I, Tonya: Harding Redeemed

By Pamela Zoslov

Actress Margot Robbie can be forgiven for not having heard of Tonya Harding, the champion figure skater implicated in a violent attack on Olympic rival Nancy Kerrigan in 1994. Robbie was born in 1990, and in Queensland, Australia at that.

Still, Ms. Robbie is a fine Tonya Harding in the black comedy I, Tonya, which uses a zesty mock-documentary format to tell the story of the talented athlete who achieved infamy in a scheme involving her ex-husband, Jeff Gilooly, a bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, hired assailants, and her lust for glory.

Directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) from a script by Steven Rogers (Hope Floats, Stepmom), I, Tonya sizzles with energy and irony. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film tells viewers it's based on “totally true interviews” with the principals of the notorious case: Tonya, her acerbic mother, LaVona (Alison Janney), Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), dimwitted bodyguard Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser), and a producer for “Hard Copy” (Bobby Cannavale), the TV tabloid show that, along with media everywhere, made bank off the Harding story. “There is no such thing as truth,” the movie's Tonya asserts in a low, raspy voice. “There is no such thing as truth. Everyone has their own truth.” And everyone has their say in this rinkside Rashomon.

 

Alison Janney as rinkside stage mom from hell.

LaVona tells her hard-luck story of raising the headstrong Tonya, who began skating at age 3 in their hometown of Portland, Oregon. “I guess we spoiled her,” she says, a claim belied by scenes of her verbally and physically abusing her daughter, the product of one of LaVona's several marriages. At 5, Tonya already had the burning desire to become a professional skater, and LaVona, dangling her omnipresent brown More cigarette, takes her to an ice rink and forces Coach Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson) to accept her, despite Diane's objections that she doesn't train beginners. (Young Tonya is played by Mckenna Grace.)

There's a class system at work in the girls' figure skating world. While Tonya is preternaturally talented, her athleticism and working-class background are handicaps in competition. She's made to feel unworthy in the sport, which requires girls to be ladylike and wear perfect little costumes and furs. (Tonya, who's been coached by her dad in rabbit hunting, tries to fit in by stitching together a homemade fur coat.) Throughout the movie, as her actions become ever more reprehensible, Mom LaVona laments that she sacrificed all for Tonya's career. Her meanness, she claims, pushed Tonya to greater heights, insisting in the present day, “She skated better when enraged.” In the interviews, LaVona is hooked up to portable oxygen, with a cockatoo perched on her shoulder, a nicely absurd touch. In real life, an epilogue tells us, Harding and her mother have been estranged for many years.

As Tonya's skating career takes off, she drops out of high school and marries Gillooly, the first boy she ever dated. He's crazy about her, but also violently abusive; in the “interviews,” Giloolly disputes Tonya's account of his brutality, but what we see is horrific. For Tonya, it's a continuation of her life with LaVona. Giloolly reflects on his infamy, and how, after the attack on Kerrigan, his funny-sounding surname “became a verb —” to “Gillooly someone” (to hit them violently in the knee with a baseball bat).

With a parade of tacky late-'80s hair and clothing styles, thrilling skating sequences that highlight Harding's astonishing skill (she was brilliant at the very challenging triple axel), and a soundtrack of '80s rock music both good and awful, the movie has exciting energy and a wry tone befitting the trashy saga.



The script relies on Harding's version of events, which mostly absolves her of guilt in the 1994 attack on Kerrigan. A brief summary: On January 6, 1994, after a practice session at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, a man named Shane Stant attacked Kerrigan with a telescopic baton, bruising her leg. It quickly emerged that Stant had been hired by Gillooly and Eckhardt to attack Kerrigan and prevent her from competing at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Harding went on to win the national championship, and Kerrigan and Harding both were selected for the Olympics team. Harding finished eighth, and Kerrigan, recovered from her injury, won the silver medal.

As Harding tells it, she knew nothing about the planned attack, and was told only of a plan to send threatening letters to Kerrigan; the movie's account blames the escalation on Eckhardt. Wherever the blame lies, the fallout doomed Harding's career; she was banned for life from the sport, and was reduced to professional women's wrestling and other lowly activities. (The film doesn't mention her celebrity sex tape or her band, the Golden Blades, which got booed off the stage during its lone performance.)

