RACKETEERS

Now in the multiplexes:

Challengers--Two rising teenage tennis stars meet a third at the U.S. Open Juniors, beginning a triangle that defines not only their careers but their lives. That's the premise of this tempestuous sports drama from Italian director Luca Guadagnino.

At the top of the triangle is Tashi, played by the elegant, long-limbed Zendaya, understandably worshipped at first sight by both Al (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O'Connor), inseparable friends and doubles partners since childhood. Their passion for her is on different levels, however. Patrick is fascinated by her ferocious physicality; Al suffers true love.

Those who dislike nonlinear storytelling may find Challengers a bit, well, challenging. Even Quentin Tarantino's movies don't usually have timelines this scrambled. The story wanders around over thirteen years, as Tashi has relationships with both Al and Patrick, as estrangements and injuries bedevil the trio, as Al becomes a superstar under Tashi's coaching, as Patrick's career slides to the level of declined credit cards and sleeping in his car. We get subtitles like "13 YEARS EARLIER" or "THREE DAYS LATER" or "MIDNIGHT," but sometimes it's mostly variations in facial hair that help us keep track of where we are in the narrative.

It's worth the effort, though. Challengers starts a little slow, but Guadagnino, working from a script by Justin Kuritzkes, unfolds the story in convincing scenes that gradually accrue emotional punch. There are some risqué passages which, unlike most such sequences, actually forward the story.

The three leads--the rest of the actors here are basically bit players--have charm, which softens how unpleasantly the characters behave at times. The core of the film, of course, is the remarkable Zendaya, a Disney Channel veteran who, after a turn as a pop singer--my wife and I took our kid to see her at the Arizona State Fair more than a decade ago--has carved out a niche as a serious actor in stuff like Euphoria and the Spider-Man and Dune flicks. In Challengers her lissome beauty is balanced by a slouchy, imperious pugnacity. It's a true star turn.

The recurrent thumping techno music on the soundtrack verges on the unintentionally comedic at times. And Guadagnino allows the movie to get a bit operatic in the homestretch, with tortured scenes played out against wild windstorms and scandalous revelations telegraphed across the net before crucial serves in tournament play. But this feels right for a story about how our long-haul lives are shaped by the feverish melodramas we get caught up in as adolescents.

42 FOR THE SHOW

Last night The Wife and I betook ourselves to Chase Field...

...where, in the company of a gang from The Day Gig, we observed Jackie Robinson Night, the anniversary of Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Our beloved Diamondbacks were taking on the Chicago Cubs. It was a beautiful night for baseball, and it was great to see 42s on everybody's backs...

(Excuse the lousy cell phone pictures.)

Alas, what we didn't see was much offense from the hometown team. Despite a solid start from pitcher Merrill Kelly and some fine scoring opportunities, the Snakes lost, 2-3 in 10 innings. The Wife's long, discouraging streak as a jinx--the D-bax seem to contrive to lose whenever I talk her into going--annoyingly continues.

That's in the regular season, that is; they did manage to win the preseason game against the Cleveland Guardians to which she took me a couple of weeks ago on my birthday. But I think the last time she's seen a regular-season win was in 2017, when The Kid was with us, and we saw them defeat the Miami Marlins and clinch a playoff spot. The Kid, with me and with friends, has a much better win-lose record.

Anyway, hail Jackie Robinson!

YES THEY CANYON

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...of Joe Raffa's moving documentary Bad Indian: Hiding in Antelope Canyon, playing this weekend at Phoenix Film Festival.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Opening this week, hopefully only in the movies...

Civil War--Such a conflict has broken out in the contemporary United States. Fighting seems largely confined, so far, to the northeast, between the government and the "Western Forces," a confederation between Texas and California (!), though there also seem to be guerilla fighters around, and I couldn't always tell which side, if either, they were supposed to support.

We're told that in places like Missouri and Colorado people are still "pretending this isn't happening." But the country between New York and D.C. is lawless and shattered and bloody, with refugee camps and burning buildings and mass graves and bodies hanging in car washes or from overpasses. Canadian cash is needed if you want to buy gas.

