Zendaya

The Drama

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Zendaya posing with a rifle

Is it possible to reject the big idea but still like the movie? Exhibit A: The Drama, a producers’ wet dream of casting – Robert Pattinson and Zendaya – and a strange hybrid of the talky New York dramedy, of the sort Woody Allen made his own, and a horror film. Woody Allen done as horror, yes, that’s about it. They are uneasy companions, one all rational, the other fantastical, one a running commentary on a situation, the other a situation that needs no commentary. But even Woody Allen veers off piste occasionally – Midnight in Paris – to great effect. Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen, the guys behind Midsommar, are behind this, … Read more

Challengers

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Art and Patrick kissing Tashi

Structured like a game of tennis, pinging back and forth over a chronological net, Challengers tells the story of three people locked together in an unsavoury menage. A big, panting melodrama of the sort Douglas Sirk would recognise, it’s thrillingly conceived, ingeniously constructed and plays out impressively but overstays its welcome like a tie break that will not deliver a victor. And that’s your lot for tennis metaphors. It starts at the end, where once-friends and now-rivals Art Donaldson (the solid plugger) and Patrick Zweig (the naturally talented bad boy) are at a tournament playing the game of their lives, though how important that game is won’t become apparent until the film reaches … Read more

Dune: Part Two

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Close-up of Paul

Let’s get straight to the verdict. Dune: Part Two is visually spectacular but dramatically inert, the good stuff attributable to its remarkable director Denis Villeneuve, the bad stuff down to the writer of the original novel/doorstop, Frank Herbert. This is not going to be how everyone sees it, of course, what sort of a world would that be? But if you’re one of the people who picked up Herbert’s original Dune at some point only eventually to put/fling it down again after tiring of the relentless one-thing-after-anotherness of it (see also Tolkien) the movie won’t offer much that the book didn’t, its retina-cleansing visuals to one side. It picks up right where Part … Read more