American Ultra

It can be hard to write a review. Sometimes I find it difficult to look at something critically because of how much I enjoyed it, and at other times it can be hard to find something good to say about something I strongly disliked. But this time, a complete lack of any feelings one way or the other makes reviewing American Ultra hard, a film so unremarkable in every way that I forgot I had already seen this film when it first came out in the cinema nearly five years ago.

American Ultra is the story of Mike Howell and Phoebe Larson, a couple of unambitious stoners who live together in the town of Liman, West Virginia. Unbeknown to Mike, he's really a secret CIA asset from an Ultra program, a highly trained killing machine who can be activated with a coded phrase. When the person responsible for the Ultra program learns that he is to be taken out by a rival CIA agents operation, she travels to Liman in order to activate Mike and save his life.

Despite this seemingly interesting premise, there is very little of American Ultra that feels at all original or noteworthy. The most obvious problem facing it is that it was marketed as something it isn't – those expecting a mash up of the Bourne films and a stoner comedy are going to be sorely disappointed when they realise that much of the films run-time is dedicated to exploring the (admittedly rather sweet) relationship that Mike and Phoebe share, the infrequent comedic moments being rooted in character and having nothing to do with our heroes penchant for substance abuse, a part of our main characters that really isn't needed. The stoner aspect of American Ultra has no bearing on either the plot of the film or the characters themselves beyond surface level (and I'm talking mainly costume design here), and if anything distracts from the film during potentially important moments. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart bring enough to their characters for this 'humanising' aspect of them to feel unnecessary and the cynic in me sees it as an if not manipulative then certainly questionable attempt to sell the film to a wider demographic – one that has wholly failed, judging by the under-whelming box office numbers that American Ultra took back when it was first released.

On the plus side, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart are, as I already mentioned, really quite good as Mike and Phoebe respectively. Jesse Eisenberg's Mike is the right level of vulnerable to garner sympathy and understanding without alienating the audience, and despite some questionable career choices Kristen Stewart more than proves yet again that she can actually act. Although it isn't a particularly original pairing (the two of them having already shared the screen for Adventureland) it can't be said that it isn't a great bit of casting – a good job too, given how American Ultra is far too content to try and get by on the charms of their lead actors alone.

Everything else about American Ultra is nothing more than mediocre. Topher Grace is competent but unremarkable as the films bureaucratic bad guy. The side-plot dealing with the inner-workings of the CIA is an acceptable distraction to the central narrative. The action scenes are evenly placed throughout the films running time and don't go on for too long. This constant level of 'fine' becomes almost over-whelming by the time the film draws to a close, and results in a movie that I was already forgetting by the time I'd left the cinema. It's a film without highs or lows, a film that should be vivid and full of energy but is instead completely monotone, a film that exists and nothing more.

American Ultra is a perfect example of when the sum of the pieces is less than the value of the pieces themselves - this is a film that is consistently OK, but somehow less than OK when taken as a whole. It failed to resonate with me, it was unable to engage me as an audience member, it was incapable of making me care about what was happening - no matter which way you phrase it, something about American Ultra simply didn't work. I can't say I would or wouldn't recommend American Ultra because ultimately, I feel nothing but pure apathy towards it. And in some ways, that's more harmful than being bad.

The Post

Like a few of Spielberg's more recent movies except Ready Player One, The Post (which sits comfortably alongside Lincoln and Bridge of Spies in what I'm calling Spielberg's "important events in American history" trilogy) is a film with a lot of narrative on its hands. It's telling the story of Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post during the Nixon administration and the difficulties she faced in being taken seriously in a male-dominated environment. It's also telling the story of Ben Bradlee, the executive editor of the Washington Post during the release of the Pentagon Papers and, later, the Watergate scandal. And it's ALSO telling the story behind The Pentagon Papers, a decades long deception of the American people by the American government in order to maintain public support for a war they know they can't win.

It's a lot, but it works because much like how Bridge of Spies isn't really about the Cold War at all, The Post isn't really about those things either. Instead, it's about the importance of a free press and the vital role they play in any true democracy, which makes The Post feel extremely relevant in the time of Trump and "fake news". There are speeches given by characters here that may as well be delivered directly to the camera and addressed to 2018 itself, and while that has the potential to come across as preachy, Spielberg's guiding hand alongside Liz Hannah's solid script ensures that's never quite the case, resulting in a film that speaks to its audience rather than at them. It helps, of course, that most of these speeches are delivered by everyone's favourite uncle Tom Hanks, who plays Ben Bradlee much the same way he played James Donovan in Bridge of Spies – intelligent, righteous, and not afraid to speak up in the face of injustice, regardless of the consequences he might face.