The focus of writer-director Alex Garland's gruesome road movie is on four Reuters journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson) trying to make their way south down back roads, in a van marked "PRESS," from New York to D.C. They're hoping to interview the three-term President (Nick Offerman) before the capitol falls to the Western Forces.

If some of these alliances sound improbable or confusing to you in the context of our current real-life partisan divide, all I can say is that they did to me, too. Garland seems to quite deliberately make the ideologies behind his clashing forces vague, and both sides are shown to be equally ruthless; no quarter is granted in this combat, no prisoners taken.

The movie grips, evoking a potent sense of a nightmare that many of us fear. But it's also unsatisfying, even maddening. In the movie's best, most terrifyingly believable scene, for instance, our heroes are at the non-mercy of a murderous soldier (Jesse Plemons) who articulates an overtly racist, nationalist vision of America. But again, we aren't sure which side this guy is on, or even if he's officially on either side.

What I hope is that Garland's insistent, evasive non-partisanship isn't the result of commercial timidity; of a wish for the movie to play equally well in Red and Blue markets alike. Even more so, I hope that it isn't a result of sincere ideological false equivalence. Rising above partisanship is a laudable goal, certainly, and few reasonable observers would suggest that decent people on both sides don't have legitimate grievances, even if they're often directed at the wrong targets. But the idea that both sides are somehow morally equal is indefensible.

In the absence of conviction about what's at stake in the outcome of this conflict, Civil War takes shape as an earnest journalism drama. Dunst is effectively haunted as the disillusioned photographer; Spaeny, who looks like she should be home studying for a 9th-grade algebra test, is the newbie who Dunst doesn't think belongs on this treacherous trip. Moura is the febrile, adrenalin-stoked reporter and Henderson is the wise old veteran correspondent. About all we're left to invest in is that old-school newshound standard--will they get the big story?

Unless, of course, another investment is possible. It's hard to shake the question of to what degree this movie may be aimed at that part of the audience that thinks this sort of anarchy would be cool. One sometimes has this sense with the zombie movies--a feeling that part of the appeal is that of shooting people in the head with impunity--and the Mad Max style postapocalyptic actioners.

Intentionally or not, Civil War carries a queasy whiff of this same twisted wishful thinking. But in this case, the fantasy is sickeningly attainable.

ALL CREATURES GREAT, SMALL AND SHELLED

One hot Saturday in May almost nine years ago The Wife, The Kid and I opened the garage door, planning to go to lunch, and saw an impossibly cute chihuahua with black-and-white superhero markings wandering up the sidewalk across the street. The Kid and I coaxed her to us, and we took her to the Humane Society, where we determined she didn't have a chip. She was wearing a collar (no tag), seemed well-fed and was friendly and fearless, so it seemed like somebody loved her, but her origins remained a mystery. I hate to think about what her previous person or people may have gone through if she went missing.

I wish I could tell that person that she lived with us from then on, that from day one she acted like she owned the place, held her own with two other weird chihuahuas, and brought us inexpressible joy and fun. We gave her the name Sadie, which seemed to fit her perfectly. She was feisty and bold and rambunctious and mischievous but deeply affectionate; she loved a belly rub. She hated the sound of fireworks. I doubt that anyone else will ever make me feel as important as she did by the way she greeted me whenever I came into the house, barking in a loud, proclamatory way, as if to make it clear what a significant event my arrival was.

Sadie departed this realm Friday before last, after a struggle with kidney disease. Peace and joy eternal sweet little creature; we'll miss you terribly.

Some memories:

Here she is early on in her time with us, after a minor foot injury; doesn't it seem like Lily, in the background, is gloating?

At the animal hospital on Camelback we took her to, we spent hours with her seated in a big common area, where you couldn't help but overhear and invest in everybody else's pet crises. Most memorably, near us was a guy holding a beautiful Russian tortoise which was--cringe--impaled on a stick, a nasty splintery rotten-wood shard jammed between his neck and his right foreleg, going in how far it was hard to say. The staff got x-rays and were calling other clinics that specialize in reptiles to consult; they were understandably afraid that if they just yanked it he'd bleed out. For all I know the poor thing might have been in terrible agony; tortoises have a pretty stoic manner.

