Sweaty, muscular and desperately horny, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers lusts in the fashion of an old courtly romance. The emphasis is on the court – it’s a tennis film – but the romance is as pervasive as it is dripping in the erotic energy of unquenched climax. Every game is intercourse. As befitting the Chaucerian tradition, there are knights, jousts and a fair maiden worth fighting for. More modern is the youthful vibrance of the piece. Guadagnino’s cast are electric but it’s his own reinvention of point of view filmmaking that drives forth the avant-garde vigour.
A deliciously simple premise delivers gory satisfaction in Abigail, the first post-Scream horror from Radio Silence directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. In short, a pint-sized, tutu wearing, vampire torments ragtag criminals in a Scooby-Doo mansion. It’s proper elevator pitch material and ballet’s bloodiest episode since Darren Aronofsky pitched Natalie Portman against Mila Kunis. Neither would last a pas de trois on stage with Alisha Weir.
A life lived so vibrantly spotlighted as that of Amy Winehouse’s was ripe for the biographical pickings from the moment of her death, all too soon back in 2011. It’s an indictment of the day and age we live in. Nothing to be proud of. Back to Black is the first dramatisation out of the blocks. It follows, and skulks in the shadow of, Asif Kapadia’s superior 2015 documentary, Amy. Where that film dived deep, upsetting her family in the process, this one’s but a paddle in the shallow end. A superficial and underwhelming entry to the current vogue for jukebox biopics. It’s worse than that though. Back to Black hasn’t the self-awareness to recognise itself as being no better than the then paparazzi it vindicates.
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