But Hanks is just one part of what makes The Post work. Something I'm really enjoying about several of Spielberg's more recent projects is the amount of credible actors and actresses he's able to get involved and The Post offers no exception – you've got Bradley Whitford, Bob Odenkirk, Alison Brie, Bruce Greenwood, Jesse Plemmons and Sarah Paulson rounding out the cast in roles of varying sizes, all of whom manage to leave an impression. But of course it's Meryl Streep who ends up walking away with The Post and an Oscar nomination under her arm, introducing us to Katherine Graham as a nervous and uncertain woman with very little self-belief before transforming her into a confident leader in what is easily The Post's most interesting storyline. It's a shame that we've gotten so used to Meryl Streep receiving award nominations for everything she does – this is a genuinely great performance, and it's frustrating that those who haven't seen The Post might assume that the praise she received for this role is because of who she is not because of what she's done.

Where The Post does falter somewhat, however, is in the actual film-making itself, albeit in very minor ways. Other than an opening scene in Vietnam, the cinematography feels pretty lifeless throughout, and there are a number of scenes where the dialogue doesn't feel as snappy as it should, or a shot feels like it's been held for just a beat too long. It's here that Spielberg's "one big, one small" approach to filmmaking seems to work against him – I can't help but feel that these issues, minor as they might be, wouldn't exist if The Post hadn't been shot, edited and released all while he was still working on post-production for (the god awful) Ready Player One. Given the time and attention that it deserved, The Post could've been a genuinely great movie rather than just a very good one.

But it's also ultimately the worst thing I can find to say about The Post. Even with it feeling as if it were put together in a bit of a hurry, it still easily manages to hit every emotional beat it sets its sights on, and the result is still an engaging, timely and downright important piece of cinema all the same, one that you can't help but get wrapped up in and absorbed by as it progresses. Perfect? No. Spielberg at his best? Again, no. But even as the weakest film in that aforementioned "important events in American history" trilogy, lacking the tension of Bridge of Spies or the sheer craftsmanship behind Lincoln, The Post is still nothing less than an incredibly solid movie that once again proves Spielberg to be one of the most accomplished directors in the industry.

Green Book

Set in the 1960's, we follow New York bouncer Frank Vallelonga (known as Tony Lip to his friends) as he is hired by famed black musician Dr. Don Shirley to serve as a driver/bodyguard on an eight-week tour of the deep South. Naturally then, it's an odd couple/road trip movie, with the two main characters initially bouncing off one another before bonding over the course of the movie. But what's fascinating about Green Book – and not necessarily fascinating in a good way – is the way in which these two characters change over the course of the movie.

Or more importantly, the way that one of them kind of doesn't. Green Book is book-ended by scenes that imply Tony Lip (and somehow his family, possibly via telepathy) has grown as a person during his time with Dr. Shirley, but the movie in between those scenes in no way challenges Tony's worldview or the way he acts – in fact, it validates and agrees with him almost unanimously, possibly because it was written by Tony's real life son, Nick Vallelonga, who naturally wouldn't want to portray his father in a bad light. Instead, it is Dr. Shirley's worldview that is challenged throughout, often on the receiving end of what can only be described as Tony's "white working class wisdom". Over the course of the movie, we see Dr. Shirley go from someone who doesn't respect or appreciate Tony to someone who does – which means that Green Book is, at a fundamental level, a film about a black man learning not to judge a white guy based on appearances.

That's pretty incomprehensible for a film set in the midst of the Civil Rights movement in the Jim Crow South to do, especially when Dr. Shirley's real life family dispute many of the claims made by Green Book, right down to the idea that Tony and Dr. Shirley were ever even friends. This is a film that seems to broadly agree with Tony when he says that he's blacker than Dr. Shirley, who at this point in the movie has been harassed and assaulted multiple times for being black, a film in which Tony helps Dr. Shirley get back in touch with his blackness by forcing him to eat fried chicken. In the years to come, we're going to look back at Green Book and laugh about the fact that it was ever considered a serious movie, let alone a best picture award winner – it's simply an incredibly tone deaf and stupid movie, offering a childish and mollycoddled take on a topic that deserves a far more intelligent and confrontational examination than Green Book is willing (or able, I suspect) to offer.