I finally couldn't resist asking "How did this happen?" as the guy sat waiting, looking distraught, and he shrugged and said "He just came out of his burrow that way." I guess he must have kept him in his back yard? Anyway, after Sadie took her leave of us and we were walking out of the place, blubbering and sniffling, I saw that they had the poor tortoise on a procedure table, and one of the aides was drawing lines on his carapace based on the x-rays.

This past weekend we went back to pick up Sadie's ashes, and I asked the woman who brought them out if she knew what became of the tortoise; she said he survived!

WHAT NOT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING

Opening this weekend:

Monkey Man--The title character, also known variously as "Kid" and "Bobby," wears an ape mask in the ring in the underground fights from which he ekes out a living. He's a man on a mission; he wants to get close enough to the corrupt officials in the Indian city where he lives who caused the death of his mother and the destruction of his neighborhood when he was a child. In flashback, we see the saintly woman telling him stories of Hanuman, the heroic monkey-god from the Ramayana.

Our hero works his way up from floor-scrubber to waiter in the human-trafficking club where these creeps hang out, and from there, lots of blood-splattered mayhem ensues. Grievously wounded, he finds refuge in a religious community of transgendered people who become his allies against the bad guys.

This is the feature directorial debut of Dev Patel, who also wrote the story, co-wrote the script and stars. Patel, the kid from Slumdog Millionaire, has already shown his badass bona fides in 2018's overlooked, believable thriller The Wedding Guest, among other films, and he's a true action star here too, though he never loses a certain sympathetic callowness.

Other memorable cast members include the Jon Lovitz type Pitobash (known to American audiences from Million Dollar Arm) as the comic relief, gorgeous Ashwini Kalsekar as the sinister boss at the club, Vipin Sharma as the serene leader of the trans order, and Sharlto Copley as the shady fight manager. The standout, however, is Sikandar Kher as the brutal but shrewd police chief; his clashes with the Monkey Man are the high points of the film.

Shot in garish, lurid tones by Sharone Meir and slickly edited to propulsive Indian music, Monkey Man is extremely bloody, to be sure, at least by wide-release standards. I'm not sure that, at its bones, it's anything but a standard revenge tale, in the manner of a spaghetti western; Kid/Bobby/Monkey Man is a classic Man With No Name. But as such, it's helped by a gallery of seriously odious villains that help you invest in the hero's vengeance. Whether it's a healthy feeling or not, it's enormously satisfying every time the Monkey Man lands a punch.

The First Omen--Just a couple of years shy of its half-century mark, the original version of The Omen, enormously influential both on the horror genre and on society in general, is still spawning movies. In this prequel, set in Rome in 1971, Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), a young American novice raised in Massachusetts, arrives at a Catholic orphanage and quickly realizes that something is very wrong behind the scenes.

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, who was also among the screenwriters, this account of the diabolical Damien's nativity has its merits. It starts well, with a setting and a hapless heroine that suggest a tale from Sade. It has a brooding period atmosphere, some nightmarish imagery and sequences, and a cast stocked with veterans like Bill Nighy, Sonia Braga, Charles Dance and the bassoon-voiced Ralph Ineson as an Irish priest investigating the matter.

It's also potentially interesting on a thematic level, in that the plot to bring the Antichrist into the world, it turns out, is reactionary; deliberately concocted to create a concrete Evil which will drive people away from the rebellious, authority-questioning counterculture of the time and back to the Church. Something provocative could have been done with this idea.

So it's by no means an unintelligent piece of moviemaking. But it's a tiresomely unpleasant movie. The story concerns the effort to find a suitable mother for the little devil, which results in many extended scenes of restrained women groaning and whimpering and pleading and gasping, to a degree that felt to me uncomfortably close to torture porn at times.

It's possible that this movie's non-consensual gynecological and obstetric procedures are reflective of a post-Roe sensibility, and can thus claim political validity. But that doesn't make them any more watchable. Perhaps this First Omen should also be the last Omen. 

24

The 24th annual Phoenix Film Festival...

...kicks off Thursday night and runs through Sunday, April 14; check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine, previewing the festivities.