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The Searchlight logo made up to look like the 70's Fox one is a nice touch.

domino harvey wrote:Trailer

I'm pretty surprised that, at least in the trailer, the film chooses to ignore the [however disputed] theory that Riggs threw the match to settle a mafia debt

mfunk9786 wrote:I'm pretty surprised that, at least in the trailer, the film chooses to ignore the [however disputed] theory that Riggs threw the match to settle a mafia debt

This is completely ignored in the film. That doesn't mean it's not true, but it wouldn't match the version of Riggs seen in this film.

This was the fifth film I saw at TIFF, and the one I regretted seeing the most, not because it isn't good (it is), but because I could have just waited a week and seen it for cheaper, and more comfortably. But the film is very good, and surprisingly touching. It's actually about not just the infamous match, but also covers Billie Jean King being instrumental in the creation of the women's tour and King's coming to terms with her sexuality. It also shows the first "Battle of the Sexes" match between Riggs and Margaret Court. The Emma Stone parts are much better that the Steve Carrell sections; Stone really owns this film and if she hadn't won the Oscar last year. she'd probably be more of a shoo-in this year.

I saw this today. It's a beautiful film that is smart enough to figure out the real story is King’s life and relationships and not the match itself. The only places where the film stumbles are the scenes with Steve Carell acting like a buffoon—this is the sort of nonsense that detracts from the sensitively handled story at the core of the film.

The best line in the film comes from Alan Cumming at the end- when the filmmakers wrote it, they thought it would make the audience cry because we would recognize how far we’ve come. In 2017, it makes us cry because we realize how far we have to go.

This is a really nicely shot but unfortunately merely passable movie with a lot of dollar-store dialogue and an unnecessarily overprotective soundtrack. The performances are all terrific, the costumes and sets are eyepopping, but I wish they'd taken another couple passes at the script and either trimmed it to a more habitable 90 minutes or given us more meat to make all two hours really worth our time. There might actually be a really good movie under the incessantly nattering score - watch it for Emma Stone and the tennis.

Well, this was every bit the run of the mill biopic I suspected it would be, even with such a great cast. I agree, the film is often nicely shot, but to no ends. Stone and Carrel are fine, but they can both play these roles in their sleep. I thought the film did a good job of laying on the sexism so thick and in such an unsubtle fashion only to then climax by using what I assume are real newscasts and talking heads from the match to illustrate that, "No, actually, things were this ridiculous only a few decades ago." The film is less convincing in its handling of the gay aspects of the story: I could have done without the silliness of Stone's Fairy Godfathers looking on and guiding her from the sidelines, and the strong eroticism of Stone's initial lesbian interaction is a stark mismatch for the rest of the film's tone, for better or worse. Also, can we get an MPAA rules change to outlaw any more AM Gold soundtracks?

Interestingly, after watching I realized I had to edit the thread title, as Dayton and Faris swapped the order of their director credit in the film, for the obvious reason!

Basically agree with Domino, though I would like to say (however much this thread seems to disagree) that I thought the Carell scenes were handled better both in dramatic terms (Carell plays desperate so well) and because they get to do so many weird visuals with him. The Stone scenes are much more generically shot period prettiness.

This movie was so forgettable that when this thread came back up to the top I wondered why I'd posted in it.

The film featured one of my favorite pieces of original score from last year.