I suppose you could call "Christine" a kind of real life version of "Network" since it tells the story of Christine Chubbuck who shot herself live on air in 1974 but this is a much more lowkey affair, an indie production and it shows. It's as if writer Craig Shilowich felt he didn't need to add any drama to a story that was supposedly dramatic enough and director Antonio Campos films it with the same cold lack of emotion he applied to "Afterschool" and "Simon Killer" but this is a film that could do with a touch of melodrama.As the slowly disintegrating reporter Rebecca Hall does what she can with the part but it's the kind of role we have seen so often in the movies before and Hall does nothing new with it other than look perpetually glum. Perhaps the only surprise isn't that Chubbuck kills herself but that she done it on air. Didn't anyone see the signs? It's not that the film is actually boring but given the material it really should have been so much better.

Holy Sh#t. The film is impressive. Not from a storyline or budget angle but from a directing stand point. I literally went to IMDb while watching the film just to look up who directed it- because I wanted to put more of his film-catalog on my must watch list. I have a feeling this film will get him noticed. He captures the 70s era perfectly and does what few directors really know how to do, use character development within the confines of the story. Plus the camera angles, lighting and etc are completely on point. I could go on and on. What's his name directed the heck out of this movie and I can not wait to see more from him. The lead actress does an incredible job as well. You can tell she has a lot of respect for her craft. I could go on and on but I have like 20 other films I need to review.

Christine (2016)A small market local television station in Western Florida in the 1970s might be the epitome of tawdry, pathetic America. Or so it appears here, where a rag-tag crew of struggling journalists and talking heads patch together a low budget news show every day. And ratings are going down.Christine (played by Rebecca Hall) is a second string reporter in this wishful situation. Her life is full of compromises, and her efforts to excel at her work are awkward and sometimes sad. But she has determination, and works hard. When two of her colleagues are chosen over her for promotion, it's just another reminder that life sucks.First point to make here: don't read anything about the big point of this movie ahead of time. I was lucky to not have a clue what this was all leading up to, and it was a final terrific punch to a slow, empathetic lead up. By empathetic I mean that the movie makers (writer Craig Shilowich and director Antonia Campos) have shown the situation for what it was. It took a lot of restraint to keep this from turning to parody, or to become critical, or even to be highly dramatic in a kind of glitzy way. There is a steady, almost disappointing feeling to it all. Not a single character seems admirable, and yet every one is perfectly ordinary and nice. Even the incompetence throughout is a normal kind of mediocrity, mixed with sprinkles of hope and humor. And people are generally good to each other even as they strive to move up (and out of Sarasota). It's a realistic construction of a mise-en-scene that will not sparkle or create intrigue or move you in particular. Until the end.And that's pretty amazing. The dullness and the acting might strike you as just bad— as if this movie just plain sucks. But it's not the movie, but the subject, that is so uninspiring. Stick it out, if you like it at all. Admire Hall's acting, which is remarkably nuanced.

Rebecca Hall is mesmerizing in her portrayal of Sarasota, Florida TV news personality, Christine Chubbuck, who shot and killed herself on air in 1974. Since the release of this film, there have been think pieces written using Chubbuck's suicide as a touchstone for musings on the nature of journalism, then and now, and its impact on her actions. But what we see in this film, and which likely cuts closer to the truth, is that Chubbuck was a young woman with crippling emotional problems who was finally overwhelmed by them. Unmarried and a virgin at 29 going on 30, yet desperately wanting a husband and children; needing a cystic ovary removed reducing her chances of ever getting pregnant; feeling thwarted in her ambition to move forward in her on-air career (for which she seemed hopelessly unsuited in an era when happy talk newscasts with young, perky blonde newsreaders was becoming THE format du jour); still living with her mother (in what looked like her childhood bedroom), an aging woman trying to live the hippie lifestyle; having a hopeless crush on a co-worker already involved with another - one doesn't need to look any further to understand the sense of utter hopelessness that drove her to put a gun to her head. The strength of the film is in Hall's characterization. We see Chubbuck's extreme awkwardness and abrasiveness in almost all her social interactions; her desperate need for close relationships yet pushing people away when they reach out to her. Her pain is almost palpable. Chubbuck believed at 29 she was a failure at life. There doesn't seem to be anything more to her suicide than that. The film perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the times. In fact, it looks and feels as though it was shot in 1974, rather than 2016 (the array of polyester clothing is amazing, and the soundtrack is 1974 top 40 hits and Watergate). Warning: this is not an uplifting film. It's the sad story of a sad woman that has transmuted into Internet urban legend because of the myths surrounding what happened to the videotape of her death.