Considering how badly Harding was treated by the media, which demonized and ridiculed her (she was a favorite late-night talk show punchline), the film's generous point of view is refreshing. As Tonya says in the movie, what is "truth" anyway?

Bob Ignizio's Favorite Movies of 2017

As this year comes to an end, so does the Cleveland Movie Blog. But first, one last obligatory year-end roundup article.

I had big plans for the last two weeks of December. I was going to get out and see most, if not all, of the big end-of-year awards bait movies playing locally. Alas, it was not to be. The whole family came down with various illnesses – flus, colds, sinus infections – that are still lingering as I write this.

So no, I did not see LADYBIRD, THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI, THE DISASTER ARTIST, THE SHAPE OF WATER, or THE FLORIDA PROJECT. I didn’t even get to see STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI.

Despite missing all those prominent releases, I still somehow managed to take in 160 first run features in 2017. Given that writing about film is more of a hobby than a job (i.e. no one pays me for this), those are respectable numbers. And out of those 160 films, there were more than enough exemplary movies that I still feel good about my list. If anything, not it means I have room to include some less ballyhooed movies that would, in any year, be worthy of inclusion on a “Best of” list. So without further ado, here are my best films of 2017, divided between scripted films and documentaries.

We Will Fight Them: Darkest Hour

By Pamela Zoslov

Darkest Hour chronicles the period following Winston Churchill's unlikely accession to UK Prime Minister in 1940 and his famous “We shall fight” radio address, a mere 48 hours later, stating that England would never compromise with or surrender to Hitler. The film was scripted by Anthony McCarten (who also wrote The Theory of Everything), for whom this episode in British history is a personal passion. The screenplay is adapted from a book McCarten wrote on the subject.

Gary Oldman, who is nearly as protean as Lon Chaney, is the umpteenth actor to portray “The British Bulldog.” Encased in masses of jowly makeup, Oldman persuasively affects Churchill's personality and mannerisms, or at least the way those are remembered through the unreliable prism of history. All that is recognizably Oldman are his eyes, which seem younger, and probably less bleary, than those of the prodigious drinker Churchill. (His daily alcohol intake was reportedly white wine with breakfast, champagne and brandy with lunch, two or three glasses of whiskey and soda in the afternoon, champagne and brandy with dinner, followed by more whiskey and soda.)

Pamela Zoslov's Favorite Movies of 2017

We bid farewell now to 2017, that most terrible, awful, Trump-cursed year. Good riddance, bad year! As always, the movie theater proved a good escape from the frenzied chaos, and the year brought us some excellent films, and not too many terrible ones.

My list of favorites includes two titles starting with "I," the first-person pronoun, and not one of this year's four movies with the word “Wonder” in the title. I did, however, like cinematography and Kate Winslet's performance in Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel. I didn't see everything this year, God knows, and have not seen some scheduled to be released soon, like The Post, All the Money in the World, Molly's Game and Phantom Thread.

The top movie on my list, Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is currently playing in theaters, and is getting the nominations and recognition it deserves. McDonagh, the Irish playwright whose infrequent movies have included the coruscating In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, has had a popular breakthrough with Three Billboards, in which Frances McDormand plays a woman determined to get justice for her murdered daughter.

Underworld: Blood Wars (now on home video)

Review by Bob Ignizio

Plotless is a criticism one often sees leveled against action films. That's one failing  UNDERWORLD: BLOOD WARS certainly does not suffer from. On the contrary, there is so much plot that the film becomes a huge, incomprehensible mess. Not only do we have four previous films worth of backstory to recount in flashbacks and voice-overs, but there are multiple factions of vampires and werewolves each working to their own ends as they cross and double-cross each other. And sure, you can follow it if you pay close attention, but given how dumb and ridiculous it all is, the rewards don’t really justify the effort.

Dumb and ridiculous has always been a trademark of the UNDERWORLD series in which blood sucking “death dealer” Selene (Kate Beckinsale) has to do battle with the savage Lycans (the series name for werewolves) while simultaneously fending off scheming members her own kind. That was fine in the previous films, though, as it never felt like they took themselves all that seriously. As disposable as they may have been, they were entertaining on a B movie level, always offering plenty of well-staged action scenes and cheesy special effects. Here, the action and CGI monsters seem like more of an afterthought, with Cory Goodman’s script instead focusing on the dense mythology of the series.

