I, Tonya

This morning I saw I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie and Allison Janney.

Figure skater Tonya Harding (Robbie) should be remembered for her career-making triple axel, but the history books will only care about the scandal involving how her rival, Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver), got clubbed in the knee. This film shows what (may have) happened, based on interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) who were both charged in the attack.

Disclaimer before I continue: Tonya Harding isn't just some abstract figure that I saw on television when I was younger—she was a girl from the neighborhood. As a Southeast Portland native, our families crossed paths multiple times. As a young child, my sister took ice skating lessons with her at Lloyd Center ice rink; in high school, I spent many lunch breaks watching Tonya practice for The Olympics because she trained at the Clackamas Town Center rink, which was in the mall where I worked. Also in the early 1990s, my Grandmother worked for a senior club's dance classes where I sometimes helped out at the registration desk—and chatted often with Tonya's mother (who went by 'Sandy,' not LaVona, as the movie shows). She was always quite pleasant to me.

The movie is shot like a mockumentary. The actors narrate their sides of the story, talking-head style, and re-enactments look back on the events that shaped Tonya's life. They begin with her practices at Lloyd Center in the early '70s, emphasizing how tough her mother was on her. They age her quickly so Margo Robbie can take the reins portraying her, and that she does quite well. Her scenes are both laugh-out-loud hilarious and tear-inducing sad.

By the time Tonya's competing at a professional level, she's already fallen in love with Gillooly (who was also abusive) and fallen out with her mother. Tonya was bratty, rebellious, tough—a poster girl for white trash—but she was also dedicated, talented and real.

Janney's portrayal of Sandy ... er, LaVona, is bait for every major award. She nails her mannerisms and intonation, and offers just enough in her eyes to show that the mother truly loves her daughter. Also impressive was Sebastian Stan as Gillooly, who always appeared very mild-mannered on the surface, but was a violent jerk behind closed doors. I'm pretty sure he really loved Tonya too, in whatever warped way he could.

Where the film goes wrong is its portrayal of Portland. Those of us who were born and raised there (and probably those who have only visited, too) can tell that it wasn't filmed there. Georgia foliage doesn't look like Pacific Northwest greenery. Also, little details are off—like, Lloyd Center was an outside mall until their major remodel in 1991, but in the first few scenes it looks like tiny Tonya practices on an indoor rink. The vibe should be more Portlandia and less small-town-hicksville. We get that she didn't have a lot of money; simple stock footage of the skyline would have been a nice touch to remind us there was a city that claimed her and was alternately proud/embarrassed by her.

The way they present the sequence of events is wildly entertaining, though. You won't be bored for a millisecond. And the story will most likely leave you empathizing with the former skater more than hating her.

Overall, I'd give it a 5.8.

~~~

Wendy and Lucy

Tonight I saw Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams and Lucy.

Have you ever been in a situation where one bad thing happened and then another followed, and another, until you felt as if the whole universe was against you?

This is how you'll feel watching events unfold in the life of Wendy (Williams), a young girl from Indiana who is headed to Alaska to work in a Ketchikan cannery.

We first see her playing with her dog Lucy (Lucy) in the woods and learn she is in Oregon. After she wakes up to a security guard telling her she's not allowed to sleep on Walgreen's property, she realizes her car won't start. And thus begins her own personal spiral to hell.

With one bad choice, her world soon spins out of control and we're held emotionally hostage wanting so badly for it to all turn out okay for her. Why do we care? This is what makes the movie good: we have very few clues as to what put Wendy in this situation, yet her almost numb responses to each event make us unimaginably sympathetic. She seems like a decent person who is just down on her luck—and haven't we all been down on our luck at one point in our lives or another?

The film moves at a slow, quiet pace, but is never boring. The few supporting characters that emerge (the security guard, the mechanic, etc.) feel as though they're real people who we may actually encounter when we have car trouble ourselves; the dog is undeniably sweet.

And Michelle Williams amazing performance makes this very human story work.

See this movie—you'll painfully cringe at her misfortune while joyfully tearing up at the sight of the kindness she experiences.

Feast of Love

This morning I saw Feast of Love, starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

I liked this movie a lot more than most critics.

Set in my home city of Portland, Oregon, the story follows Professor Harry Stevenson (Freeman) as he observes his friends and neighbors falling in and out of love as they're guided by (or prisoners of) fate.

The tender relationship he maintains with his wife Esther (played refreshingly by Tell Me That You Love Me's Jane Alexander) acts as an anchor to the turbulent love lives of virtually everyone he encounters.

His friend Bradley (Kinnear), who owns a coffee shop, is irritating in an unintentional way and this ultimately causes him to lose his wife to a lesbian. As he dusts himself off and tries to find another match, we're introduced to Oscar - one of his coffee shop employees who is a former heroin addict and his love-at-first-sight girlfriend Chloe.

Of all the relationships, theirs is the most genuine.

But that's not to say the rest aren't believable. There are many a married men who can't read their wives, cheat on them and make futile attempts to keep it together. And there are also mistresses who are genuinely in love with other women's husbands and still other women who may decide to switch teams after several years of being straight.

The main problem with this movie is that it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be an aw-shucks romantic comedy or a Crash-like preachy lesson on love, God and fate.

There's also a ridiculous character called The Bat, played by Fred Ward, who is possibly the worst-written alcoholic father in the history of cinema.

Nonetheless, I still enjoyed it (despite the fact that one of the scenes features a loud thunderstorm that would never happen in Portland).

If nothing else, go to be charmed by the ever-appealing Freeman.