10 Flawed Elements In Otherwise Flawless Films

Marketed as Zendaya's threesome movie, Warner and MGM couldn't have done Challengers any dirtier. In truth, Luca Guadagnino's movie is the greatest tennis movie of all time, massaging genuinely intense sports action into a love triangle drama.

Opening on an emotionally-charged tennis match that promises to decide the fates of two ex-friends and tennis greats Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson, Challengers takes us back through their shared histories, back to when they met alluring young tennis star Tashi Duncan, and their relationship began to fall apart. Set to a thoroughly unconventional techno soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Challengers plays a power baseline game that doesn't let up for all 131 minutes.

Yet while the film goes many places other, far smaller pictures have feared to go, and features bold directorial, narrative and musical choices, sometimes the experiment goes just a little too far. In particular, the film's pivotal and final scene's use of first-person is jarring, putting us in the players' shoes, and it only gets worse when the camera becomes the ball. We are propelled back and forth across the net, and honestly it is hard to understand what this is supposed to do for the movie, other than give viewers a time out from their suspension of disbelief.

Thank the gods of cinema this wasn't released in 3D or we'd need an exclusive Challengers sick bucket to go with it.