Challengers (2024), directed by Luca Guadagnino

Tashi, Art and Patrick are champion junior tennis players with promising futures. The two boys have been inseparable since the age of 12 at tennis academy, Patrick’s talent always edging Art’s graft. Tashi lives and breathes tennis; it’s her obsession and she becomes theirs. When serious injury stops her brilliant career before it starts Tashi turns to coaching, but only one of Art or Patrick can benefit from her attentions. Ten years later Tashi and Art are married with a child and Art is attempting a comeback from injury to the top ten, while estranged Patrick is a struggling tennis journeyman on the fringe of the tour. Billed as a raunchy rom com, this film is not that. It is an examination of an equilateral love triangle, framed by the final of a Challenger tournament where the stakes could not be higher. The structure of the film is clever, with flashbacks from the crucial match filling in the interesting history of these three. But the overall treatment is shallow, 140 minutes apparently not long enough to develop any depth of character or motivation. This is not helped by whacky camera angles and a weird and over loud soundtrack, that often obscures the dialogue. The tennis looks good, but there is an awful lot of it. Josh O’Connor is the outstanding performer, managing to make more of Patrick than the inadequate writing should allow. Zendaya and Mike Faist are beautiful and athletic as the other two sides of the triangle. A long drawn out and entirely predictable climax culminates in a WTF ending, which exemplifies how this film misses the mark.

The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal

This sequel to The Calculating Stars sees the Lady Astronaut, Dr Elma York, on ‘bus driving’ duty as a pilot on the moon, serving the small lunar colony and its space station. She spends three month rotations there, which puts a strain on her marriage. This has her considering retirement as she and Nathaniel contemplate having children, so there is no way she will join the first manned mission to Mars. That is, until an increasingly militant Earth First movement requires the Lady Astronaut back on the PR circuit and joining the 3-year pioneering mission. Racial and other tension amongst the crew mirrors that of the society their expedition aims to save, with an interesting perspective on the 60s. Looming natural disaster is driving the need for Mars colonisation, but inevitably some will be left behind. Who is that likely to be? The tone of these novels cleverly echoes those of leading post-war sci fi authors, such Clarke and Asimov, who could imagine amazing technological leaps forward, but no social progress. But here John and Mary don’t stick to their assigned roles of hero and helpmate; technology and urgent need helping to drive change.

I Don’t - The Case Against Marriage, by Clementine Ford

The statistics have been clear for years – married men are happier, healthier and wealthier than single men and married women are less happy, healthy and wealthy than single women. Why then does the myth of marriage as the be all and end all for women persist? Clementine Ford forensically examines the history and current reality of marriage as a tool of patriarchal control and the way it has been sold to women as their ultimate goal and as essential to their wellbeing. There is an element of preaching to the converted here and no new ground is broken in this book. But Ford expertly pulls together the myriad logical and convincing arguments against an institution that in fact offers women so little benefit. Despite occasionally lurching into hyperbole and extremism, for the most part I Don’t offers a valid alternative to the trap of marriage, with a considered dismantling of its purported attractions.

3 Body Problem (Netflix)

The laws of physics no longer seem to apply, scientists are baffled and many of them, all over the world, are seemingly killing themselves. A shadowy secret government organisation is investigating and recruits some of the remaining best and brightest minds to assist. It all goes back to 1970s China and probes sent out into the universe to seek out other life. Five firm friends are the focus of the drama. All promising physics students, Will dropped out to become a teacher; Jack and Auggie have become very successful in business, one in snack food and the other at the cutting edge of nanotechnology; while Saul and Jin remain in academia, one coasting and the other a leading light. In very different ways these five have much to contribute to solving this mystery of the universe. Based on a series of books by Chinese writer Liu Cixin , this combo of science fiction and hard science has been adapted by the creators of Game of Thrones. There are a few questions left unanswered, but it is intelligent, sometimes excessively violent, occasionally puzzling, always intriguing, with a diverse and uniformly excellent cast.

Impossible Creatures, by Katherine Rundell

Magical beasts once populated the world but they are now hidden away in the Archipelago, a group of secret islands. Christopher has always had an affinity with animals and when he visits his grandfather in Scotland he discovers he comes from a line of gatekeepers to the magical world. Mal lives in the Archipelago with her great aunt and she is worried about a creeping influence that seems to be draining the magic from the land, putting all the creatures at risk. When an assassin threatens Mal she recruits Christopher to the cause of saving the Archipelago. They are helped on their difficult and dangerous quest by a Berserker and a marine scientist, as well as some of the magical creatures they are trying to save. Griffins, centaurs, dragons, unicorns and nereids are amid a plethora of less familiar creatures that are difficult to keep track of, despite the helpful guide at the start of the book. Power, sacrifice and conservation are strong themes in a book aimed at older children and Rundell pulls no punches in this rather violent adventure tale.

Wicked Little Letters (2023), directed by Thea Sharrock

Edith Swan is a good Christian woman, dutifully living with her elderly parents in the English coastal town of Littlehampton just after WWI. She has been receiving hateful poison pen letters, filled with foul and abusive language, and the police are called in. The main suspect is the next door neighbour, widowed mother Rose Gooding, who is Irish and drinks and swears and consorts with men. It’s an open and shut case for the local plod, and Rose is headed for jail, but trailblazing Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss suspects there is more to it. She calls on the ingenuity of local women to nail the real culprit and see justice served. Based on a true story, the film gives a funny and insightful look at the restricted lives of women in a patriarchal society that is about to change, Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley are wonderful as the frenemies Edith and Rose, two women who seem to have little in common but are similarly confined by roles and expectations and respond in very different ways. Anjana Vasan makes a composed WPC and the supporting cast is stellar, featuring Timothy Spall and Gemma Jones as Edith’s parents, Eileen Atkins, Lolly Adefope and Pam Ferris as helpful local characters and Matilda’s Alisha Weir as Rose’s daughter. This is a warm and thoughtful film that depicts women in all their shades, not just black and white.

14 Days, edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston

A run down New York apartment building during the 2020 COVID lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’ is the setting for this series of short stories. A group of residents collect on the roof every evening to cheer essential workers and share some kind of community amid the fear and despair. They are the ones who could not afford to flee the city and are largely older, poorer, less white, more queer. Seemingly with little in common but their plight, they bicker and bond as they share stories of friends, lovers, families, pasts and distant homelands. Billed as a collaborative novel, this is something of a concept album, with 36 short stories from a disparate group of well-known authors, set within a framework. Readers don’t know who has written which story until an appendix lists them alphabetically and identifies their character/s and tale/s. Editor and contributor Douglas Preston has done the heavy lifting in setting the framework and fitting all the stories and characters into some kind of coherent whole. But there are so many characters, known only by nicknames, that it is easy to lose track of who is who. The quality of the stories varies from stunningly memorable to dull rubbish and a few serve as baffling interludes that don’t really fit the narrative, until a twist at the end ties everything together. This is an interesting exercise that provides a poignant reminder of what should not be forgotten from a bizarre and terrifying period of recent history that is already fading from view.