Movie Review: I, Tonya

I, Tonya **** / *****

Directed by: Craig Gillespie.

Written by: Steven Rogers.

Starring: Margot Robbie (Tonya Harding), Sebastian Stan (Jeff Gillooly), Allison Janney (LaVona Golden), Julianne Nicholson (Diane Rawlinson), Paul Walter Hauser (Shawn Eckhardt), Mckenna Grace (Young Tonya Harding), Bobby Cannavale (Hard Copy Reporter), Bojana Novakovic (Dody Teachman), Caitlin Carver (Nancy Kerrigan), Jason Davis (Al Harding), Anthony Reynolds (Derrick Smith), Ricky Russert (Shane Stant).

 

You can say a lot of things about Tonya Harding – most of them, not flattering – but you have to admit that she really was close to having one of the greatest underdog sports stories ever. She grew up poor, with abusive or absent parents, got married very young – to a man who may well have abused her as well, and was still, at one point, one of the very best figure skaters in the world. While her competitors got to focus on nothing other than skating, she had to work, and deal with an insane family. None of this excuses what happened – but it certainly makes her interesting. She really is the reason why “the incident” became such a massive media event – and she’s the reason why it’s remembered. Nancy Kerrigan is better remembered for that incident than anything else – which is completely unfair to her, but also true. She’s boring – Harding most definitely is not.

 

I, Tonya is probably the best feature film version of this story that you could ask for – and it’s done in the perfect style for it. The vast majority of the action takes place in the early to mid-1990s, so director Craig Gillespie basically decides to make a film directly from that era. You can see a lot of GoodFellas-era Scorsese influence, a little Coen brother mixture of mockery and humanity, and a lot of Gus Van Sant’s To Die For in the film as well. What happens in the film is so insane you would never in a million years believe it, if it was not true. But – of course – it is.

 

Margot Robbie plays Harding, and it’s a performance that once and for all should prove to everyone just how good she is (I was convinced after The Wolf of Wall Street – and in general, I don’t think she’s been bad in anything, even if the movie sucked). Yes, she’s too old to play Harding starting at 15, but you get over that pretty quick. This is a brash performance – mixing humor with humanity, and more than a healthy dose of self-delusion (Harding never thought she was responsible for anything, ever). The film requires a lot of Robbie – and she carries it well. As her infamous husband/manager Jeff Gilloly, Sebastian Stan is quite good as well – looking awful with a horrible mustache, the film has him flash between sweetly dim, and violent and abusive (the film is structured like a documentary, with various people telling their stories, and then we see those scenes, so you get different version of the people). The best performance in the movie belongs to Allison Janney as Harding’s mother LaVona – you wouldn’t say that she humanizes her – LaVona is clearly a monster, abusive, belittling and controlling, but you get to see what makes her tick. The various guys involving in the actual crime are all convincingly played as a gaggle of idiots – none more so than Paul Walter Hauser as Gilloly’s best friend Shawn – the “body guard and international terrorism expert”. He is hilarious in every scene he’s in.

 

I, Tonya does a great job at walking that fine line between mockery and simply portraying its characters. It would be easy to mock many of them – they are not smart, they are delusional, and from 25 years in the future, the dress and style themselves horribly. The film is certainly funny – it has to be given everything that happens – but it also positions itself well in terms of explaining why this story caught the way it did back then – and what that may mean about us today. The film never gets overt about it – but we see what the story that knocked Harding out of the headlines was, and we know what that means – and we see what she did in later years. She was a reality TV star before reality TV.

 

The film is also, it must be said, just extremely entertaining – an absolute blast from beginning to end. If you’re going to make a film about this subject, you have to fully embrace its inherent sleaziness – and this film does just that. It’s a film that keeps you laughing while watching it – and only really sinks in later.

Movie Review: Million Dollar Arm

Million Dollar Arm
Directed by: Craig Gillespie.
Written by: Thomas McCarthy.
Starring: Jon Hamm (JB), Pitobash (Amit), Suraj Sharma (Rinku), Madhur Mittal (Dinesh), Aasif Mandvi (Aash), Darshan Jariwala (Vivek), Lake Bell (Brenda), Alan Arkin (Ray), Bill Paxton (Tom House), Gregory Alan Williams (Doug), Allyn Rachel (Theresa), Tzi Ma (Chang), Rey Maualuga (Popo), Bar Paly (Lisette).

Normally, I am a sucker for a good inspirational sports movie – and for the most part, Disney makes these better than just about anyone. Put on Remember the Titans (2000), The Rookie (2002) Miracle (2004) or Invincible or Glory Road (both 2006) and I usually fall under their spell all over again – and I will have a good time, and probably end up crying at some point. I may not feel very good about that later – none of them are particularly great movies, but they are effective at being precisely what they want to be – male oriented tear jerkers. So, I was looking forward to Million Dollar Arm – which looked to be another one in Disney’s lineup. Unfortunately, it kind of seems like everyone is just going through the motions in this one – and when you couple it with the fact the real story isn’t exactly the most inspiring one in the world (the movie doesn’t lie per se – but it does stop before the end of the story) and overall I wasn’t overly thrilled with the film.

