My first Watches: September 2024

Tennis, Talking Heads, and fine French cooking.

Challengers

An interesting case where the movie’s marketing didn’t do the film any favors. After seeing the trailer I was worried that this would be something pulpy and trashy. But I suppose I should have put more faith in director Luca Guadagnino. His excellent 2017 film Call Me By Your Name was the right mix of melodrama and eroticism, and he manages to pull off the same trick with Challengers. But while Call Me By Your Name was tender coming-of-age romance, Challengers is an intense film about competition and determination.

Zendaya gives an outstanding performance, probably the best of her career so far. Her two co-stars, Mike Faist and Josh O’Conner, played a pair of tennis rivals well and their tennis scenes were tense and entertaining. In the film’s final moments on the court, there is a call back to an earlier conversation the two characters had that put a huge smile on my face when I realized what was happening. Those tennis scenes were filmed well and looked like real tennis, not the idea of the sport run through an AI generator a handful of times. And like any good sports film, the action isn’t about the sport, but it’s about the lives of the characters. There is an idea presented in this film that relationships are a completion. In Challengers love is tennis. And these characters really love tennis.

4/5

Stop Making Sense

Possibly the greatest concert documentary I’ve ever seen. This is extraordinary. The Talking Heads are a great band with a lot of great songs, and the way this is filmed is a caring tribute to each one. Director Jonathan Demme, of Silence of the Lambs fame, shot Stop Making Sense in a way that didn’t feel like a traditional concert movie. Each song has a unique style and lighting and the audience is rarely seen. It’s not a documentary that is here to document a concert in Los Angeles in the early 80s. It’s about the emotion of the music. David Byrne’s stage presence pulls you into the performance so that you start to forget you’re watching a concert, but instead experiencing the creative process through The Talking Heads. On top of it all it’s clear that everyone on stage is having a tremendous amount of fun. The Joy and the Music is infectious.

5/5

The Fall Guy

Speaking of having fun, The Fall Guy was an enjoyable action comedy that paid much-needed homage to Hollywood stunt actors. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt have a lot of chemistry, and their back-and-forth was often very funny. The main villain and conflict was a little out there, but I think this was all just a will they won’t they type movie between the two stars.

The action was the highlight, however. Director David Leitch used to be a stunt performer himself and it shows in his action sequences. There is nothing as brilliant as his hallway/staircase fight from Atomic Blonde, but each action set piece is well-filmed and well-choreographed. There was a lot to enjoy with this, especially the dog that only responds to French.

3.5/5

Klute

Alan J. Pakula sure made a name for himself in the world of 70s thrillers. His masterpiece was All The Presidents Men, one of the great political thrillers and journalism films. But, he kicked off the decade with a corporate thriller starring the late Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda. Sutherland is a private detective searching for a family friend gone missing, and Fonda is the call girl he may or may not have been having an affair with. Right from the start there are all the hallmarks of a great mystery. An early scene with Sutherland stalking a peeping tom is a real edge-of-your-seat moment. But what ends up setting Klute apart is the romantic relationship between the two leads. It develops surprisingly for this kind of movie, and feels incredibly natural. It’s handled tastefully and never comes across as tacked on like other thrillers from this era.

4/5

The Taste of Things

Beautiful and at times heartbreaking. This French film is one of 2024’s best. It’s the story of a French chef and his cook/lover. Benoît Magimel is wonderful as the chef, but Juliette Binoche is the heart of the film. Her performance has such warmth to it. It’s a standout roll for an actress with a career full of them. The movie also makes you incredibly hungry. It’s a story of love told through it’s food. And the food is as beautiful as their relationship. The character’s culinary creations are an expression of their feelings for each other. We see the care and effort put into each rack of lamb and each chopped onion.

It’s the last act of the movie that we see how much of an effect Binoche’s character has on Magimel’s chef. When she asks if she was ever his wife or his cook, we see just how much of his world she inhabits when he says she’s always been his cook. The food is their love and it’s all that has ever mattered between them.

4.5/5