I, Tonya - Craig Gillespie (2017)

Some people are deserving of a celebration of their life. Whether revolutionary (Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"), controversial (Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Downfall"), or bizarre ("Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt"), biographical films don't always work.

There are three such films: educational, boring as hell and the odd ducks. (And when I say "odd duck," I do so with loving affection. People who think "odd" is wrong are fascists.)

Craig Gillespie's film "I, Tonya," which follows Figure Skater Tonya Harding, from her abusive childhood right through her boxing career is among the oddest of the odd ducks.

From the start of her earliest years, Harding (Margot Robbie), has never had anything or any companion save ice-skating. It's the standard life of a young figure skater. Practicing eight hours a day, having been forbade from eating anything delicious and stuck with her mother (Allison Janney).

In this film, Harding's upraising with her terrifying mother is given priority over her skating career, her troubled relationship with Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), or even "the incident."

Harding's mom is definitely one of the mothers who decided to raise an athlete instead of a daughter. Janney plays the role of a controlling mother openly, controlling to the point of abuse, I felt like picking up the phone and calling social services. You can actually feel the venom spitting from her lips anytime she's anywhere near Tonya. She is brought to vivid life by Janney who makes her performance. Allison Janney is really the revelation of this film. She has popped up in my nightmares these past few days.

Aside from the way Tonya is, and isn't, nurtured, the film takes us through her relationship with Jeff Gillooly. We can see she falls back on funicular, when Gillooly starts beating her just like her mother has always done.

She struggles, with more than her figure skating. She also has to a great deal of energy with her mother's derision and Gillooly's twisted distortion of what support looks like.

"I, Tonya" has earned all of the accolades it's getting right now. It's gritty and honest. It stands among some of the darkest comedies I've seen.