Christine (2016)

Christine Chubbuck was a field reporter for a Sarasota news program in the early '70s. I knew nothing about her or her story before seeing this film and Gary and I watched it for 45 minutes with one of us exclaiming every five minutes or so: "what is this about?" or "why is this a movie?" Gary bailed at that point since we were bored out of our minds -- but I finished it up the next day.

For the next hour, I continued to wonder why the hell anyone wanted to make a movie about this woman. These were my deductions from Rebecca Hall's performance and the movie as a whole:

• Christine Chubbuck was on the spectrum -- possibly undiagnosed Asperger's
• She felt entitled to promotions even though we were shown nothing that would warrant this
• Her co-workers seemed to take care with her; they all seemed to think her weird but also liked her enough to be kind and patient
• Her boss often got frustrated with her, for what seemed to be good reasons.
• Her mother may have not been terribly good at mothering, but she definitely didn't seem to be to blame for Christine's difficulties

But then, the "event" -- the entire reason this movie exists -- occurs in the last 15 minutes. Christine shoots herself on air. I truly wonder how many people stuck with it long enough to see it, because this was so dry that I really didn't care.

F