Based on the marketing, you might think “Challengers” is at its core, a tennis movie and, well, it sort of is. The film is certainly set in the world of tennis, you can’t deny that, and at one point, Zendaya’s character Tashi Duncan remarks, “We’re always talking about tennis.” The sport is at the center of her life. But despite everyone involved’s best efforts, the serves and volleys in this movie are nowhere near as important as the decade-long love triangle between Tashi and one-time BFFs, Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson, played by Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, respectively ..read more

It’s just so sad. A somber tone hangs over Hulu’s very good “Under the Bridge” like a weighted blanket, dragging everyone down into the Canadian ground. It’s a show about characters who carry trauma and are forced into a situation in which they have to watch people work through their own life-changing situations, too. It’s about those rash decisions that young people sometimes make that they can never get back. There have been attempts at true crime stories about the systemic problems in youth culture that often discards children that society deems unwanted, and there have been dozens of stor ..read more

Coming on the heels of Baz Luhrman’s decision to re-edit “Australia” into a mini-series for Hulu, taking an already long film and stretching it well beyond its breaking point in “Faraway Downs,” Veena Sud has chosen to do the opposite for the streaming service. Taking her forgotten Quibi show “The Stranger” — a short-form web series about a rideshare driver (Maika Monroe) who picks up a deranged stalker (Dane DeHaan), leading to the worst night of life — and reformatting it as a lean 90-minute film, Sud recontextualizes Quibi’s ten-minute episodes into a highly episodic, and occasionally bump ..read more

How much would you pay for a chance to speak one more word to those you’ve lost? A cursory viewing of “Baghead,” another addition to the cinematic world of ghosts, might suggest such a premise to be the central focus of this unremarkable horror outing. Yes, that notion is undoubtedly part of the narrative, but just as much attention is placed on those who’ve been lost as those who are desperate to see those faces one more time. Either way, any focus the film places doesn’t go anywhere special ..read more

In Benjamin Brewer’s compelling solo directorial debut, “Arcadian,” humanity’s last remnants grapple with the harrowing aftermath of a mysterious apocalypse, where our species survival hangs by a thread amidst the looming threat of monstrous adversaries that come in the night. This atmospheric tale manages to blend family domesticity and raw emotion with gripping horror and excellent creature effects, weaving a fresh and engaging narrative. Despite this being a tale we’ve definitely seen before, the film should manage to make horror audiences clutch their pillows or popcorn with its shar ..read more

There is so much going on in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel “The Sympathizer” that it would take a team of true craftsmen even to attempt to unpack it in episodic form. HBO is lucky they hired one of the best in Park Chan-Wook, a supremely and undeniably talented director. The South Korean auteur filmmaker behind “Decision to Leave,” “Oldboy,” and many more brings his remarkable tonal confidence to the first three episodes of “The Sympathizer,” which almost plays like a three-hour new film by the award-winning director ..read more

Built on a wearying cheerful optimism/cruel fatalism dichotomy—contrasting chords that aren’t all that engaging or novel to begin with but repeated ad nauseum regardless—it’s astonishing just how quickly the post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, “Fallout,” wears out its welcome. Startlingly glib, one-note, and yet self-assured in its vacant design, the series reveals its shallow hand very early. “Fallout” endlessly reprises the wholesome quaintness vs. the grotesque or freakishly ruthlessness mode of apposition and fails to do anything remotely interesting with it, reinforcing what swiftly becomes ..read more

Two years ago, following a vast array of attempts at a hit small screen vehicle for uber-talented “SNL” veteran Maya Rudolph, Apple TV+’s “Loot” hit the sitcom world, entering on new divorcée Molly Wells (Rudolph) trying to navigate and decide what to do with an enormous $87 billion settlement. Eventually, she settles on re-engaging with her charitable foundation, reconnecting with the real world, and trying to find out who she is along the way ..read more

Any creature feature worth its salt will, predictably, generally follow a well-worn path and set of rules plucked from classics like “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park,” or any number of sequels to “Alien.” A similar structure exists within any memorable creature thriller and the challenge a filmmaker must face in trying to elevate what is essentially a well-known edifice into something more than ordinary. At a minimum, those same-ish results habitually wind up on the safe side of a fun, mindless viewing experience, with the unwritten rule that the slightest mark of an acceptable monster outing shouldn’t ..read more

In many ways, “Scoop” is not the movie you think it is. Sure, it’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the BBC television program, er, “programme” “Newsnight” landed a hotly sought-after interview with Prince Andrew in 2019. At the time, the Duke of York was embroiled in longstanding controversy over his past association with Jeffrey Epstein. A convicted sex offender who had just been arrested again on new charges by the FBI ..read more