Engineered Criticism

1. Tonya Who? Oh boy, I, Tonya … So it’s been brought to my attention that literally every other human in the world knew about Tonya Harding previous to this movie, and everyone had their opinions set in stone. Strong opinions about this Olympic figure skater. But I learned all this after the fact. So many that colored my view of this movie. Am I gonna try to take sides on the entire debate one way or the other? Fuck no. The movie certainly doesn’t try to tell you what’s true. It’s extremely straightforward about that fact. Hell, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) turns toward the camera near the end of the movie and directly says as much: “there’s no such thing as truth! I mean, it’s bullshit! Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.” Somehow it’s less important what exactly happened. Did Tonya fire a gun at Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan)? Does it entirely matter? This story is about the cycles of abuse, it’s about passion and trau

You know, of the movies of 2017, the two that surprised me the most were I, Tonya , on which I will likely write next, and, of course, Lady Bird, the coming of age story directed, written, and loosely based on the life of Greta Gerwig. Lady Bird, despite what people seem to expect, has nothing to do with Lady Bird Johnson. Instead, it follows Lady Bird McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) as she progresses through her senior year of high school, looking to the future, toward college, and toward some sense of freedom. It’s a story that nearly all of us can relate to, to some extent. A sense of wanderlust, a sense of wanting something bigger and better for ourselves, wanting to at least discover what we want. And all the while trying to figure a bunch of other shit out. Lady Bird treats its characters and its situations with so much tenderness, showing their flaws and shortcomings just alongside their best aspects. The dialogue is beautifully done, coming across with a genuineness un

1. How Happy is the Blameless Vestal’s Lot? Eternal Sunshine was one of the first movies that showed me what film could do, and what power it had to inspire feeling and passion. Even more specifically than that, however, are three things I can point to that drew me to film, and one thing that inspired me to delve into Eternal Sunshine  when I did. The first of these influences, specifically with respect to forcing myself to take the plunge and start this blog, was Film Critic Hulk (@FilmCritHULK). If you’re unfamiliar, Film Critic Hulk is, as the name suggests, a twitter account that offers incredibly insightful and emotion criticism and analysis of film, TV, and the like, in the style of the Hulk (writing in all caps, referring to themselves in the third person, etc.). This style of criticism – insight mixed with an intense vulnerability – informed my approach to film writing. The second was my best friend growing up. He always seemed drawn to film and screenwriti