Increasingly, our mainstream cinema seems consumed with the act of storytelling itself. We can add American Animals to a list that already includes recent films as different as I, Tonya and Bisbee ‘17. This inward turn is nothing new for the avant-garde and the art-house, long characterized, from Bergman to Godard to Kiarostami, by the foregrounding of artifice.
The 2018 Oscar ceremony is nearly upon us, bringing to a close the annual tradition known in cinephile circles as “The Grouchy Season”!
In past years, I’ve grouched along, with alternative nominations for every category (either from the previous year’s releases or from the Nicolas Cage canon, as appropriate).
“There is no such thing as truth,” Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) tells us at one of the many caustic, slippery moments in I, Tonya. “Everyone has their own truth.” This could serve as the self-congratulatory motto for Craig Gillespie‘s well-acted film, a distinctly, and appropriately, Trumpian sentiment for what might be the first of a genre: the Fake News Biopic.