WHAT TO WATCH

Challengers (in theaters) 

All’s fair in love, war, and tennis. But that doesn’t mean there are any survivors. 

That’s definitely the case in “Challengers,” the tense, sexy, psychological new movie by director Luca Guadagnino. The movie chronicles the shifting power plays between the three central characters, both on and off the tennis court, and the endless question of where and if different kinds of love fit into all of it. The sports scenes are gripping, but what will really capture your attention is tracing the way the three characters push and pull each other into the best and worst versions of themselves. 

The movie starts with a classic sports trope, the tense face-off between two rivals. Why they’re rivals, and why the seemingly insignificant match is so important to them both, is slowly revealed through flashbacks that show how deeply all three characters are intertwined. You trace their lives through the time jumps the same way you would volleys in a tennis match, propelled by shifting, sometimes hidden desires that the boys sometimes don’t understand themselves. 

Josh O’Conner and Mike Faist are fascinating as the two men caught in the years-long game, friends and enemies with a constant undercurrent of something more. Zendaya is even more interesting, the real power player who controls the boys’ lifelong match with a subtlety and skill neither of them can match. The movie’s one failing is that we don’t get to see enough of what drives her – once she loses her own ability to get on the court because of an injury, her motivations become too opaque to really sink your teeth into. It drains her character’s power, and since Zendaya brought the most propulsive force to the movie it’s a distinct loss. 

Whether it’s love, war, or tennis, it’s the players that really make it mean something. 

Grade: Three and a half stars

Scoop (Netflix)

Journalism movies are designed to scratch a very particular itch.

Since they’re designed around stories big enough to justify their own movies, we already know what the big reveal is. Journalism movies are for those of us who are interested in the story behind the story, all the twists and turns it took to bring the truth to light. It’s a specific audience, but for people who fit the bill it can be quite satisfying.

“Scoop,” which focuses on the Prince Andrew BBC interview that cost him his titles, finds that satisfaction on a more psychological level. The dark secrets here are firmly in the prince’s head, all of them connected to his involvement with sex trafficker Harvey Weinstein. What the journalists here have to do is a careful dance of trust and truth, maneuvering the prince into a position where he condemns himself on national television.

The movie assumes a certain amount of background knowledge of the Weinstein situation that not everyone may have, though it does eventually outline the basic facts. A quick refresh beforehand will let you enjoy the movie more, along with an understanding of just how much power and protection the royal family has in England. No matter how many facts they had, they still had to lure the prince outside of the protective fence of his mother’s power.

Billie Piper and Gillian Anderson are both great as classic journalistic archetypes. Piper is a features coordinator that wants respect, while Anderson is a seasoned interviewer who still feels the pressure of being a woman in a man’s world. Rufus Sewell is nearly unrecognizable as Prince Andrew, hiding behind a collapsing wall of his own justifications.

If you’re interested, you can watch the real interview after the movie’s done. It makes the whole thing that much more satisfying.

Grade: Two and a half stars