Run time: 139 mins

Luca Guadagnino swaps the sweat and sensuality of Challengers for the icy corridors of Yale in this glossy academic thriller where intellect, ego and moral panic collide.

Julia Roberts stars as Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor forced to choose sides when a promising student (Ayo Edebiri) accuses a colleague (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. What follows is less a campus scandal than a sleekly stylised game of loyalty, power, and perception.

Guadagnino shoots academia like high fashion. It’s all polished wood, soft lighting and emotional repression. Nora Garrett’s script turns philosophical debate into verbal sparring. Roberts is superb: controlled, brittle, and quietly ferocious, her performance suggesting a woman whose intellect has become both weapon and shield. Garfield relishes his slippery charm, and Edebiri plays ambiguity like a chess master. Fresh off of their work on Tron: Ares, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s pulsing score underscores the tension, giving every exchange a faint hum of danger beneath the surface.

It’s a film more interested in appearances than answers, but perhaps that’s the point. Guadagnino’s lens lingers on style, not substance, but in this world of shifting truths and careful facades, honesty was never really the point.