On two recent Sunday evenings I went to see a movie at an actual movie theater. Pre-covid such an announcement would have epitomized banality. And perhaps it still does. But nowadays when I go to a theater, I am there to see a play. Movies will appear eventually on television, where I don’t need to worry about whether somebody behind me will be talking or somebody in front of me will be scrolling through messages on their cell phone or somebody beside me will want to get up in the middle of the show to visit the lobby. Nevertheless, I went to a movie theater on two consecutive Sunday nights, and I was glad that I did. These two movies were worth the risk, and, as it happily transpired, the audiences for both were impeccable.
Challengers deserves its hype and its raves from the critics. Usually I despise ambiguity, but here, in the hands of director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, the ambiguity works in tandem with a series of brisk revelations to hook the audience instantly and pull us into a consistently surprising and entertaining world. The three actors at the center of the story—Zendaya (age 27), Mike Faist (32), and Josh O’Connor (33)—all began their careers in childhood and thus are already seasoned professionals who are still ascendant in their journeys to stardom. I’m not going to say much about the plot of the movie because almost everything would be a spoiler. But I will say that I’ve been watching the work of these three for years, and they seem to have no boundaries to their range as performers. Zendaya started on the Disney Channel, and perhaps her work in the Spider Man movies has made for the most logical transition into Hollywood blockbusters, but Disney would faint at her work on HBO’s “Euphoria,” and here, in Challengers, she reads just as convincingly as a mom and a wife as she does as a teenaged tennis prodigy. I saw the then-unknown Mike Faist at Arena Stage in Washington when he was originating the role of Connor Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen before the show moved on to Broadway. More people got to know him when he played Riff in Steven Spielberg’s version of West Side Story, so, yes, the guy can sing and dance and play tennis and act. Josh O’Connor I first saw playing a lugubrious gay farmer in God’s Own Country, and I thought that he must be like his character: taciturn, introverted, morose. Then I saw him as the cheerful, exuberant Lawrence Durrell in all four seasons of The Durrells in Corfu on PBS and initially couldn’t recognize him. I have not watched The Crown, but I know O’Connor earned much praise for his portrayal of Prince Charles on the series. He’s also done plenty of stage work. The movie works because of flawless performances from astonishingly intelligent, talented actors and a beautifully constructed script. Don’t take my word for it. Go.
While Challengers offers us stars on the rise, The Fall Guy, which is entertaining in an entirely different way, relies on established talent to work its clever meta-narrative. Drew Pearce handed director David Leitch a funny, satisfying screenplay, and then Leitch, a former stuntman, cast Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and Hannah Waddingham in the principal roles. All deliver perfect deadpan turns in a movie that both mocks and embraces the excesses of Hollywood and celebrates and elevates the usually anonymous stunt doubles who take all the risks and absorb all the pain for stars who get the credit. This is the kind of movie where Emily Blunt, playing a director, will talk on the telephone with Ryan Gosling, playing a stunt man, and will ask him what he thinks about split-screen effects. Then the movie will use a split screen to show the rest of the conversation. That moment for me was the only spot where the humor was predictable and sophomoric in an otherwise witty homage to and sendup of the Hollywood action movie. Stay for the final credits, where you get to see the actual stunt people working out of disguise and then, at the very end, a final coda to the movie itself. It’s funny, fun, and self-aware, and it makes for a fine evening out on a Sunday or any other day of the week.