The Last Scene in a Film
‘Challengers’
Mike Faist in “Challengers.”Credit…MGM
Real tennis, like real dancing, happens when the body is rapt and alive, where visceral sensation takes over and the only thing left is the crystallization of every nerve and muscle, both aligned and on edge. That last match was a dance.
—Gia Kourlas
Season Premiere
‘The Bear’
Season 3 of “The Bear” turned out to be a disappointing holding action. But its first episode — a fraught, often wordless montage of Carmy’s tweezer-cuisine education, obsessive discipline and damaged personal life — was set to a wall-to-wall score, an extended version of “Together” from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), that pulsed quietly and captured every bit of tense, determined perfectionism within just four chords.
—Jon Pareles
Death in Vienna
‘La Traviata’
I’m not a big opera guy, but I saw “La Traviata” in Vienna this summer, and the ending featured one of the greatest onstage deaths I’ve seen. Simon Stone’s hyper-contemporary production is staged alongside a revolving cube; in the closing moments, as tuberculosis vanquishes Violetta, that cube cracks open, and she falls backward out of the playing area, swallowed by a swirling mist, knowing she has simultaneously found her love and lost her life.
—Michael Paulson
Rom-Coms
‘Nobody Wants This’
Little did I know that a show with a witty Kristen Bell and ever charming Adam Brody at the helm was the feel-good TV I was missing in my life. The story follows Joanne (Bell), a podcast host, and Noah (Brody), a hot rabbi, who meet and fall in love despite their differing faiths, kooky families and some self-sabotaging tendencies. The scene of their first kiss gave me butterflies in a way that I hadn’t felt since watching my favorite romantic comedies of the early 2000s.
—Shivani Gonzalez
