‘CHALLENGERS’ Volleys Passion and Obsession in Steamy Love Triangle

April 12, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Most Popular, Out in Theaters Tagged Atticus Ross, Challengers, Josh O’Connor, Justin Kuritzkes, Luca Guadagnino, Mike Faist, Trent Reznor, Zendaya Leave a comment

“You think you know what tennis is about but you don’t,” Zendaya’s tennis wunderkind Tashi Duncan scolds best friends Art and Patrick. Tennis, she says, is about a relationship. The beauty of the sport isn’t its winning – despite that being the thing that separates champions from wash-outs – it’s about the magic of two people hitting a ball with a racket in complete synchronicity. There the rest of the world falls away, leaving behind a chorus of grunts and pools of sweat, and physical artistry. So too is Challengers about tennis and a relationship. Though the relationship at the center of Luca Guadagnino’s steamy sports drama is neither a traditional doubles or singles match, as the two young men, bunkmates-turned-teammates-turned-rivals, find themselves sparring for the affections of one woman in an awkward, decades-spanning love triangle. Read More

Cannibals Need Companionship Too In Rangy ‘BONES AND ALL’

November 23, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged André Holland, Arseni Khachaturan, Bones and All, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Luca Guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Taylor Russell 1 Comment

Sympathy for The Devil

Luca Guadagnino has made a career of sucking every last ounce of fat from the narrative bones of his projects. From his arthouse critical darling Call Me By Your Name, a sweeping pedophilic queer romance, to his celebrated – though gaudy and overwrought – remake of Suspiria, Guadagnino suckles on the teat of indulgence. This viewer has found Guadagnino’s style overtly lugubrious, feigning depth by overstaying his welcome, applying a Terrence Malick aesthetic template to otherwise intriguing conceptual pitches. This is no different in his latest adaptation, Bones and All, a cannibal love story that 100% should be my jam but wasn’t entirely. Read More

‘SUSPIRIA’ Remake a Horrifyingly Inauspicious Chore

October 29, 2018 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Dakota Johnson, Horror, Luca Guadagnino, Out in Theaters, Remakes, Reviews, Suspiria 4 Comments

A pretentious bore posing as high art, Suspiria is a stuffy dance horror melodrama that manages to make a murderous coven of ballet witches boring as sin. At two-and-a-half grueling hours, the film from Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) is the most masturbatory of remakes, one that painfully tacks a superfluous hour of runtime onto the original without any added content. By the time Suspiria finally reaches its blood-soaked conclusion, I stood at such an emotional distance, with a countenance of such bored apathy, as to not even enjoy its macabre platter of dark ritual and liberal gore. Read More

Out in Theaters: ‘CALL ME BY YOUR NAME’

December 20, 2017 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged André Aciman, Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name, James Ivory, Luca Guadagnino, Michael Stuhlbarg, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Timothée Chalamet 2 Comments

Call Me By Your Name is that annual run-away critical darling that far too many are quick to call a modern “masterpiece” that has good odds to bore most general audiences to tears. Clocking in at 132 minutes, the film from Italian Luca Guadagnino is long-winded indeed, emphasizing its European cinematic roots by having its characters spend a good chunk of their screen time staring into the distance, ruminating internally, sighing deeply and smoking cigarettes. After all, what’s more European than smoking cigarettes and staring off into the great beyond? Read More