And yet I'd be lying if I tried to claim that Green Book wasn't at the very least watchable, reasonably well put together on a technical level with nice cinematography and good editing even while it sticks its foot so far into its mouth that it can taste its own kneecaps. Mortensen's Frank Vallelonga is a caricature of an Italian-American but it's exactly what this movie needs, a performance big enough and bizarre enough to keep you engaged where a more subtle performance simply wouldn't. Is it a good performance, of a well-written character? No. But it works within the context that Green Book presents it, much like the rest of the movie tapping into well-worn tropes to produce something so familiar that it can't help but end up feeling... well, comforting, and safe, and broadly inoffensive - as long as it's playing to "the right kind of audience", which just so happens to be the same demographic as the majority of Academy Award voters.

Green Book is little more than a shallow and superficial example of why the recognisable hallmarks of a prestige picture don't mean much at all if they aren't imprinted on something with actual merit, which really shouldn't have come as much of a surprise being as it's directed by one of the guys behind the excruciating Movie 43. With another writer and a different director, maybe Green Book could've been a genuinely good, enlightening movie. But as it stands, it's little more than a film that's only vaguely entertaining at its very best, deeply unchallenging and staggeringly misguided throughout - and if that's what we're holding up as the best picture of 2018, then something has gone very wrong indeed.

The Favourite

"Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power". It's a quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde (as far as I'm aware, no one actually knows where it came from), but more importantly, it's a quote that couldn't help but come to mind when thinking about The Favourite, the latest film from The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer director Yorgos Lanthimos (although Pop. 1280 is now in preproduction at the time of writing this). In The Favourite, sex is seemingly only ever a means of establishing power, whether that be through attempting to create an heir, marrying for a title, paying a debt or even simply gaining someone's favour. It is the latter of these that The Favourite naturally spends most of its time on, but make no mistake – sex and power are intrinsically linked throughout, whether it be staring you in the face or hiding just out of view, obscured somewhat by the norms and systems of society but still very much ever present.

It's a thematic core that in the wrong hands could've easily come across as misogynistic, playing into tired femme fatale tropes without a shred of irony or self-awareness, but thankfully Lanthimos, and writers Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, are smarter than that, able to ensure that we understand this to be a societal phenomena rather than a gendered one thanks to just how much of The Favourite ultimately circles back and highlights this link. Take, for example, a scene in which a naked guy gets pelted with rotten fruit for the entertainment of a group of bawdy male politicians, or one in which another politician sits there "stroking his goose" (not an innuendo within the context of this review but very much a visual innuendo within the film itself) as he and an opponent speak with the Queen – I wasn't over-exaggerating earlier when I called this link "ever present", and the result is a film just as focused and thematically interesting as The Lobster, and equally fascinating to think about after the fact.

Set during the War of Spanish Succession, we follow the once wealthy but now broke Abigail Hill as she starts work as a maid in Queen Anne's court, gaining the job thanks to the fact that her cousin is Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and the Queen's most trusted adviser. After Abigail creates an ointment that helps the Queen deal with her gout, Queen Anne takes a liking to her, making her a lady-in-waiting and in the process starting a competition between Sarah and Abigail for the Queen's favour – and the power that comes with it. And so it begins, a game in which Abigail and Sarah are constantly trying to outwit and outplay one another in order to become Queen Anne's favourite and achieve their goals, whether they be political or personal or both in nature, and as you might've guessed based on my opening paragraphs, sex plays a major part. The Favourite might not be the most historically accurate film you've ever seen, but then again that's by no means what it's trying to achieve – instead, it's simply using the vague historical theory that Queen Anne may have had a lesbian relationship with Abigail Hill as a kicking off point for an engrossing tale of female rivalry and political machinations in the 18th century.

Queen Anne, Sarah and Abigail are interesting on paper thanks to Davis and McNamara's captivating and often hilarious script, but once you factor in the brilliant performances given by the three leading ladies, these characters all take on additional life and really pop from the screen in ways they simply wouldn't have with different actresses in the roles. You've got Emma Stone as Abigail Hill, who brings a very modern sheen to this initially naive point of view character; Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill, who plays her as confident and domineering and downright unshakable in the face of opposition (with a bunch of fantastic outfits to boot - if we don't see Weisz play a maverick pirate captain in something soon, we've failed as a species); and of course the brilliant Olivia Colman as the sickly and deeply unstable Queen Anne, whose instability is first played for comedy (and to great effect) but soon morphs into something quite tragic, showing yet again that Colman is a far more talented actress than she has been given credit for in the past.

