Johnny DiLoretto takes the minimalist approach to four current films.
Christine
Not to be confused with the movie of the same name about a possessed fictional car that kills people, this Christine is a new movie about a real woman possessed by personal demons who kill only herself.
Man, in today’s world, Christine Chubbuck would be a household name -- at least for a month until her story got chewed up and shat out by the gaping maw of our sensationalist news cycle. Interesting then that in 1974, after she killed herself on live television, her story quickly faded from view. That’s partially attributable to the good taste and decorum of the TV station owner who shelved that footage and locked it away with no intent of it ever being released.
Chubbuck’s story is straightforward enough - she was a 30 year old virgin struggling to connect - socially with friends, romantically with men - yet nevertheless carved out a distinct career as an ambitious and austere TV news reporter.
Screenwriter Craig Shilowich and director Antonio Campos fail to adequately explain or explore their character’s depression and manage to miss key dramatic beats in the story - ones that actually happened - that would have both underscored Christine’s emotional plight and ratcheted up the tensions between her and her co-workers. In real life, Christine “joked” with a colleague at her station that she bought a gun and was intending to kill herself on air. The man reportedly - he was uncomfortable - quickly changed the subject. It’s not here and so the character’s suicide feels like a minor leap.
Rebecca Hall is impressive. Usually, a fragile presence onscreen, she is convincingly aloof and broken. But the framework of Chubbuck’s story as presented here doesn’t offer the actress the support she needs to make this an Oscar worthy performance.
Nocturnal Animals
A slick, stylish crime thriller dressed up in heartbreak from fashion-designer-dressed-up-as-director, Tom Ford.
His follow up to the acclaimed A Single Man is intermittently potent and emotionally flat as it cross cuts between its brutal Southwestern noir and its romance-a-la-regret storylines.
The crime bits - which spring to scary life as Amy Adams reads her former lover’s novel are harrowing enough - it’s just that when the movie cuts back to her well heeled art dealer existence the movie comes to a grinding lifeless halt.
Fun and frightening in spurts (mostly thanks to Michael Shannon’s slow dying sheriff) and nice to look at (mostly thanks to Ford’s designer eye) this is a wildly over-praised trifle.
La La Land
A delightful, heart-leapingly rapturous end of year movie gift. Don’t walk - run - to see it on the big screen - then float all the way back home on the bubbles.
Moonlight
An empty half-drawn portrait of a gay black youth, from being bullied throughout his school days to his gun-toting, gold-toothed young adulthood. The movie seems to be petrified of showing two black men engaged in anything but longing looks, hand-holding, and forehead caressing.
There are young black gay boys who will grow up to be gay black men and this film lets them down by shying away from giving image to their desire.