The crumbling of April continues and there is no stopping for the box office as the total of tickets now reaches pandemic levels, with demi-titles not creating excitement in the audience and a multitude of “also shown” films still burying few great films of the period (such as ” Chimera” which is unanimously praised abroad during this same period, with an impressive 90 on metacritic).
No recent premiere has even come close, with “Civil War” at the top of new movies with 7,200 tickets from 85 theaters (close behind was “Abigail” with 5,700), but “Kung Fu Panda 4” continues to play unopposed at #1, making in its 5th week now 20% of the total receipts(!). Children’s films generally dominate the box office at the moment, but the cute teen “Spark in the Sea” didn’t take advantage, making 19 (!!) tickets.
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Maybe Katyusha is slowing down a bit this week, both with the release of Unboxholics’ honest horror film “Don’t Open the Door” but maybe also with the edgy, fan and sexy “The Rivals” with Zendaya in a love triangle.
Movies of the week:
The Rivals
(“Challengers”, Luca Guantanino, 2h11m)
****
Two tennis players face each other in the final of a small tournament. But for the two of them, this game seems to be much bigger than it appears on paper. Between them, a spectator, a woman looking at each other. What is at stake in this particular match will not be perceived until after a long dive into the past. We begin 13 years ago, when the two current rivals, then brotherly friends, and great hopes of American tennis, meet, fall in love and claim the same girl.
Luca Guantanino (“Call Me By Your Name”, “Bones and All”) is a director who has clearly found his calling portraying youthful desire in its various guises, sometimes as self-discovery, sometimes as a melancholic search for status us in the world, then – that is, now – as a pulsating dynamic, as a correlation of forces and desire that defines who we are and what we ask of our partners, of ourselves and, ultimately, of the world as we mature. Rivals, as the quintessential love triangle story, fully embraces this last element, perfectly tying together the outline of the three central characters, and what they ultimately want out of life (them), with what they desire in the person they have against them.
Art (Mike Feist, magnetic in Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor, on the opposite side from where we saw him in the nostalgic “Chimera” a month ago) know Tashi (Zendaya, finally in a constant interpretive variation that highlights her star power) same night, same time. Guantanaino’s camera does not let them separate from the frame, constantly observing not only their different reactions that form and which of her character (one will always want to weigh the situation, the other rushes to the opportunity), but also the what, after all, is what each of them sees in Tashi. She is the same woman, but their looks are different.
Through the successive flashbacks a dense story is formed full of passions, friendships, loves, betrayals, separations, disappointments, triumphs, and which explores this triplet of heroes, their contradictions, and how they can change on the surface but in the background just reveal more what they always were, what they always wanted. Many are the sexy or angsty scenes of the anthology, which are presented in a bombastic montage with the fight going on in the present: As the final unfolds, we learn more about what has brought us here and what is at stake – but until at the last minute there are hidden spots, secrets, but also of course the question of how the fight will end, and what this will mean for the three people involved.
The screenplay by Justin Kuritskis (husband of Celine Song of “Past Lives”) opens up the trio and explores them gradually, making each point in the present count, and mean more and more something different – but with a common axis always desire, and what it means to lose her, or to lie to yourself. Guantanino with Marco Costa (his constant editing partner in his latest projects) embrace this structure and end up juxtaposing the agony of the past and the present in a parallel montage as if it were a time continuum, while the soaring electrifying score of Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (“The Social Network”) make every look and every step seem like the most shocking event in the world, giving the film an almost uncontrollable momentum (at some points, Guantanaino seems borderline embarrassed by the momentum itself power of his film music).
In the meantime, the Italian director very cleverly shares the sexual tension and passion in a perhaps unexpected way: The love scenes themselves work like foreplay, as if they are constantly preparing us for something they don’t deliver – sex, it’s tennis itself. The action scenes on the court are shot with an almost cartoonish frenzy, with a camera that acrobats, zooms, zooms out, flies, steps into the shoes of the ball, the racket, the heroes. Guantanino makes heavy use of dramatic slow motion, putting huge emphasis on every backhand, every serve, every ace or every fault. It’s like watching a live action version of an anime that never existed. Everything here is tense – the ever-dripping sweat, the swings of emotions, the dramatic monologues about what each hero wants from his life, the tennis as an illustration of the dramatic shifts in each person’s relationships and self-awareness, the impetuous finale.
Although there is perhaps something that remains slightly unexplored in terms of the perspective of the central heroine herself (which is artfully covered by a combination of acting, direction and collective energy), the film manages to present a worldview without conveying it as a sermon, with a fantastic triplet of protagonists, and with Guantanino trying his hand at something new and exciting, something pulsating, something immobile – perhaps the only way to portray the role of desire in a relationship, in a life. For “Challengers”, living means moving and desiring.
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Don’t Open The Door
(Sakis Karpas, Alexandros Karpas, 1h 27m)
**½
In an isolated house in a forest, a woman knocks fearfully on the door in the middle of the night. The lonely resident opens the door to her not knowing that there is unwittingly something evil that enters his house. Together with the woman, the door opens to past guilt, but also to a terrifying threat.
Sakis and Alexandros Karpas, from the popular YouTube channel Unboxholics, try their hand at feature fiction for the first time in a completely independent and lo-fi production that takes the limitations and uses them as part of the film’s identity. A dark horror story of two people and one setting – which is mapped out very effectively and exhaustively, leaving no part unexploited.
As an attempt at horror cinema it seems more like the modern, allegorical horror of an Ari Aster or a “Babadook”, connecting the scary atmosphere with some deep psychological trauma that gradually unravels. As such, the result is largely quite repetitive and with an idea spread across the screen without much filler – this is a wider problem in modern horror and not just Unboxholics.
But what they do exceptionally well is to achieve an effective atmosphere of horror that raises your hair and makes you uncomfortable at several points. Without even relying on constant shaking or other tricks. It is a very honest and sincere in its intentions and style of the film, which without hiding the completely handmade and lo-fi of its origin, does not seem for a moment poorly made or amateurish. It respects the viewer and gives them what they went for – we’ll be waiting with interest for any possible next step from the team, despite the fact that as an overall experience, the present film ultimately hangs quite a bit.
They are still circulating
Living Spirit: Every summer, little Salome returns to the family mountain village. When her beloved grandmother dies and the adults start arguing over the funeral, a woman’s spirit begins to haunt her. The locals considered her a witch.
The Last Hero: A man tries to stop a German multinational from building a supermarket on the site of his father’s statue. But this battle of his will have unexpected effects on his daughter’s life. Angeliki Papoulia stars.
Super Maggi: In a city that has been completely rid of crime, a new virtual threat comes to shake up the waters. Children’s superhero cartoon film.
Professional Sleepwalker: A failed poet discovers that his mother has marketed him as a local “Pythia”, bringing in customers at night to listen to his recitation. After his initial anger, he decides to take the “business” into his own hands, derailing the situation completely.
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