 

My Friend Dahmer

Review by Bob Ignizio

It’s funny how a movie adaptation of a book can be faithful in very many ways, and yet still wind up missing the heart and soul of its source material. Such is the case with MY FRIEND DAHMER, adapted from the graphic novel by Clevelander John “Derf” Backderf. It’s an autobiographical tale in which Derf (played in the film by Alex Wolff) recounts his high school semi-friendship with Jeff Dahmer (Ross Lynch), who would go on to become one of the most infamous serial killers in American history.

At the time, Dahmer just seemed like a harmless weirdo whose bizarre antics provided Derf and his friends with a source of amusement. They made Dahmer a mascot of sorts, encouraging his odd disruptive behavior. Eventually, though, the fun came to an end as Jeff's dark side became more apparent. This was most obvious in his level of alcohol consumption, which even in the party hearty era of the seventies seemed excessive, and clearly not done for fun.

Escape From New York (screens Oct.13 and Oct. 15 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK screens Friday October 13th at 7:30 pm and Sunday October 15th at 9:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinemathque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

All his career John Carpenter has told folks that he’s really only wanted to make “westerns.” Yet he has consistently delivered horror and science-fiction and the occasional one-off nonconformist like a good TV biopic of Elvis Presley (featuring Kurt Russell) or the police thriller ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which is regarded as a partial remake of RIO BRAVO. Okay, but not since his student-film days, if I’m not mistaken, has the dude actually delivered a genuine western.

Maybe he’s doing one of those things from The Little Prince, in which there’s a drawing of a lamb that is so perfect it’s just the box in which the lamb resides; you will never actually see a lamb, but you can still just imagine how the drawing is exactly right (sort of like my career). Same with John Carpenter and his “westerns.”

Carpenter’s 1981 flick ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, at least, does have the DNA of a proper Hollywood-studio western, in the Howard Hawks no-funny-business filmmaking style (most recently personified by Clint Eastwood’s work behind the cameras), hitched to a high-concept dystopia plot.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Cold Moon (now playing at Tower City Cinemas)

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: COLD MOON opens today in Cleveland exclusively at Tower City Cinemas.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

The late writer Michael McDowell is best known these days, if at all, for co-writing the screenplay to BEETLEJUICE, which led to further film work in the nineties. But during the eighties, he cranked out a number of pulpy horror novels, including the then ubiquitous “Blackwater” series. Early in his career he wrote the novel ‘Cold Moon Over Babylon’, published as a paperback original in 1980. That novel has now been adapted into the film COLD MOON by director Griff Furst and his co-writer, Jack Snyder.

At first, COLD MOON plays like a fairly typical seventies gothic slasher movie, something along the lines of BLOOD AND LACE or THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, perhaps. That means unlike a FRIDAY THE 13^TH eighties style slasher, there’s more emphasis on character, place, and subtext. We sense there will be a little more meat on its cinematic bones than just seeing how high a body count the killer can rack up, and what interesting forms the deaths might take.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Antibirth

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: ANTIBIRTH is now available on home video and streaming.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Lou (Natasha Leone) is the kind of girl whose hard partying lifestyle could plausibly lead to a situation like the one in which she finds herself in ANTIBIRTH. To be specific, she is evidently pregnant despite not having had (to her memory) sexual intercourse for the last 6 months. But hazy memories point to the possibility that something may have happened at a druggy warehouse party. Maybe she was raped by Gabriel (Mark Allen Webber), a small time drug dealer and sammer, or his buddy Warren (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos). Or maybe some other, stranger kind of violation took place.

Lou looks for support from her friend Sadie (Chloe Sevigny), Gabriel’s girlfriend. But it is Lorna (Meg Tilly), a mysterious drifter who talks about alien impregnations, who ultimately helps Lou get to the horrifying truth.

All Things Must Pass (screening at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival)

[ALL THINGS MUST PASS screens Thursday October 5th at 7:00 pm at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Filmmaker/actor/Hollywood royalty Colin Hanks - staying offscreen for the duration here – shows a gift for nostalgia beyond his young years as he directed ALL THINGS MUST PASS, the chronicle of Tower Records. Remember them? It was a giant music/entertainment retailer and tastemaker that seemed unstoppable  until it collapsed, seemingly overnight, at the start of the 21st century.

