Robert Emms

Skilfully made by Swedish filmmaker Janus Metz (the award-winning Armadillo), this film is essentially a biopic about tennis icon Bjorn Borg that centres on his fascinating rivalry with John McEnroe. Indeed, in Scandinavia, the film is simply titled Borg. But the script has a complexity to it that finds clever parallels between two players who seem on the surface to be opposites. And it has things to say that will resonate with audiences who know nothing about tennis history.

It's set around the 1980 Wimbledon final, an epic match that captured the world's attention as it pitted the ice-cool four-time champion Borg (Sverrir Gudnason) against the volcanically tempered upstart McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf, in a nifty bit of casting). While it felt like a battle between the old guard and a young upstart, there were actually only three years between 24-year-old Borg and 21-year-old McEnroe. But while Borg was intensely focussed, meeting with his manager Lennart (Stellan Skarsgard) and keeping his fiancee (Tuva Novotny) at arm's length, McEnroe was partying with his friends, fellow players Peter Fleming (Scott Arthur) and Vitas Garulitis (Robert Emms), at least until time came to meet them on court.

The script digs occasionally into McEnroe's childhood, but spends considerably more time with Borg over the years (played as a youngster by Leo Borg, Bjorn's son, and as a teen by Marcus Mossberg). Intriguingly, when he was younger Borg was a lot more like McEnroe, with a short temper that erupts into epic tantrums, and watching him he learn to suppress them is fascinating. In the present day, Gudnason and LaBeouf capture the characters perfectly both on-court and off, finding big contrasts and more subtle similarities. And both Novotny and Skarsgard have strong scenes of their own, creating real-life people out of what could have been simplistic side roles.

Continue reading: Borg/McEnroe Review

While this strikingly well-made film is a great calling card for rising-star filmmaker Norris, it's also so relentlessly dark and unsettling that it's difficult to see the point of it all. This is such a bleak coming-of-age tale that it almost obscures any hope at all, focussing a series of horrific incidents into a confined space that gives the actors and filmmaker a change to shine, but leaves the audience exhausted.

It's set in a North London cul-de-sac, where the pre-teen Skunk (Laurence) lives with her big brother Jed (Milner), her single dad (Roth) and her nanny Kasia (Marjanovic). But her happy life is thrown into chaos when violence erupts: hotheaded widower Bob (Kinnear) storms across the street and punches simple-minded Rick (Emms), seemingly for no reason, triggering a series of events that Skunk struggles to understand. And Bob's three daughters seem to be just as violent. One (Bryant) is mercilessly bullying Skunk at school, while another (Daveney) is seducing Jed.

The way so many story elements circle around Skunk makes the film feel almost like a stage play. Everyone is so interconnected that we wonder if much of this exists only in her mind. For example, Kasia has just started a relationship with Skunk's schoolteacher (Murphy), who has been accused of abusing one of Bob's daughters. And there are even more issues that put Skunk in both emotional and physical peril, including a new boyfriend (Sergeant) who might have to move away and the fact that she has Type 1 diabetes. And Skunk's world seems to be limited to her street and a junkyard across the field.

Continue reading: Broken Review