Seeing them interact with and bounce off one another is where the vast majority of The Favourite's entertainment value comes from, especially as the aforementioned great screenplay slowly reveals more information about these characters over the course of the films running time, forcing you to rethink whose side your on multiple times as you learn more about them and as their actions get more extreme. There are other characters in The Favourite, of course - I'd be remiss to not at least mention Nicholas Hoult's vile and conniving (but oddly compelling) Robert Harley - but they're very much secondary in nature, only really existing as a way to further complicate this triangle and add external pressure. There's no denying that The Favourite is an incredibly tightly focused movie, after all.

But maybe that's somewhat to its detriment, come the end. I mentioned earlier that it is hilarious, and that's true - but only really for the first two thirds or so of its running time. As tensions mount and Abigail and Sarah begin to go even further in their attempt to become Queen Anne's favourite, the film's increasingly laser-like focus on this story means that there is less time for the kind of character informing (and audience pleasing) humour that defined the earlier parts of the movie, and while the story itself is still strong enough to keep you engaged, it has to be said that I missed the comedy a fair bit.

Add to that an ending that can't help but feel underwhelming and a touch conventional in comparison to the film preceding it and sadly, The Favourite can't help but be a movie that ends not with a bang but... well, certainly not with a whimper, but not quite the extravagant fireworks you may have been hoping for either. Still, I'd be lying if I tried to claim that The Favourite is anything other than a film I enjoyed a great deal, engaging on a number of levels throughout and more accessible than Lanthimos' previous movies without losing his distinctive style or voice – and at the end of the day, that still all adds up to make a movie that's very much worth watching, flaws and all.

Ready Player One

"Come with me / And you'll be / In a world of pure imagination". So goes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory's Pure Imagination, a version of which scored the first trailers for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One and promised an imagination fuelled adventure in the process – a promise only reinforced by main character Wade Watts' description of The Oasis (a virtual reality where most of the population of Earth spend the bulk of their time in 2045) as a world where "the limits of reality are your own imagination". So with that in mind, how is it that Ready Player One has ended up being one of the most deeply unimaginative and creatively bankrupt films I've even seen?

The answer is simple but depressing: it's a film that seems to be operating under the wild misconception that grouping a lot of recognisable things created by other people's imagination under one roof counts as using your own. It doesn't, obviously, and yet it's so busy doing this throughout that it forgets to do much of anything else, meaning that while those looking for a seemingly never ending parade of pop culture references presented to the audience with all the intelligence, elegance and wit as an episode of The Big Bang Theory are in luck, those looking for an engaging story or interesting characters or... well, a real movie, are going to end up feeling more than just a little bored and frustrated with a film that simply doesn't even seem to be trying.

The story, itself little more than an excuse for a handful of visually extravagant but ultimately pretty vapid action sequences, sees various groups searching for an Easter Egg that will give them control over the Oasis following the death of James Halliday, its creator. One of these groups is led by Wade Watts (in-game name Parzival), whose love for the Oasis and its creator is seemingly endless; another is led by Innovative Online Industries CEO Nolan Sorrento, whose only interest in controlling the Oasis comes from how much money could be made through introducing targeted advertisements, pay to win micro-transactions and differently priced membership tiers.

There's a half-hearted critique of capitalism in there that Ready Player One has all but completely chickened out of by the time the credits roll, but beyond that? It's effectively just a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory updated for a post-Internet world, one in which Willy Wonka is dead, the potential heirs to the throne know they're being tested and John Cadbury is on the tour alongside the children. In fairness it's a fine, simple structure to hang a film around – but the key to unlocking that sentence is that other stuff needs to be hung around it, which ignoring the aforementioned obnoxious pop culture references, Ready Player One entirely fails to do. Instead, we're left with nothing but cookie-cutter characters, embarrassing dialogue, a plot you've seen a million times before, and actions sequences that are both far too visually busy for their own good and impossible to get caught up in thanks to the aforementioned issues with character and story, resulting in a film that left me by and large bored out of my mind.

