Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Challengers’ Review: Game, Set, Love Matches

    Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist play friends, lovers and foes on and off the tennis court in Luca Guadagnino’s latest.You can always feel the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino trying to turn you on — he’s a zealous seducer. His movies are sleek divertissements about ravishing people and their often sumptuously rarefied sensibilities and worlds. I tend to like his work, even if it can be overly art-directed and feel too (excuse the verb) curated to stir the soul along with my consumer lust. I am moved when a father tenderly comforts his son in “Call Me by Your Name”; my most vivid memories of “A Bigger Splash” is its striking setting and a dress that Tilda Swinton wears.Guadagnino’s latest, “Challengers,” is about a continually changing love triangle involving two besotted men and a sharp, beautiful woman with killer instincts and personal style. Largely set in the world of professional tennis, it is a fizzy, lightly sexy, enjoyable tease of a movie, and while someone suffers a bad injury and hearts get broken (or at least banged up), for the most part it’s emotionally bloodless. Even so, it’s a welcome break in tone and topic after Guadagnino’s Grand Guignol adventures in “Suspiria,” a take on a Dario Argento horror film, and “Bones and All,” about two pretty cannibals hungrily and moodily adrift.Written by the novelist and playwright Justin Kuritzkes, “Challengers” is fairly straightforward despite its self-consciously tortured narrative timeline. It tracks three tennis prodigies — friends, lovers and foes — across the years through their triumphs and defeats, some shared. When it opens, the troika’s one-time brightest prospect, Tashi (Zendaya), has been retired from playing for a while and is now coaching her husband, Art (Mike Faist), a Grand Slam champ rapidly spiraling downward. In a bid to reset his prospects (he’s a valuable property, for one), he enters a challenger tournament, a kind of minor-league event where lower-ranking professionals compete, including against injured higher-ranking players.That match takes place in New Rochelle, N.Y., an easy drive from Flushing, Queens, and the home of the U.S. Open, which Art has yet to win. It’s while in New Rochelle that he and Tashi dramatically reconnect with Patrick (Josh O’Connor), the errant member of their complicated three-way entanglement. A rich boy who cosplays as poor (well, at least struggling), Patrick met Art when they were children at a tennis academy. By 18, they were tight friends and perhaps something more; the movie coyly leaves just how close to your imagination, even as it fires it up. It’s at that point that they met Tashi, then a fast-rocketing star.Soon after the movie opens in 2019, it jumps to the recent past (“two weeks earlier”) and then starts bouncing around back and forth in time like a ball flying over the net, with the New Rochelle match serving as the story’s frame. (The 2019 date may be a nod to an epic men’s final at Wimbledon that year in which, after nearly five hours, Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer.) Turning back the clock can be a cheap way to make movies appear more complex than they actually are. Here, though, as the story leaps from past to present — from when Tashi, Art and Patrick were feverishly young to when they were somewhat less young — time begins to blur, underscoring that the passing years haven’t changed much.All three leads in “Challengers” are very appealing, and each brings emotional and psychological nuance to the story, whatever the characters’ current configuration. They’re also just fun to look at, and part of the pleasure of this movie is watching pretty people in states of undress restlessly circling one another, muscles tensed and desiring gazes ricocheting. Guadagnino knows this; he’s in his wheelhouse here, and you can feel his delight in his actors. With the cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, he shows them off beautifully, caressing them in light so that they look lit from within. Even during the fantastically staged and shot — and very sweaty — New Rochelle match, they glow.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Anthony Roth Costanzo, Star Countertenor, to Lead Opera Philadelphia

