“Challengers” is a sleek and sometimes sexy “Jules and Jim” menage a trois set in the world of professional tennis. The (digitally augmented) tennis is quite good, the romantic entanglements sophisticated and the story narrowly-focused on our three leads in this new film from the director of “Call Me By Your Name.” The picture’s backdrop is almost as richly-detailed as “King Richard,” depicting the grinding life sought by the (literally) privileged few as two “bunkmates since we were twelve” tennis academy alumni compete for the rising star who is the most beautiful woman either has ev ..read more

The chief appeal of a “Calendar Girls,” “Poms,” or “80 for Brady” movie is the chance to see venerable and venerated film stars taking themselves on a trip down memory lane, and us along with them. Such movies are an outreach to older audiences, who rightfully feel left out of the movie-going conversation as Hollywood has, at least recently, been all about the youth movie market with little time for anything else. If only “The Magic of Belle Isle” or “And So It Goes” or that Oscar winners chasing Tom Brady ego trip were any good, maybe that audience could be lured back, if only out of nos ..read more

Sterling Brown and Mark Strong are among the co-stars in this topical, FX-laden but possibly empty-headed actioner slated for release on Netflix May 24. It looks slick and really dumb ..read more

“Boy Kills World” is a gonzo, video-game-violent/splatter-film-bloody “Hunger Games” for fanboys. It is “Oldboy” meets “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” pandering and slaughtering in equal measure, a movie with jaunty, genre-spoofing possibilities that descend into into lethargy and wind-up in stomach-turning savagery before all is said and done. And star Bill Skarsgård’s character and leading man turn is just similar enough to brother Alexander Skarsgård’s work in Netflix’s “Mute” to be worth mentioning. Skarsgård (“It”) plays the titular Boy, raised since childhood by a martial arts s ..read more

Looks cute. Ish. Neon has this one, which means it opens May 31, closes June 1. Or maybe June 2 ..read more

“We Grown Now,” the third feature of writer-director Minhal Baig, is a sentimental coming-of-age tale, a period piece nostalgic for Chicago’s stigmatized and long-gone Cabrini Green high-rise housing project. That’s just the first way this lovely and intimate film upends expectations and challenges the viewer to see the world differently. The two tweens who grow up in “the projects” — Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) — are not overtly victims of their circumstances. Each lives in a single-parent household, but Malik’s mom (a radiant Jurnee Smollett) and gran ..read more

South African writer-director Brad Katzen puts extra effort into trying to make his stoner comedy “Soweto Blaze” look and sound new and “fresh.” The setting is a post-Apartheid Soweto, more affluent and generally unrest-free, with nicer homes and just a scattering of ruins. The dialogue is mostly the local patois, some blend of Zulu and Sotho, some of it given the International Accent of Cannabis — “Rastafarian.” Katzen uses split screens, simulated phone screens and jump cuts so often that when the film stops cold — freezes up — you wonder if that’s a stylistic choice, or a technical g ..read more

Josh Hartnett, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills and some relative of M. Night’s star in this Aug. 9 release. A big pop concert is used to capture a notorious serial killer, who apparently is a fan of the “Gaga-esque” singer, played by Saleka Shyamalan, oldest daughter of M. Night ..read more

“The Roaring Twenties” is a summation of the classic “gangster movie” era, all rolled up into one swift, sprawling narrative. Produced by THE gangster movie studio, Warner Brothers, released in that pinnacle cinematic year of 1939, we can look back at it now as heralding the end of one crime thriller era, with the more subtextual and highly-regarded film noir genre about to emerge. It’s the final teaming of two of the great screen gangsters of the age, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. It has themes and threads that run through the cinema of that age and ages to come — social circums ..read more

The two most beaten-to-death tropes in thrillers? “Serial Killers” and “Hit Men.” Here’s a Richard Linklater “true story” movie about a college prof (Powell of “Anyone But You,” “Top Gun: Maverick”) whom the police use as a play-acting fake “hit-man” for would-be criminals trying to hire somebody as their murderer-for-hire. This could be really clever, playing with the MOVIE stereotype of what a hit-man is like — urbane or Eastern European and soulless, world traveler or low-rent sociopath. The most “accurate” hit man movie is probably “The Iceman,” a true story that depicted a dull, cruel and ..read more