Series 7: The Contenders

The "reality TV" craze is taken to its final, logical extreme as six people hunt each other down in a small town for the benefit of network TV cameras in this darkly comic satire. "The Contenders" is a top-rated television game show in which six contestants are set loose in the same Connecticut ...more

Daniel Minahan's remarkable debut feature has the sting of some of the best American media send-ups (Network, for starters), but its timeliness gives it an impressive ardor all its own. One of the more inventive and audacious recent films to explore the nation's obsession with sensationalism, the movie scores also as bona fide entertainment, reeling in the viewer in the same way an actual "reality" program might. The violence-as-spectatorship angle has been explored onscreen before, but never ...more