I mean, where's the sense of wonder that usually accompanies this kind of Steven Spielberg movie? Where's the heart and soul he's known for, the earnest sentimentality that virtually defines his filmography? Other than one short scene towards the end, they're entirely missing, which means that if not for his name in the credits it would be pretty difficult to identify this as being directed by arguably one of the greatest American directors working today. Instead, it's a bland, unartistic and seemingly entirely passionless affair, the kind of film that feels like it should've been released for free on the Internet as part of a viral marketing campaign for a terrible free to play game rather than a huge piece of would-be blockbuster cinema.

And I can almost see some of you who have already watched Ready Player One sitting there, shaking your heads and silently mouthing the words "but I enjoyed it", and you know what? That's fine. The moment to moment filmmaking of Ready Player One is passable at its very worst and actually pretty nifty at its best, by and large lacking the kind of obvious hallmarks that most people use to identify if a film is any good or not. It might seem fairly harmless, but imagine if every big film had the same lack of respect for its audiences intelligence, trying to skate by purely through tickling the stupid part of your brain that gets excited when it sees something it recognises. We'd quickly find ourselves in a completely stagnant cultural landscape, and while that might've made for an slyly subversive subplot in a significantly more interesting and self-aware version of Ready Player One, it's not a future I particularly want to experience. It's the cinematic equivalent of empty calories, filling you up without offering anything of real value, and while that might satisfy in the moment you have to be able to recognise that it's simply not good for you.

And the message behind all this lazy nostalgia bait? It's not intelligence or teamwork or compassion that matters, but how much meaningless trivia you've managed to commit to memory. It's Gatekeeping: The Movie, pandering to the worst kind of "oh, you like Star Wars? Name everyone who worked on the Death Star" nerd in the process, and it's deeply embarrassing to sit there and see that kind of knowledge treated as worthwhile. Fact is, Wade Watts would be an unbearable, boring asshole in real life, and I really don't have much patience for a film that goes out of its way to glorify that kind of person, especially when they already don't need the encouragement.

But it's the shameless, cynical hypocrisy of Ready Player One that rankles the most. Ultimately, what we have here is a film that pays lip service to the power of imagination while refusing to use it's own, a celebration of pop culture that contributes nothing to it, and an ode to the importance of stories that doesn't have anything new to say. Yes, it probably is the best possible version of itself - but at a certain point we have to look beyond its surface level sheen and realise that what it is simply isn't any good. A bad film made well is still a bad film, after all.

Aladdin (2019)

In terms of what you might be expecting, Disney’s live-action adaptation of their own animated take on Aladdin is much more than a diamond in the rough. Against the odds, and certainly expectations, Guy Ritchie and his likeable and talented cast have managed to deliver a cave of wonders which honours the original classic and yet still manages to find enough new angles to make the story feel new again.

Trapped in a cave after being tricked into going by the ambitious Grand Vizier Jafar, Aladdin, played by Mena Massoud, finds himself in possession of an old lamp – and an all-powerful genie with whose help he sets out to win the heart of Princess Jasmine. In the early scenes, it sticks fairly close to the story beats of the original but gradually it reveals that it has more on its mind than just polishing up Aladdin’s rough diamond. In this subtly updated version, not only does the genie get a more cohesive story arc, but so too does Jasmine. Although the original Jasmine was no fragile blossom, there’s more than just sassy feistiness to Naomi Scott’s heroine. Determined and defiant, there’s an agency to Jasmine in this that results in a much richer and more satisfying conclusion to the whole affair.

While director Guy Ritchie remains a puzzling choice, and never seems entirely comfortable with the musical numbers, he brings enough spectacle and vibrant, colourful action to the screen to keep things moving along nicely. The musical numbers themselves are transformed on the big screen, lively and toe-tappingly familiar even when given a fresh coat of hip-hop, courtesy of Will Smith – arguably the film’s biggest gamble if Robin Williams fans are to be believed. So, let’s talk about Will Smith as our Genie. If you’d seen it in the trailers and hoped he'd be rendered better before the film's release... you are in for a disappointing ride. It’s completely overwhelming when Genie comes out of the lamp as you’re examining the disproportionate head with his body but Smith absolutely nails the role – respecting Williams’ footsteps yet unafraid to add a little fancy footwork of his own – creating something wonderful. This is vintage Will Smith like we haven’t seen in years and reminds us, in case we’d forgotten, just why he was such a bankable box office star in his 1990s heyday.

