Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

I, Tonya

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Apple Rating:

Director Craig Gillespie uses a fake documentary style to illustrate the Tonya Harding story that I quite enjoyed.  There are mock  interviews with a variety of people who played a part in her life.   Margot Robbie’s Tonya Harding is a tough-as-nails skater whose horrible childhood feeds her competitive nature.  Allison Janney plays her mother in one of the great supporting performances as an abusive mother who abysmally maltreats her daughter, then has the audacity to declare she should be thanked for giving her the drive to succeed.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tonya Harding, the basic plot line leads up to the time that her ex husband hired someone to break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee, thus allowing Tonya to have a better shot at an Olympic medal.  Poor Tonya was used and abused by family, husband, and even Olympic judges.  I came away with a new respect for Margot Robbie’s acting talents as well as Tonya Harding herself.  If  you are interested in the world of figure skating or have always wondered about this dark event in Olympic history, I recommend you check out this movie.

The Girl on the Train

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I enjoyed Emily Blunt a lot in this movie.  She plays the alcoholic Rachel, who takes a train every day into NY city; and happens to pass  the very house she chose with her ex husband, that he, his new wife and baby  live in. They have a nanny, who turns out to be the wife of a neighbor.  While watching from the train, she observes some shenanigans. When the nanny disappears, the mystery  begins.  Emily Blunt’s Rachel was drunk that night and had got off the train to confront the nanny.  She wakes up at home, covered with blood and bruises.  She has no memory of what happened.  A detective, played by the always intriguing Allison Janney, investigates.  Then the nanny is found dead! Rachel has been violent before, could she be a murderer?  Things are not what they seem though, as all the main characters appear to be hiding something.  Even though there are some plot holes, and everything doesn’t exactly add up, it doesn’t harm the flow of the story, and Emily Blunt’s performance ties the whole movie together.  I read the book when it first came out and thought at the time it would make an interesting movie;I was not disappointed.

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

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This is the best movie Tim Burton has made in a while.  If you read Random Rigg’s book, I don’t think you will be disappointed.  In fact, this is one of the very few cases I can think of where I enjoyed the movie more than the book.  The  author had an original  idea.  He collected old photographs and decided to use them as a guide to tell his story.  The book is full of quirky pictures and many of them are brought to life in this movie.  Eva Green is wonderful as Miss Peregrine, an Ymbryne who can change into a falcon and protects the peculiar children.  Their peculiarities are just the kind of thing that Burton is good at filming. Hugh stores bees in his stomach and can command them when released.  Olive can control air and must wear weighted shoes to keep her from floating away.  Horace can project his dreams for the entertainment of the other children who are all safe living in a time loop, reliving the same day in 1943 over and over again.  I am not even going to try to explain the plot, as it is extremely complicated, so no worry for spoilers.  I wouldn’t take younger children to see this one.  There are several pretty gruesome scenes, including some eyeball munching monsters who are under the direction of the always watchable Samuel L. Jackson. Allison Janney and Terence Stamp round out a solid cast.