The MixTape podcast · Movie Review Podcast

I, Tonya ''2017'' film

July 21, 2025·1 hr 5 min·3 clips

This film shows Tonya as a person, not a punchline—and that changes everything.

They start with *I, Tonya*. The hosts frame the 2017 film as something they really love, and they approach it the way screenwriters do when they care about how the whole machine clicks together. Craig Gillespie directed it, and Stephen Rogers wrote it. The discussion keeps circling back to how the film shapes its story like a documentary that knows everyone has an angle. That framing matters. Tonya Harding, Jeff, and Tonya's mom all appear early as interview subjects, and the episode leans hard into the fact that the movie is built on competing testimony. The movie is about a competitive skater. The hosts trace Tonya's rise, the injury that puts her future in doubt, and the true-story scaffolding that makes the whole thing feel even stranger. They keep pointing listeners back to the documentaries too, because the movie is treated as extremely accurate. They love the opening. The interview setup gives the film a way to deliver exposition without draining the energy, and the hosts keep praising that choice because it keeps the audience guessing who is telling the truth. Tonya gets pushed. They especially like the way Tonya's mom understands motivation as humiliation, because the film treats shame like fuel and the conversation does not look away from that ugly little truth. Then comes the exhibition. The heckler, the coach, the money changing hands, and Tonya stepping onto the ice build into a tense sequence that the hosts treat as the movie's perfect setup-payoff engine. She lands it. The triple axel lands like a shock, and they linger on the goosebumps, the disbelief, and the wild feeling of watching someone do what nobody else has done. Jeff turns nasty. After that high, the movie breaks into harsher versions of the same life, and the hosts enjoy the way Tonya and Jeff describe the same events in totally different emotional worlds. Nobody gets the last word. The episode keeps coming back to the film's refusal to hand out a clean verdict, because the point is not certainty but pressure, perspective, and damage. They also notice the way Tonya changes after the achievement, the way Jeff tries to rewrite her, and the way the movie keeps both accounts in play. That tension is the whole game. By the end, the hosts have stayed close to the scenes, close to the mechanics, and close to the strange joy of a movie that is both messy and tightly controlled. They sign off by teasing next week's *The Lighthouse*, then close with the familiar mixtape sentiment that if someone made you one, they must really love you.

As heard by us

A scene-focused look at how I, Tonya uses competing perspectives to tell its story.

The MixTape podcast looks at I, Tonya through a screenwriter's lens, staying close to what the film puts on the page and on screen. It moves through the interview style framing, the competing accounts around Tonya Harding, and the triple axel as the film's hinge point.

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Why you'd press play

Want an I, Tonya movie chat that treats the interview frame and the skating scenes like craft, not trivia?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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