PERFECT DAYS

 Wim Wenders' idea of an 'action' movie is having someone stumble after silently walking down a street for ten minutes of screen time. He is, in other words, a minimalist who draws you slowly but inexorably into his sagas of lonely men living largely isolated existences and his new film, "Perfect Days", is no exception.

His hero, Hirayama, is a middle-aged Tokyo toilet cleaner, superbly played by Koji Yakusho, (he won Best Actor at Cannes), without doing almost anything at all and Wenders simply follows him through his mostly silent days and nights as he cleans toilets, tends to his plants, takes the occasional photo, reads William Faulkner and listens to a lot of sixties and seventies American music on what we now might think of as ancient cassettes. Considering how fully Yakusho embodies his role this could just as easily be a documentary about a real toilet cleaner.

Of course, it won't be a film for everyone; its simplicity and lack of what we might call a plot could prove off-putting to a lot of people, (perhaps the nearest thing to a plot in the film deals with the love life, or lack of it, of Hirayama's co-worker). Naturally, among the music Hirayama listens to is Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day' and while his life might seem conventional and even boring to most people to Hirayama every day is perfect. So, too, is Wenders' film which, on reflection, you could even call his Japanese "Paris, Texas".

CHALLENGERS

 How sexy you find tennis probably depends very much on how sexy you find the players; the men's sweaty, muscular bodies when the shirts come off; the women racing around the court in their short skirts. The whole idea is more like something out of the comic 'Viz' than the real thing and it's this element that Luca Guadagnino wants us to keep in the forefront of our minds when watching "Challengers".

Guadagnino's latest is as much about the sex as it is about the tennis and very enjoyable it is, too. Never one to shy away from laying things on a tad thickly he goes all out here in a steamy tale of sexual as well as professional rivalry. Tashi, (Zendaya), is the up-and-coming potential champion while Patrick, (Josh O'Connor), and Art, (Mike Faist), are the young turks and boyhood friends who both spy her at the same time, both wanting her as much perhaps as they may even want each other.

At the centre of the film is a long tennis match between the two men, one of whom is now Tashi's ex-lover and the other, her husband but the action is broken up by flashbacks telling us how all three have reached this point in their lives. It's a technique that works surprisingly well both in building up a picture of the protagonists, (the three leads are superb), as well as naturally building up suspense, at least until the climax which isn't so much treated as a tennis match as a battle between two young gods on the slopes of Mount Olympus with an ending bordering on parody. Still, this is top-notch multiplex fare, brilliantly shot, edited and acted and further proof that Guadagnino is up there with the best of them.

MONKEY MAN

 There's no doubt that Dev Patel is a fine actor and now, with his first film as a director, someone who clearly knows the ropes. Unfortunately that film, "Monkey Man" is just another "John Wick" rip-off set in Mumbai, an ultra-violent revenge fantasy distinguished, if at all, by a subplot involving a community of Hijiras living on the margins who help our hero when he needs it most.

Otherwise it's business as usual and something of a vanity project for Patel, very well made but hardly pleasant viewing. With its main plot involving political corruption and the rise of right-wing politics in India as well as murder and revenge, it's a tad more intelligent than the Wick movies and the action scenes should ensure its success at the box-office but personally I found the excessive violence a turn-off.