Founded in Sacramento as a humble scheme to sell used jukebox 45s at a Tower drugstore, the chain grew by leaps and bounds, as the initial success spurred CEO Russ Solomon to move into vending all-new vinyl LPs at prime locations on the West Coast, under the slogan “No Music No Life.”

What Hanks does quite well is show how Russ Solomon ended up one of those unsung-hero retailers who steered creative industry choices, as the artists themselves began finding their own muses via the inventory. His LA emporium, in fact, observed special hours to accommodate star shopper Elton John (John is interviewed here, as are Bruce Springsteen and David Grohl). 

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Death Note (now available on Netflix)

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: DEATH NOTE is now available on Netflix.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

A high school student finds a magical book that lets him kill anyone he wants just by writing their name in DEATH NOTE. Based on a Japanese manga which was, in turn, previously filmed as an anime feature film, director/writer Adam Wingard’s version tries to adapt the premise for western audiences.

The student in question is Light Turner (Nat Wolf), a smart kid who sells term papers and is still coping with the murder of his mother. Once he finds the book and starts reading it, a demon named Ryuk (voice of Willem DaFoe) appears and explains that he can kill anyone Light wants him to, provided he writes the victim’s name in the book and can concentrate on their face.

Light decides to use this newfound power over life and death to be something of a superhero, taking out the kind of bad guys his policeman father (Shea Whigham) often has to let go due to technicalities. Sort of a supernatural Dirty Harry, if you will.

Nosferatu (October 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[NOSFERATU screens Friday October 6th at 9:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Live musical accompaniment by The Invincible Czars.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

For those who don't already know, F.W. Murnau's silent horror classic NOSFERATU is in reality a very thinly disguised and very much unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Stoker's heirs were not pleased and tried to have every copy of the film destroyed, but like any good movie monster NOSFERATU managed to rise from the grave. It is now considered one of the undisputed classics of the horror genre, one of those films that film historians and critics will tell you that you simply have to see in order to have an appreciation for the development of cinematic art, blah, blah, blah. And they're right, of course, but that's not why you should watch it. You should watch NOSFERATU because, even at almost a century old, it's still fun to watch.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: It

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: IT is now playing in theaters.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Stephen King’s 1986 novel ‘It’ is over 1000 pages, takes place in two different times, boasts a monster who appears mainly as a clown but is, in reality, comprised of orange lights from another dimension, and includes a scene in which group of adolescent friends engage in a consensual gang bang. To say that it is a difficult work to adapt faithfully to the screen is probably an understatement.

The first attempt to turn ‘It’ into a movie was the 1990 TV film version directed by Tommy Wallace. It boasted a strong cast that included Tim Reid, John Ritter, Harry Anderson, and Annette O’Toole, with Tim Curry giving an iconic performance as the monstrous Pennywise. It’s well acted and reasonably true to the book, but in trying to cram everything into three hours skips over a lot. The special effects are, to be charitable, dated, and much of the horror had to be toned down for the television standards of the time to the point that you’re not always sure whether characters have died or disappeared or been injured until it’s flat out told to you.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: The Blackcoat's Daughter

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER

 is now available on various home video formats.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Although it is the first feature film directed by Oz Perkins (son of Anthony), THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is his second to see release. I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE was released last year by Netflix, and was one of this critic’s favorite films of the year. Despite having sat on a shelf for a while, THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER is almost as good.

Perkins takes a familiar horror film setup – a private girl’s school oozing with barely contained sexuality and beset by evil – and puts a fresh and satisfyingly creepy spin on it. With most of the students going home for break, Kat (Kiernan Shipka) remains, waiting for her parents to arrive and fearing that they won’t. The only other student on campus is Rose (Lucy Boynton), who has lied to her parents about when they should pick her up because she needs to deal with her unexpected pregnancy.

31 Days of Halloween 2017: Beyond the Gates

[31 Days of Halloween 2017: BEYOND THE GATES is now available on various home video formats.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Imagine JUMANJI as a low budget eighties horror movie, and you have a fairly good idea what to expect from BEYOND THE GATES. Two estranged brothers – the successful Gordon (Graham Skipper) and ne’er do well John (Chase Williamson) – reunite after the death of their father to settle his affairs. In particular, there’s the matter of the video store dad owned and all the movies contained therein. Left behind in the store’s back room: a strange board/VHS game that sucks the brothers into a netherworld where their choices result in people dying. And once the game has begun, quitting is not an option. 

