REVIEW: Battle of the Sexes & The Meyerowitz Stories (LFF Days 2-3)

Battle of the Sexes

The real-life Battle of the Sexes, the 1973 tennis match between women’s world champion Billie Rae King and former men’s champion Bobby Riggs, is an event that might well have been conceived with dramatisation in mind.

To say that the film version, co-directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), in a populist, mainstream sports biopic takes nothing away from it.…

REVIEW: Mudbound & Wonderstruck (LFF Day 2)

Mudbound

“Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of sorrow.”

It’s misery and anguish that are the heart of Mudbound, Dee Rees’ Netflix-bound period drama about farmers in early 20th Century Mississippi.…

The Program is the real dope

 

The sound of the wind. Breathing. A steady heartbeat.

A man on a racing bike waggles his way up a scrubby hillside – his progress is measured, a gradual, steady ascent. Whether or not this is slow motion, it feels like it.…