I, Tonya

On a purely emotional level, Margot Robbie should have won an Oscar for this wild parade of domestic violence, 90s fashion, crazy bangs, a boorish family background and figure skating, because there's hardly a character in the last year that has had such a broad appeal and reflected society so well, as well as the values of will, hard work, life's victories, losses and realising your dream, no matter how self-typical. She downright steals some scenes, such as the one at the courthouse at the end, overshadowing not only the other actors but also the otherwise excellent technical ensemble. I,Tonya is also on the same level as Titanic or the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one respect, the visual effects serve as a means of supporting the story, not as mere eye-candy. At the same time, they are hardly visible at all and the ice-skating scenes are filmed fantastically, yet unspectacularly, so not everyone notices. It's not a great film, but for the first time in a long time a story of the rise and fall of a person in an antipathetic way with very peculiar, harsh humour. (2018-05-13)

As excellent as the performances are, the true star of the film is Gillespie, the director, who managed put together a boisterous story with motivations that cannot be fully understood and where you don’t really have anyone to root for due to the moral ugliness of all the characters, and he did it in such an energetic and coherent way, comparable to Martin Scorsese at his best. I can’t remember any other film where I enjoyed so much the retrospective structure supplemented by the narration of the participants, all complemented with “Soderbergh-like” breaks in the shape of the remarkable soundtrack, on which the staging of many scenes depends, or the sudden time jumps for the sake of more striking twists. Under this barrage of great ideas and interesting (though awful) characters, it almost doesn’t matter than the runtime could have been shorter and the secondary plots better resolved. A welcome breath of fresh air to the stereotypic Academy shelves, it’s a pity that Margot didn’t get there, too. (2019-02-27)

It's hard to see such a wonderfully brisk, energetic and above all entertaining biopic, and the almost Coen-like humor suits this real, yet barely believable story immensely. The same can be said of the soundtrack, which almost perfectly underlines the dynamics of the narrative. The American figure skater Tonya Harding grew up a poor redneck with a psychopathic mother and a father who ran away from them. Her childhood was simply unhappy. Probably for these reasons she didn't look very feminine on the ice, but she was an excellent jumper of her time. I have to admit that Margot Robbie in the title role and Allison Janney as the tough mother really got under my skin, playing their roles so convincingly. (95%) (2023-03-21)

This biographical character study featuring well-developed characters is interesting due to the contrast between the protagonist’s redneck nature and the refined world of figure skating, which is everything for her. The world from which she came and the crowd that surrounds her (and that she has chosen for herself) produce drama worthy of a genre movie, event though no lives are put in danger. Great actors, engaging athletic performances. (2018-03-04)

I didn't think I was going to be that entertained by this film, but given the way it is shot and the performances in particular (Margot Robbie and the incredibly exuberant Allison Janney, not to mention little McKenna, who shines everywhere, even if only for a moment in this film), I had to smile and just enjoy myself the entire time, also because of how interestingly the film is shot. (2018-01-24)