Director Jackson Stewart, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Scarlata, is obviously working with a low budget here, but that’s fine. He clearly knew what his limitations would be, and doesn’t try to stage anything he can’t pull off satisfactorily. Besides, capturing that eighties aesthetic doesn’t really require millions of dollars. Just plenty of fog, colored lighting, latex, and slime. 

Woodshock (opens today at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[WOODSHOCK opens in Cleveland on Friday September 29^th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

With its hazy, washed out cinematography, languid pacing, ambient soundtrack, and naturalistic performances, WOODSHOCK is every inch the modern indie film. Written and directed by fashion designers turned filmmakers Laura and Kate Mulleavy, it is a film that announces early on that it has something to say, and then goes about saying it in a whisper so low you’re not really sure what was said. It is a tone poem about a woman descending into grief and madness while engulfed in a haze of marijuana smoke.

The plot, to the degree the film has one, is that Theresa (Kirsten Dunst) works at a medical marijuana dispensary. In addition to the usual fare one would expect to find in such an establishment, Theresa also offers a special euthanasia blend to terminal customers. As the film begins, Theresa is giving this drug to her mother. It may be what mom wants, but Theresa has a hard time dealing with her guilt afterwards.

24x36 (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Shown here at the 2016 Cleveland International Film Festival, director Kevin Burke's feature is now available for the small screens, so you don’t have to risk getting shot going downtown to see it. Not that the movie isn’t good – but not quite at intensive-care unit level. Which would be a pretty cool criteria for seeing a worthwhile movie, these days.

24X36 isn't the first documentary by far to dwell on the nerd-tastic topic of Hollywood movie-poster art – I recommend DREW: THE MAN BEHIND THE POSTER and THE MAN WHO DREW BUG-EYED MONSTERS - but it covers the subject nicely and comes up with a fresh 21st-century twist.

Brad's Status

Review by Pamela Zoslov

We hate it when our friends become successful – Morrissey

What is it about dads that makes people cry? Regret about words unsaid to a dad now dead, issues unresolved, or just the general poignancy of the role of fathers, who are expected to be strong but not domineering, caring but not soft, and whose approval or disapproval can launch a child into a lifetime of success or a spiral of despair?

Recently on “Fresh Air,” the long-running interview program on NPR, host Terry Gross brought filmmaker Mike White to tears about his father. Granted, that is not unusual for Gross, whose pop-Freudian probing is designed to make her subjects weepy. White was talking about his love and gratitude for his father, Rev. Dr. Mel White, to whom Mike's new film, BRAD'S STATUS, is dedicated. About the film, White said, “I wanted to write something to tell my father I love him and think he is a success, even though he feels like he never lived up to his expectations for himself.”

The Lego Ninjago Movie

Review by Bob Ignizio

Both THE LEGO MOVIE and THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE were far more entertaining than I expected. The plots may have been standard issue kid flick stuff about being true to yourself and/or the importance of friends and family, but the jokes were clever and plentiful. Heck, THE LEGO MOVIE even managed some emotional resonance. So despite not having much of an idea what Ninjago was (other than having put together a few Lego sets bearing the trademark), I was hopeful that THE LEGO NINAJAGO MOVIE would be up to those standards.

It’s not, but it’s not terrible, either.

The Girl Without Hands (September 21st and 22nd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE GIRL WITHOUT HANDS screens Thursday September 21^st at 8:50 pm and Friday September 22^nd at 7:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

It’s a given in fairy tales that when someone makes a deal with a supernatural being, be it a witch or whatever the heck Rumplestiltskin is, there’s going to be a catch. In THE GIRL WITHOUT HANDS a poor woodsman trades “what is behind [his] mill” to an incognito Devil for wealth, thinking all he is giving up is his apple tree. What the woodsman doesn’t realize is, at the time the deal is struck, his daughter is in said apple tree, making her part of the package.

As is often the case with fairy tales in their purer forms (and this adaptations sticks fairly close to the Brothers Grimm text), this one is probably too dark and loaded with subtext to qualify as children’s fare. The idea of a father lopping his daughter’s hands off to make good on his deal with the Devil is certainly nightmare fuel. And when the handless girl eats pears from a Prince’s garden, it certainly seems suggestive of something else. Or maybe my mind’s just in the gutter, and sometimes a cigar (or pear) really is just a cigar (or pear).