I, Tonya

I, Tonya is a mockumentary type film based on the true story of US figure skater Tonya Harding.

In 1994 Harding was convicted for her part in the attack on her bitter rival Nancy Kerrigan. She, at the very least, attempted to cover up the attack which was carried out by her ex-husband Jeff and some hired thugs. This film however paints Harding as the victim, rather than Kerrigan who barely gets a mention, let alone any sympathy.

In its defence the film doesn’t pretend to be accurate, it is the account of those involved on Harding’s side. The film instead shows Harding (Margot Robbie) as a victim of life, fighting her way to the top of the figure skating world against the odds and despite the 'help' of her chain-smoking mother, LaVona (Allison Janney) who believes in the motivational power of abuse. 

 

She gets slapped around all the time, first by her mother and then by husband (Sebastian Stan). However Harding’s aggressively style and technical brilliance get results on the rink but although her approach is tolerated it is not loved. She feels she is constantly discriminated against by the judges because she came from the wrong side of the tracks and couldn’t afford a smart dress to skate in.

With her likely to be outshone by Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Jeff and his drinking buddy Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser) make plans to intimidate her rival.

Though the men ultimately get prison time for what they did, Tonya’s life ban from skating to her was possibly worse.

It’s a decent film but in a slightly tiresome style. Margot Robbie is excellent in a role that I don’t think really suits her and perhaps because of that it is Allison Janney who is getting all the plaudits.

The Shape Of Water

Everybody is raving about Guillermo del Toro at the moment but I'm not that familiar with him. His films range generally from Spanish language horror films such as the acclaimed 'Pan’s Labyrinth' to weird action affairs such as 'Hellboy'. So the 'Shape Of Water' is already being acclaimed as a masterpiece.

Del Toro calls it a fairy tale and everyone says its based on ‘Beauty And The Beast’, which I suppose, tenuously, it could be but personally as I watched it I was thinking 'Splash' only without Daryl Hannah or maybe the 'Creature From the Black Lagoon'. 

This is probably why it's up for so many Oscars, the Academy does like a bit of cross pollination with old films and this, like ‘La La Land’,  name checks many, features a cinema and also a man obsessed with old movies.

Then again the Academy aren't going to like the plagiarism allegations surrounding the play ‘Let Me Hear You Whisper’ which is a love story between a cleaner and dolphin that is held in a laboratory.

The cleaner in this story is Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) who is a mute and has been since she was found by a river one day with odd scars on her neck. She lives above the Orpheum cinema which somehow survives on its minuscule audiences and next door to Giles (Richard Jenkins), an out of work artist who watches old TV movies all day long while having the hots for the waiter at the nearby pie emporium.

Elisa’s cleaning job is at a ‘top secret research facility’ where she works alongside Zelda (Octavia Spencer). The research facility has a new project, having come across an amphibious creature somewhere in the Amazon. Despite the top secret-ness of the facility the two cleaners stumble across it while doing the hoovering.

Elisa is immediately mitten but then she is a strange one. She hard boils eggs every morning while masturbating in the bath to her water fuelled fantasies. I'm not sure these scenes were strictly necessary but I suppose when you've got a film based on bestiality I guess you think 'what the hell'. 

Elisa then shares her eggs with the creature, plays him music and dances for him. He seems smitten too and she devises a plan to save the creature from the clutches of the film’s bad guy Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon) and his boss General Hoyt (Nick Searcy).

She talks Giles into helping her and they are assisted by the sympathetic scientist Dr Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), who wants to study the creature which he says was once revered by the Amazon tribes as a god. Neither of these men nor her colleague Zelda appear to think her romance with the creature is at all strange. 

Back at her apartment, she keeps the creature alive in her bath which she fills with salt water but things don’t take a good turn when he dines savagely on the cat and then Hoffstetler turns out to be a Russian spy. This is the cold war by the way and Russian Agents have already infiltrated the facility with the soul purpose of killing the creature. 

The creature does she to get on with Giles because as well as being able to heal bodily wounds, he can also restore hair to a bald man. Elisa is happy as well because she now gets to consummate her relationship with the creature in her bathroom, Which we find out will hold ten feet of water simply by closing the door and putting a towel under it. Well, apart from a few leaks into the cinema below.

So all that is left is to complete the plan. The plan being that once the river is at full tide, the creature can be set loose to find the ocean. What can possibly go wrong...

Well... it is indeed a good film but bloody weird too. Best Film? Probably not.

Phantom Thread

Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a celebrated dressmaker in 1950s London, dressing the rich and famous but now feeling under pressure from new fashion influences coming across the Channel.

The well established bachelor and general misery appeared to uncharacteristically on holiday when he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a German waitress who appears to be about thirty years his junior. He appears to falls in love with her (or what he calls in love) and she seems to reciprocate. What he sees in her and more particularly what she sees in him is never really made clear. However, smitten (of sorts) she moves in with the work-obsessed Woodcock where she becomes his muse cum live-in human mannequin/occasional companion, that is on the very rare occasions he needs one.

Once she is living with him she comes up against the strict regime run by Woodcock and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) and has to cope with a man who, if he has any emotions at all, keeps them very well hidden. She clearly wants much more from their relationship than she is currently getting, which appears to be next to nothing, but he won’t have his carefully constructed life disrupted for anything, not even an attractive young woman half his age. It is not even suggested that they might be lovers.

So leave you think... but she doesn’t. Instead she serves up a surprise romantic meal to a man who clearly does not like surprises or romance. Domestic war breaks out with asparagus chosen as the weapon of choice.

Alma is right about one thing though. The solution to her problem was to be found in the kitchen. When she cooks him up an omelette containing poisonous mushrooms he promptly falls proper near death ill after eating it. Now she is finally happy because she can indulge herself in nursing him back to full health, openly relishing his reliance on her, and for a time they have a normal-ish relationship.

Until he reverts back to being a miserable bastard. So she does it again.... and he knowingly lets her... and she says she will do it again and again if it makes him need her. Now call me old fashioned but any relationship which relies on one party being poisoned regularly to bring out their good side is not a great basis for a long lasting future together. Perhaps they should have gone for counselling instead but what do I know?

It’s a decent film by the way with Day-Lewis in a Day-Lewis role that couldn't be a more appropriate one for him to end his career on, that is if he now retires as he has suggested he will do.