar, the whole thing takes on a different … Read more
Josh O’Connor is best known to most audiences for his Emmy-winning performance as a young King Charles in seasons three and four of “The Crown.” But for his new film, “Challengers,” co-starring Zendaya and “West Side Story” star Mike Faist, he’s showing a whole new side of himself. O’Connor plays tennis pro Patrick, one-third of a … Read more
“Let’s not make a tennis film.” That was the director Luca Guadagnino’s unconventional approach to “Challengers,” the hit movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor as rival tennis aces, locked in a high-stakes love triangle. Guadagnino, the Italian director known for his deft eroticism (“Call Me By Your Name”), didn’t want it to look … Read more
The sexy tennis drama “ Challengers ” won the box office this weekend with $15 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. Zendaya and castmates Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor have been on a globetrotting press tour to get the word out about Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s original film, which opened in 3,477 locations in … Read more
This tennis romance scored big. “Challengers” won the box office game on its first night in theaters, earning over $6.2 million on Friday, according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo. The Post called the romantic sports drama starring Zendaya and Mike Faist, “artful, addictive and deceptive.” The flick, which centers around a tennis champion who stages a comeback with … Read more
In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Churros have never tasted more bitter than … Read more
Hello, I’m Luca Guadagnino, and I am the director and one of the producers of ‘Challengers.’ In this sequence, we see the two male characters of ‘Challengers’— Patrick Zweig, played by Josh O’Connor, and Art Donaldson, played by Mike Faist — when they are in their early 20s. And they are very good tennis players. … Read more
movie review CHALLENGERS Running time: 131 minutes. Rated R (language throughout, some sexual content and graphic nudity). In theaters. When the movie “Challengers” hits Prime Video after its theatrical run, I suspect the response will echo that of last year’s most controversial film, “Saltburn.” Like Emerald Fennell’s shapeshifting mystery, “Challengers” is, at once, artful, addictive … Read more
You can always feel the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino trying to turn you on — he’s a zealous seducer. His movies are sleek divertissements about ravishing people and their often sumptuously rarefied sensibilities and worlds. I tend to like his work, even if it can be overly art-directed and feel too (excuse the verb) curated to … Read more
GUADAGNINO And yet you have an incredible capacity of observational reality. You know reality in a beautiful way, and you use it a lot in the way you then portray it. ZENDAYA While that’s true, I think I overly do it. I’m overly conscious of everything else around me. GUADAGNINO Because Z is a director. … Read more