Best movie of this year hands down!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Events leading to journalist Christine Chubbuck's 1974 on-air suicide are recounted in Christine (2016), a bleak but potent film written by Craig Shilowich and directed by Antonio Campos. Strong performances by its lead actors and its visual authenticity make Christine the best overlooked film of 2016.Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is a sincere but troubled woman working as a reporter for a local news station in Sarasota, Florida. She lives with her mother, Peg (J. Smith-Cameron), and performs puppet shows at a children's hospital on the weekends. Her life begins to spiral out of control when, approaching 30, she discovers she has a cyst on one of her ovaries and may never have children.Her boss, Michael (Tracy Letts), is concerned about falling ratings and wants Christine to cover more sensational stories. This professional dilemma is compounded by the arrival of station owner Bob Andersen (John Cullum), who wants to move some personnel to Baltimore. Christine is passed over in favor of anchor George Peter Ryan (Michael C. Hall) and sports anchor Andrea Kirby (Kim Shaw). This is a double-blow because Christine had an unrequited crush on George.I won't reveal how the film ends, but you probably already guessed. Rebecca Hall, who also starred in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) and The Dinner (2017), is outstanding as Christine Chubbuck, and won several awards for her effort. I'm not sure this film would have been nearly as good without her performance. She disappeared into the role, bringing her character to life with all the emotion and idiosyncrasies of a real person.This film's authenticity is also incredible. If you could somehow capture the look and feel of a decade, Christine does it. 1970s period pieces usually feature larger than life characters and situations. This film does the exact opposite-it shows normal people at a normal job, who happened to be involved in an incredibly tragic incident.But Christine is not entirely accurate. The film depicts Christine living with her mother, which was true, but her older brother also lived with them. I can't recall any mention of her siblings in the film. Also, in the film, Christine procrastinates getting a cyst removed from her ovary, but in real life she had the surgery a year prior to her suicide. Neither of these alterations negatively affect the film. The filmmakers needed to show how the surgery affected her in the run-up to her suicide, which would have been difficult if it occurred months before the events depicted in the movie.Christine confronts an issue in journalism that continues to be debated to this day. In the film, Christine is constantly butting heads with her boss over the definition of news. Michael is concerned about their station's low ratings and wants her to focus on more controversial stories. Christine doesn't think reporting on stories that interest people is real journalism.The push to report on crime and disaster deeply conflicts with Christine's self-image, and she frames her suicide as a statement against sensationalism in news. "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in 'blood and guts', and in living color, you are going to see another first-attempted suicide," she says before she pulls a pistol and shoots herself behind her right ear.The message couldn't be any clearer, but don't expect Christine to spoon-feed you answers. The movie is like a snapshot of one moment in time. We don't know how Christine's family and coworkers deal with the tragedy, or whether it affects that station's approach to the news. Its open-endedness enhances the film's final impact.

I never knew anything about the true story of Christine Chubbuck when I saw this biopic detailing the last year of her life. Needless to say, this fact gave the film an extra impact, as the ending comes as quite a jolt. Chubbuck was a television journalist who worked for a local news channel in Florida. She became nationally famous when she committed suicide live on air during a news broadcast in 1974. She was a troubled individual who was frustrated with her trivial work assignments and also had difficulties in forming relationships with men. The former issue is exacerbated by the fact that the news programme she is part of has failing ratings and so her manager aims to cover more sensationalist material with the motto 'if it bleeds, it leads'. This leaves Chubbuck's human-interest stories marginalised to the point of irrelevance. While her relationship issues stem from the fact that Christine is a genuine oddball who seems to have some social condition, which renders her both forthright and awkward in one-to-one conversations. She only really seems at home when she is on the television.I found this to be a very involving drama which brought me very much to mind of The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) which was another early 70's period piece that focused on another social misfit who ended up making the news for a notorious incident. Both films share a downbeat tone and both sport fantastic performances in their central roles. In Christine it is Rebecca Hall who immerses herself in the persona of Christine, it really is a very good example of proper acting with Hall tackling a complex character to perfection. Despite her spiky nature I really did care about this woman and that is a large testament to Hall's skills. The other main element in which I got a kick out of was the recreation of the early 70's in all of its beige glory. It was beautifully done and helped considerably in setting the tone of events which follow. Ultimately, I found this true story to be one well worth knowing about and the film did a good job of capturing and presenting it.

It's 1973 Sarasota, Florida. Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) is a struggling TV news reporter doing humanist stories. Watergate is heating up and she is high-minded about reporting. George (Michael C. Hall) is the handsome anchor. Camerawoman Jean is her best friend. Station manager Michael tells them that the station is failing and pushes, "If it bleeds, it leads." Christine's doctor has a dire diagnosis. Station owner Bob Andersen has purchased another news station in big market Baltimore and is looking take along one reporter. Pressure mounts as she does something shocking on live TV.This movie is based on true events as it tells the audience in the opening credits. It's hampered by a story that climaxes in one big moment after two meandering hours. There are lots of interesting sign posts to detour from the path but the story never goes down those roads. There's a great creepy gun guy but he's an one-off. There's a truncated affair that never starts. We're left with an intriguing performance from Rebecca Hall of a tightly wound woman but it is mostly internal. It's two hours of frustrating powerlessness as we watch a woman drowning in her own mind. That could be compelling but somehow, this is unsatisfying.

I won't lie. I had been intrigued by the notion of someone like Christine Chubbuck doing what she did on live TV, and I did as much research into it as I could, mostly through YouTube.It should be known to those that don't already know that the video footage of this DOES NOT EXIST ON THE INTERNET! Not on YouTube! Not on any other video web site! Not ANYWHERE! This happened three years before home VCRs hit the market, and the one videotape of the incident will probably never be released.This movie takes place in the weeks leading up to Christine's suicide and it does give us a glimpse of her life at that point. Someone whose own personal demons and the state of the industry she works in and wants to thrive in collude to finally lead her to her last and most infamous decision.This is as close as it will probably ever get to seeing what she did live ever, for better or worse, so if you're one of those who want closure in that sense, then it's right here.