    Costanzo will be a rare figure in classical music: an artist in his prime who is also working as an administrator.Anthony Roth Costanzo, the celebrated American countertenor who is one of opera’s biggest stars, will lead Opera Philadelphia as its next general director and president, the company announced on Thursday.Costanzo, 41, whose tenure starts in June, will be a rare figure in the classical music industry: an artist in his prime who is also working as an administrator. He said he would continue to perform widely even as he works to reshape Opera Philadelphia, which has struggled to recover from the disruption of the pandemic.“I’m really interested in how I can have the most impact,” Costanzo said in an interview. “And there’s only so much you can do as an individual artist.”Stephen K. Klasko, the chair of Opera Philadelphia’s board of directors, said Costanzo rose to the top of a list of 40 candidates because of his eagerness to attract new audiences and form new partnerships as the company looks for a sustainable business model.“He’s enthusiastic, he’s positive,” Klasko said, “and he sees our future as being an entity that goes beyond opera.”At Opera Philadelphia, Costanzo will oversee fund-raising, business strategy, audience development, community initiatives and artistic planning. Klasko said that while Costanzo did not have traditional credentials, the board was impressed by his work as a creative producer and impresario. Costanzo has curated festivals, for example, at the New York Philharmonic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Iran Sentences Prominent Rapper to Death, Lawyer Says

    The rapper, Toomaj Salehi, was initially arrested after releasing music in support of the 2022 protests over the death of a young woman in police custody.A dissident rapper has been sentenced to death in Iran after releasing music in support of antigovernment demonstrations that rocked the country in 2022, according to his lawyer, in a case that has prompted global condemnation.The rapper, Toomaj Salehi, 33, was one of the most prominent voices among those arrested over nationwide protests against Iran’s clerical rulers after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Human rights organizations have been calling for Mr. Salehi’s release, saying that he has been tortured in prison and warning that he could face execution.Amir Raesian, Mr. Salehi’s lawyer, told the Iranian reformist newspaper Shargh in an article published on Wednesday that a court in the central city of Isfahan had sentenced Mr. Salehi to death and that his client planned to appeal.The office of the U.S. Special Envoy for Iran condemned the sentence, calling it another example of “the regime’s brutal abuse of its own citizens, disregard for human rights, and fear of the democratic change the Iranian people seek.”Mr. Salehi was initially arrested in October 2022 for releasing music criticizing the government and backing the demonstrations ignited by the death of Ms. Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police. He also posted videos on his Instagram account encouraging his followers to protest.The Iranian authorities charged him that November with “spreading corruption on earth,” an offense that can carry the death penalty. U.N. experts said the court proceedings were held behind closed doors without Mr. Salehi’s lawyer present and expressed alarm about reports the artist had been tortured, citing reports of his broken nose and several broken fingers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Nowhere Special’ Review: Old Bonds, New Family

    This understated tear-jerker sees a dying single father making future family plans for his toddler son.“Nowhere Special” is an unusual, and unusually understated, parental tear-jerker in which a father prepares for the loss of his young son. The son isn’t going anywhere. But the father, a single dad, is dying, of an unspecified disease, and he’s at first eager, then later a little desperate, to get his boy placed with the right adoptive family.The picture was written and directed by Uberto Pasolini, the Italian-born filmmaker who was the producer of the 1997 crowd-pleaser “The Full Monty.” Although he shares a surname with the acclaimed director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Uberto is in fact a nephew of the neorealist cinema giant Luchino Visconti. Pasolini doesn’t seem directly influenced by his actual relative or his namesake. But his movie does have a style: slow, quiet, measured. It takes its time before bringing the emotional hammer down.Set and shot in Northern Ireland, the film focuses on a window cleaner, John (James Norton), the loving father to a very cute but often sulky 4-year-old, Michael (Daniel Lamont). We never see John at a doctor’s office, but we get a look at his packed medicine cabinet and we see him getting more ashen as the picture goes on. One location he does spend a lot of time in is a child placement agency, whose staffers escort him to speak with approved-to-adopt candidates. There are childless couples, intimidatingly big families and single aspiring parents to consider. John resists putting a “memory box” together for his boy. “I don’t want him to understand death,” he says.After being admonished by a snotty rich client because of slow work, John, taking the adage “you only live once” to heart, eggs the fellow’s house. It’s one of the few moments when the movie deigns to deliver a conventional satisfaction. But the mostly low-key mode of “Nowhere Special” is the right one. Norton is spectacular, but little Lamont delivers one of those uncanny performances that doesn’t seem like acting, and makes you feel for the kid almost as much as his onscreen parent does.Nowhere SpecialNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Infested’ Review: Bugging Out

