Josh O'Connor

Golden Boy, written by Clifford Odets in 1937, feels like a Norman Wisdom movie. A talented boxer wants to become a great violinist so he refuses to throw heavy punches in case he damages his fingers. The boxer, Joe, comes from a loving family who urge him to pursue a musical career but he meets a greedy, fast-talking agent, Tom, who promises him wealth and fame in the ring. To prise Joe away from his family, Tom encourages his adorable girlfriend, Lorna, to use her influence on him. Lorna promptly falls in love with Joe and the romantic triangle adds heaps of conflict to his career as a boxing champ. Josh O’Connor, looking more like a Hungarian philosopher than a streetfighter, brings an arrogant physicality to the role of Joe.

La chimera, which, as in English, means something like ‘the unrealisable dream’, is the latest film from Italian writer/director Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro). Her films are arthouse, in the sense that if you’re in the mood for someone blowing stuff up and escaping by speedboat while enjoying flirtatious repartee with a sexy lady, this probably won’t cut it. But if you’re in the mood for something original and woozy and riotous and wonderfully special, you will be able to fill your boots. Arthur has a kind of superpower that enables him to locate buried loot just by coming over funny It is set in Italy in the 1980s and stars Josh O’Connor as Arthur. Arthur is a tombarolo.

It sounds straightforward enough: a tennis romance starring Zendaya, idol of the mid-teen demographic and last seen riding a sandworm in Dune: Part Two. She plays Tashi Duncan, a junior player tipped for greatness, who finds herself in a love triangle with two other juniors: spoilt-but-roguish Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and nice-but-needy Art (Mike Faist). You might anticipate a girl-power version of Richard Loncraine’s Wimbledon (2004), with white skirts fluttering in summer breezes, coy glances at a face in the crowd, and a dramatic climax featuring a net rally in a final-set tie-break. Despite the lengthy game sequences, it’s not a film about tennis But Challengers is a very different kettle of fish.