Review: "Challengers" throbs with desire

by Cláudio Alves

American mainstream cinema has rarely felt as sexless as it does today. Even in the period between the 1934 implementation of the Hays Code and its demise, screens felt roused with desire. In some ways, the prohibition of overt sexuality supercharged movies with erotic potential, like a pot of boiling water that heats up faster once you put a lid on it. But nowadays, such qualities feel like artifacts of a bygone era. That's not to say movies suddenly lack objects of desire. Instead, as RS Benedict put it in his essay on superhero films, "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny."  But here comes Luca Guadagnino to the rescue, that lustful Italian whose films beckon a return to hedonistic cinema even when produced within Hollywood. Challengers is a prime example of that…

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Linky Chatterley

• Cartoon Brew the long awaited animated feature adaptation Nimona is back on. Now at Netflix since Disney shuttered it mid production. It was first announced way back in 2017.
• Out Pedro Almodóvar's gay western short Strange Way of Life will premiere at Cannes in May
• AV Club RIP documentarian Julia Reichert (American Factory)

NIMONA

More after the jump including Paul Mescal's taste buds, Amazon Prime numbers, Lady Chatterley's Lover sex scenes, and a tribute to a movie poster giant...

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Four Handfuls of Link

• Deadline Ray Liotta (Goodfellas) has passed away unexpectedly at 67. He was shooting a film called Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic. RIP
• Vulture Alison Willmore asks where the abortion thriller goes to next after recent films like Happening, Lingui the Sacred Bonds, and Never Rarely Sometimes Always
• Deadline Ellen DeGeneres bids her talk show farewell after 19 seasons on air

More after the jump including Gone Girl's legacy, frequently naked Clae Bang, Tom Cruise's all time biggest hits, Kevin Doyle from Downton Abbey A New Era, and a fascinating history of where streaming fits in the history of Hollywood...

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Top Five Reasons to see "Mothering Sunday"

by Cláudio Alves

Adapted by Alice Birch from Graham Swift's novel, Mothering Sunday depicts a day in the life of a young maid in 1920s England. She's been having an affair with a rich boy before he leaves to be married off, plans are made for an afternoon of farewell sex. Throughout, the trauma of World War I haunts the nation, ghosts looming over the living who try to conceal their brokenness through social pageantry. It's all told as remembrance, a writer looking back at her youth, trying to articulate a momentous episode on the page. Cut to non-linear smithereens, the film's prone to disrupt stately historical drama with wet carnality. Flashes of lustful memory often barge their way into unrelated scenes, like rainwater flooding a basement's every nook and cranny...

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Links: Exciting Memoirs, Luscious Italians, and the Out100

• The Hollywood Reporter Paul Mescal and Josh O'Conner to star in early 20th century gay love story, The History of Sound (the curious part is that it's about America and both stars are British and the director is South African)
• The Guardian Eternals banned in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait over gay content
• People actor Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar) has come out publicly before his memoir "You Can't Be Serious" hits. He'll be marrying his partner of 11 years soon

More after the jump including a Paul Newman memoir, new roles for Joe Alwyn and Gael Garcia Bernal, Titane's Oscar dreams, luscious Italians and the annual OUT100 list...

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