Dress for success

Molly's Game

I, Tonya

Crit

It's the same dame! OK, it's not really, but:

• she's a girl driven to and well past the point of parental abuse to succeed in her winter sport;
• succeed she does,
• until she doesn't;
• she grows up thinking J.C. Penney is as haute as couture gets (one improves her wardrobe);
• she gets the ever-loving crap beaten out of her (chronology and frequency differ here);
• she makes unwise alliances;
• law enforcement ultimately gets involved.

Another way my tough-'cause-they-have-to-be women's weekend meshes is that I've been watching season 4 of The West Wing, created and mostly written by Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of Molly, and graced by Allison Janney, who, as Tonya's mother, looks about as little like Claudia Jean Cregg as cinematic art allows.

OK, so which would I recommend more enthusiastically? I suppose Molly is the better film, but Tonya is the one I enjoyed more. And based on performance to date, Jessica Chastain is without a doubt the more accomplished actor, but Margot Robbie accomplished an undreamed of miracle: she made me think that seeing her as Harley Quinn (a character that bleeds into Tonya a bit, at moments of particularly ugly makeup and facial expression) might be worth watching the 26%-on-Rotten Tomatoes Suicide Squad.