    An apartment building in Paris is overrun by murderous arachnids and unsubtle allegory in this fleet and efficient debut feature.There are no fresh ideas in the French creepy-crawler “Infested,” yet this first feature from Sébastien Vanicek scurries forward with such pep and purpose that its shortcomings are easily forgivable. Add a handful of eager young actors, a sociopolitical slam and a claustrophobic location swarming with venomous spiders and you’ll be hunting for the DEET long before the credits roll.Set in a low-income housing block in a Paris suburb, the action — and there’s plenty of it — is led by Kaleb (Théo Christine), an industrious youth who sells black-market sneakers and fusses over his illegal collection of small critters. His latest acquisition is a spider that, unbeknown to Kaleb, was smuggled from a Middle Eastern desert after rendering one of its captors agonizingly kaput. In less time than it takes to say “arachnophobia,” it will escape, reproduce like a bandit and send its deadly progeny scampering into every unsealed nook and cranny. Woe betide anyone not wearing a hoodie.On one level, “Infested” is a well-worn, thoroughly efficient creature feature with sleek effects and pell-mell pacing. While not especially scary, the movie gains traction from a script (by Vanicek and Florent Bernard) that finds ways to add a smidgen of back story to its panicked characters. So as the building becomes a giant, web-draped cocoon, the rapid-fire squabbling among Kaleb, his sister (Lisa Nyarko) and his onetime best friend (Finnegan Oldfield) feels entirely authentic. As do the labyrinthine corridors, the constantly failing lighting (props to Alexandre Jamin’s stuttering photography) and Kaleb’s kindhearted concern for his neighbors.A police lockdown cues social commentary that, while glaringly obvious, is also apt in a movie whose French title translates as “vermin” and whose gun-and-gas-toting authorities may have their own ideas about the term’s definition.InfestedNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

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    Yunchan Lim’s Chopin, and Other Classical Albums to Hear Now

    Yunchan Lim’s collection of Chopin piano études, a new recording of Terry Riley’s “In C” and works by Marc-André Hamelin are among the highlights.Chopin: ÉtudesYunchan Lim, piano (Decca)The pianist Yunchan Lim, who recently turned 20, debuted at Carnegie Hall in February with an old-school program: all 24 of Chopin’s études. His first album on the Decca label, playing those same 24 devilishly difficult pieces — 12 each in Op. 10 and 25 — is old-school, too. The cover photo, shot on film, has Lim nearly engulfed in moody shadow, an image that, along with the font, evokes classical music’s glamorous mid-20th century.The aim seems to be to position him as an heir to that era’s keyboard titans. It’s hardly a difficult task. After Lim’s Carnegie performance, and his dazzling winning rounds at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, it’s no surprise to find him in total command on this recording, balancing note-by-note clarity with long-phrase lyricism amid staggering technical demands. Even in fiery études, he is calm as he exposes the panoply of voices that emerge from just two hands. His rubato breathes naturally yet energetically; there’s a vitality and sense of forward motion even in slower pieces. And Lim’s soft playing is particularly sensitive, as in the pleading quality he brings to a tiny pianissimo quintuplet in Op. 10, No. 9. The album loses little of the excitement of a live concert while adding more control, transparency and polish. It’s a triumph. ZACHARY WOOLFE‘In C’Maya Beiser, cello (Islandia Music)For the 60th anniversary of “In C,” Terry Riley’s crusading, proto-minimalist work, the intrepid cellist Maya Beiser has reimagined the piece ingeniously. As written, “In C,” which consists of a series of 53 short musical motifs, can be played by any group of musicians on any instruments, and lasts as long as their individual decisions about how long to repeat those motifs. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Unsung Hero’ Review: Music Dedicated to the One They Love