The film stars Jon Hamm as JB Bernstein – a once successful sports agent, who decided to strike out on his own a few years before, and had things go poorly ever since. He is basically on the edge of his company going under – when he sees a cricket match on TV and gets an idea. The pitchers in cricket throw the ball really hard, right? So what if they turn them into baseball players? India has some of the best cricket players in the world, and they don’t watch baseball – but give them a couple of stars, and you baseball has a billion new fans overnight (or so the theory goes anyway). As he’s watching the cricket match on TV, he’s switching back and forth between it and an episode of Britain’s Got Talent – and he has an even better idea. Do the whole thing as a game show in India. It’s surprisingly easy for JB to get the money together to do this, and to find a scout (Alan Arkin) who can help JB ensure they get good players, and a coach (Bill Paxton) who is willing to work with the winners when they come to America. JB`s backer has one stipulation – the winners have to be ready for a tryout for pro-scouts in one year.

The film was directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Tom McCarthy – both of whom are capable of much better, and are most likely just doing this for the paycheck. McCarthy in particular is quite talented (no matter what critics say about his latest, The Cobbler, out of TIFF – nothing can change the fact his previous three films, The Station Agent, The Visitor and Win Win are all excellent (that last one in particular is a smart sports film, which shows he could do this better if he really wanted to). One of the major problems with Million Dollar Arm is that the whole movie seems rushed – as if we have to rush from one moment to the next, so that the movie can try and be all things to all people – in addition to an inspirational sports movie, the film also wants to be a fish out of water comedy, a romantic comedy (courteous of Hamm's tenant, played by Lake Bell), and a few other things as well. The film never really settles down to allow any of the different plot threads to settle though. Just when the movie is settling into a story of an almost Don Draper-type sales person (probably why they cast Hamm), albeit a much kinder, gentler one – the film switches gears to be a comedy about Americans not understanding India, and then just as that is settling down again, it flips and becomes just the reverse – and the previously nice JB becomes an asshole, just so he can become a nice guy at the end and be redeemed. Through it all, the actual story of the two pitchers from India – played by Suraj Sharma, from Life of Pi, and Madhur Mittal, as well as their translator (Pitobash) seems almost like an afterthought much of the time. And in case you haven’t been paying attention to baseball over the past few years, they are not exactly tearing up the major league right now – although the movie ends, conveniently, on a high note for the pair.

The film never really works – it never really figures out what the real story here is – which isn’t about a sports agent who learns to be less of an asshole, but that of two poor kids from India who had never played baseball before who became pretty good over the course of a single year. Yet the Indian characters are never really well defined – the screenplay does little to differentiate between them. They are simply a way to tell the story of the films hero – a rich, white sports agent. The film in a corporate product, about a corporate product which tries very hard to be inspiring, but left me cold.

DVD Review: Fright Night

Fright Night ** ½

Directed by: Craig Gillespie.

Written by: Marti Noxon based on the film written by Tom Holland.

Starring: Anton Yelchin (Charley Brewster), Colin Farrell (Jerry), Toni Collette (Jane Brewster), David Tennant (Peter Vincent), Imogen Poots (Amy), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Ed).

I have to admit right off the top that I never saw the original Fright Night from 1985. While I love ‘70s horror films, I have found that many of the ones from the ‘80s are cheesy rather than scary, and don’t really do much for me, so right off, I think it’s fair to say I have nothing to compare this new version to.

This Fright Night is a passable horror film – and not much else. I like the idea of casting Anton Yelchin, who has more range than many actors his age do. Perhaps the filmmakers were inspired by what a great job Jesse Eisenberg did in Zombieland, mingling in humor with the horror, and Yelchin tries to bring the same thing to Fright Night (although the screenplay isn’t as good). Yelchin is Charlie, a high school nerd, who has moved up in social standing since landing the gorgeous Amy (Imogen Poots – who I’m still convinces is a Harry Potter character) as his girlfriend. This means he has essentially abandoned his old nerd friends – like Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But Ed is concerned because his only remaining friend – and one time friend of Charley – has gone missing, along with his whole family. Ed is convinced that Charley’s new neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire, and even Charley’s convincing argument that Jerry is a “horrible vampire name” doesn’t convince otherwise. But then Ed goes missing too, and Charley is starting to notice strange things about Jerry. Perhaps Ed was right. The only person Charley thinks may be able to help him is a Criss Angel type magician, obsessed with vampires named Peter Vincent (David Tennant) – but of course, his show is just an act. Or is it?

Fright Night is an enjoyable horror movie for the most part. It adds a few laughs to go along with the scares, and I for one am glad that the filmmakers didn’t neuter the film by trying to make it PG-13. This is a bloody, profane little film. Yelchin anchors the movie with his fine performance, and he is ably helped by Toni Collette as his mom, and Poots, who makes Amy not just an average high school beauty. As for Colin Farrell, I found his performance to be uneven. There are times when he seems to be relishing his vampire role – getting off on all the creepy stuff he gets to say, and glorying in looking evil. And then there are times when he seems to be going through the motions. From one scene to the next, I never knew what Farrell I was going to see.

The film was directed with efficiency by Craig Gillespie. He directed the fine indie comedy Lars and the Real Girl, where Ryan Gosling is in love with a blow-up sex doll. That was a surprising sweet film, dodging every trap you would think a movie about a man and a sex doll could possibly fall into. I guess however, we may have to add Gillespie to the list of indie filmmakers who go on to make Hollywood films and never look back. That’s a shame, because while Fright Night is well handled, it could have been directed by nearly anyone with the same results. Few could have made Lars and the Real Girl as well as he did.

I can’t say that Fright Night is a bad movie, because it isn’t. For horror fans, it is a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. No, it didn’t really scare me, but few films do. It is well made and for the most part well acted. But like Farrell’s performance, too often it just felt like it was going through the motions.