Movies: Sumer 2023

Monarch Movie Recommendations

CHALLENGERS
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Zendaya, Josh O’connor, and Mike Faist

Director Luca Guadagnino has built a loyal fanbase after releasing two Timothée Chalamet-led films: 2017’s Call Me by Your Name and 2022’s Bones and All. Now the director is pivoting to tennis (as a subject matter at least), having enlisted Zendaya and West Side Story’s Mike Faist to star. Challengers centers around three tennis players, Tashi (Zendaya), her husband Art (Faist), and Patrick (Josh O’Connor), Tashi’s ex-boyfriend and Art’s former best friend. The three have all known each other since they were teenagers, and Tashi, a player turned coach, sets out to help her husband become a champion. To jolt him out of his recent losing streak, she makes him play a “Challenger” event— close to the lowest level of tournament on the pro tour—where he finds himself standing across the net from the once-promising, now-burned-out Patrick.

WHITE BIRD
Director: Marc Forster
Starring: En Mirren, Orlando Schwerdt, and Ariella Glaser

Based on the book by the best-selling author of Wonder, this uplifting movie shows how one act of kindness can live on forever. Julian has struggled to belong ever since he was expelled from his former school for his treatment of Auggie Pullman. To transform his life, Julian’s grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage. During her youth in Nazi-occupied France, a boy shelters her from mortal danger. Together, they find first love in a stunning, magical world of their own creation while the boy’s mother risks everything to keep her safe.

OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK
Directors: Michael Jai White & Byron Minns
Starring: Erica Ash, Kym Whitley, and Anika Noni Rose

Witnessing his preacher and part-time trick shooter father, Bullseye Black, get gunned down in cold blood by cutthroat rough rider Brett Clayton and his gang, Johnny Black grows up with a heart full of hate and vengeance and a bullet he’s carved with Clayton’s name on it. His only goal in life is to track down and kill Clayton.

THE CREATOR
Director: Gareth Edwards
Starring: John David Washington, Gemma Chan, and Ralph Ineson

The Creator is a thrilling sci-fi journey based on futurism and pushing the boundaries of AI.
Set in the future, it follows an ex-special forces agent, Joshua, who is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, who developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end a war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence—and mankind itself.

THE EQUALIZER 3
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, and Sonia Ben Ammar

Since giving up his life as a government assassin, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has struggled to reconcile the horrific things he’s done in the past and finds a strange solace in serving justice on behalf of the oppressed. Finding himself surprisingly at home in southern Italy, he discovers his new friends are under the control of local crime bosses. As events turn deadly, McCall knows what he has to do: become his friends’ protector by taking on the Mafia.