Alas, not every day’s a red letter and as Naomi Scott’s Jasmine rises and Smith lights up the screen, Massoud’s more sensitive and sympathetic Aladdin fades into the background slightly although he’s still fun to watch. Unfortunately, the internet’s ‘Hot Jafar’ turns out to be decidedly tepid and Kenzari just doesn’t have the gravitas or menace to really pull off the role, hampered by a script which doesn’t seem to know how to write its villain and criminally wastes the voice talents of Alan Tudyk as the unnamed and desperately underwritten Iago. It really could have been anyone voicing the parrot and, in some ways, it really could have been anyone directing this. 

Aladdin never once feels like a Guy Ritchie film, but what it does feel like is a polished, family friendly and crowd-pleasing musical fairy tale and, surprisingly, one of Disney’s stronger live-action adaptations to date.

I, Tonya

"Good artists copy; great artists steal". It's a fairly well-known saying that speaks to the way art evolves over time as the innovations of influential artists seep into the work of those who come along later, but it's worth breaking down what exactly the phrase means by "steal". Mimicry or simple replication isn't enough; you have to make something your own in order to steal it, add your own unique spin or use it in a particular way that stamps your name on it, and that means that I, Tonya – a biopic whose style was quite clearly heavily influenced by the work of Martin Scorsese – doesn't qualify as an act of theft. Appropriately then, it also doesn't qualify as great art – merely quite good.

At the very least it's a vast improvement over the pale Scorsese imitation that David O. Russell has been doing for the last few years, thanks in large part to director Craig Gillespie's much firmer grasp of how to make the particulars of this style – such as the fourth-wall breaking narration, or the eclectic soundtrack – work on-screen. But just as important to why I, Tonya works where films like Joy don't is the simple fact that the story of disgraced American figure skater Tonya Harding is actually worth telling and well-suited to this style of film-making, hitting all the required funny, sad and tense beats as it focuses on a number of vibrant, almost larger-than-life characters who you actually want to learn more about and see interact with one another.

And I, Tonya certainly delivers there, making the decision to spend the bulk of its running time not on the incident that Tonya Harding is now mostly well known for (her alleged involvement in the attack on rival figure skater Nancy Kerrigan) but on the relationships that define her as a person. You've got her relationship with her neglectful at best mother, a cold and uncaring figure who pushed her to be a great skater no matter the cost; her relationship to her abusive and at times downright psychotic husband, who I, Tonya posits as the main reason for Harding's eventual downfall; and her relationship to the world of figure skating, the gatekeepers of which never wanted to give a redneck, working class girl a fair shot. It's a good script that knows when to focus on which relationship and gives equal importance to all three, but what really elevates I, Tonya from being an OK Scorsese-lite into a film that's genuinely worth seeing are the truly great performances given by Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney and especially Margot Robbie, who I simply didn't think was capable of this kind of powerhouse performance. Needless to say, her Oscar nomination for Best Actress was incredibly well-earned it was just a shame she was pitted against the phenomenal Frances McDormand who obviously took the win.

But it's also worth keeping in mind that without lead performances this strong, I, Tonya probably would've been all but forgotten about quite quickly. It might be a good Scorsese impression, but it's still just an impression, never living up to that from which it takes so much and at times feeling oddly forced in its execution. Sure, it's entertaining when these character break the fourth wall in order to talk to the audience, or when the actors play older versions of their characters giving interviews, but neither of these quirks appear consistently enough for them to feel like a natural part of this film when they do show up, and there are a few scenes early on that quite badly misjudge if the events happening on screen should be portrayed for comedic effect or not. Funnily enough, I, Tonya's best and most memorable scenes end up being the ones least like the kind of thing you might find in a Scorsese film, Gillespie dropping the film's borrowed aesthetic in order to simply capture a moment, whether it be an extravagant, monumental victory on the ice or a quiet scene that sees Harding break down as she applies her make-up. This is what Gillespie needed more of to truly make I, Tonya his own - not fake clips of fake interviews or era-appropriate needle-drops, but varied emotional moments that genuinely resonate with the audience.

And yet in spite of its easily identifiable shortcomings, I still really enjoyed I, Tonya for what it is – a mostly quite well-directed film telling an interesting story that's bolstered by a handful of performances so good that they'd make it worth seeing even if the rest of the film was outright bad, which it isn't. Yes, it's a touch overly derivative and at times stumbles in its attempts to replicate the films that it's quite obviously influenced by, but it's also still a really entertaining couple of hours that I can't see many people walking away from disappointed.