Live action anime tennis and the best sports movie since Creed, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers crackles with electricity and searing chemistry among its three leads. Even without its misleading marketing’s emphasis on sex — there’s barely any in the film — Challengers synthesizes eroticism and kineticism through the art of tennis, and into one of the best films of the year so far. Minor spoilers ahead…

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two is a masterstroke of bleak, fantasy world-building that continues to translate Frank Herbert’s source material into a rousing epic. A genuine feat of adaptation and engineering that captures the very spirit of the novel’s overwhelmingly strange mythos and whetted knottiness, Dune: Part Two is sci-fi at its finest and most tragic. Minor spoilers ahead…

After multiple COVID-related delays and years of anticipation, Dune is finally here. Capturing the majesty and scope of Frank Herbert’s tome of myth, Denis Villeneuve’s vision is faithfully immense, transportive, and most importantly, accessible. Like its title states, this is very much a Part One, so any review or evaluation rests upon provision, but it’s difficult to defy the gravitational pull of Dune’s meticulous world-building and gorgeous craft, even as it keeps its characters in the shadows of its sprawling grandeur. Minor spoilers ahead…