    In fact, there’s a lot of singing in the clan whose members inspired this movie and who have racked up five Grammy Awards for their Christian recordings.In the faith-based drama “Unsung Hero,” an Australian concert promoter trying to earn a living makes a last-ditch move to Nashville with his wife and six children. Based on an actual family of musicians, it mostly plays as a treacly tribute to the parents of Joel and Luke Smallbone — a.k.a. the Christian pop duo For King & Country — and their sister the singer Rebecca St. James.Viewer beware: Between the uplift and the cringe, this movie may cause whiplash. Joel Smallbone plays his own father, David, who faces financial and reputational ruin after booking a big concert and failing to pack the house. He resettles the family in the United States, but no job materializes. His pep-talking spouse, Helen (Daisy Betts), and their beatific children pull up bootstraps and practically whistle while they work, but it’s not enough.Community, humility, and the power of prayer are the lessons on offer in their story, set in the 1990s, bathed in warm light and interspersed with home video segments. Fellow churchgoers pitch in, and David gets over himself; he secures auditions for his teenage daughter, Rebecca (Kirrilee Berger), who keeps breaking into dulcet song about how everything is beautiful. The outcome of “Unsung Hero,” as written and directed by Richard L. Ramsey and Joel Smallbone, is never in doubt, though the climax has a kicker line that genuinely surprises with its laughable shamelessness.The family business has become a success: Rebecca, Joel and Luke have won five Grammys among them. But despite the fuzzy good intentions, it’s tough to make much of this making-of story.Unsung HeroRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Terrestrial Verses’ Review: Crossing Lines in Iran

    Ordinary Iranians face a maze of byzantine rules and small indignities in this series of gripping vignettes.Half the cast of “Terrestrial Verses” never appears onscreen. Instead we hear their voices as they speak to a variety of ordinary Tehranians: a young woman applying for a job, a man seeking to register his newborn son’s name, a filmmaker, a little girl, a driver’s license applicant. Out in the audience, we’re watching the hopeful faces of those people, who become crestfallen as it becomes clear that whatever they want, no matter how small, is impossible, for no real reason at all. An authoritarian regime, and a bureaucratic establishment that props up byzantine rules, has seen to that.“Terrestrial Verses,” written and directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, unfolds as a series of vignettes, almost like tiny one-act plays. Selena (Arghavan Shabani), the little girl, is wearing headphones and dancing when we meet her, while, off-camera, her mother and a shopkeeper discuss a uniform she needs for a school ceremony. Selena keeps getting called over by her mother, returning to our field of vision wearing yet another layer of clothing in the drab neutrals mandated by the school’s rules. In another vignette, a new father (Bahram Ark) wants to name his baby David, but is informed that it’s simply impossible, since the name is Western and doesn’t have the state-required religious connotation. In another, the filmmaker, named Ali (Farzin Mohades), exasperatedly converses with a culture ministry official, who wants him to remove nearly everything from his screenplay in order to make it acceptable to the regime.The most maddening segments show how boxed-in women are, attempting to simply live their lives without accidentally crossing some line. Or not even crossing it: Sadaf (Sadaf Asgari), a young ride-share driver with and a punk affect and short hair beneath her head scarf, argues with an official. Traffic cameras caught what the official insists is a woman driving Sadaf’s car, head scarf removed. Isn’t a car a private space?, Sadaf asks. The official disagrees, and Sadaf is deemed a criminal.Because each vignette is no more than a few minutes long and consists of Kafkaesque conversations that border on the absurd, “Terrestrial Verses” operates with a cumulative effect. It’s death by a thousand pinpricks, a succession of small indignities. Each seemingly simple task is not just saddled with procedural irritations — forms to fill out, appointments to attend, banal questions to answer — but with fear. Suppose your answer to a routine query could incriminate you or there’s no way to prove to an official that you aren’t lying. How would you live your life?Those questions run through “Terrestrial Verses,” which consists entirely of stark, locked-off shots that place each segment’s protagonist in the box of the frame. It becomes clear that the shots themselves are full of meaning. Each actor in the uniformly excellent cast is centered on the screen, and as they are heaped with indignities, the frame becomes something like a mug shot, or a prison — a place where they’re confined for us to look at them, watch their reactions, judge their facial cues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More