Film reviews round-up: Kate Plays Christine, Storks

A disturbing meta-documentary on an infamous case and a light, fluffy children’s animation

Sheil is a sensitive and intelligent actress whose wariness about the project is self-evident

Kate Plays Christine (15)

★★★☆☆

Robert Greene, 112 mins, featuring: Kate Lyn Sheil, Dr. Steven C. Bovio, Stephanie Coatney

In 1974, 29-year-old Sarasota-based newscaster Christine Chubbuck committed suicide live on air. Greene’s morbidly fascinating feature documentary tries to work out why she did so. Rather than follow a conventional journalistic approach, Greene has recruited an actress, Kate Lyn Sheil, to “play” Chubbuck and to front the film. As part of her research, Sheil meets some of Chubbuck’s old colleagues, revisits her old haunts and even pays a trip to the gun seller where Chubbuck bought her revolver.

The film works on many different levels. It is partly an homage to Chubbuck, who killed herself in a pre-internet age and has largely been forgotten, even in Sarasota. It’s a case study, exploring its subject’s depression, her professional anxieties, her failure to find a boyfriend and her frustration at her news channel’s blood and gore approach.

The film is as much about Sheil as it is about Chubbuck. Perhaps best known for House Of Cards, she is a sensitive and intelligent actress whose wariness about the project is self-evident, even as she throws herself into researching her role. In her early 30s, she is just a little older than Chubbuck at the time of her death. She both identifies with Chubbuck and feels repelled by her.

The filmmakers aren’t able to come up with any glib explanations for Chubbuck’s actions. The idea that, like the Peter Finch character in Network, she was “mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore,” doesn’t really ring true. The suicide appears to have been pre-meditated but it may have been spurred on by a technical lapse in the broadcast.

If it wasn’t for the sudden and violent way in which Chubbuck died, he would never have tackled her story. The film can’t help therefore but feel exploitative. Thankfully, there’s no “money shot” here. The video of the death still exists but the owners of the station refuse to allow it to be shown. The best the documentary can do is a crude recreation – which is surprisingly jolting in itself.

Kate Plays Christine leaves a strange taste. You admire the diligence and thoughtfulness of the director and the actress but you still doubt their motives. Chubbuck’s story has also recently been told in Christine, a fictional drama starring Rebecca Hall. It will be intriguing to see how that movie deals with such dark subject matter.

Storks (U)

★★★☆☆

Nicolas Stoller, Doug Sweetland, 87 mins, voiced by: Andy Samberg, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Kelsey Grammer

This is a perfectly serviceable animated feature, released in time for the autumn half-term. It has some very witty dialogue and plenty of cute and clever visual gags. The only hitch is that after such masterworks as Inside Out and Zootopia, the levels for animation have been set so high. Storks is plenty of fun but it doesn’t fly anywhere near as high as such predecessors.

The film starts from the premise that, for as long as can be remembered, storks have delivered babies… but they’ve now changed their business model. They’re now running an Amazon-style business called cornerstore.com which dispatches all manner of household goods. Young stork Junior (voiced by Samberg) has the chance to become the big boss of the business but has a couple of tasks to perform first.

One is to “fire” Tulip (Katie Crown), who was born just before the production line closed down and is now a very mischievous 18-year-old. A few tweaks of the plot later, he and Tulip have to join forces to deliver a very cute newborn baby to its rightful family. At times, most notably when Tulip and Junior are fleeing a shape-shifting wolf pack, the visual ingenuity is breathtaking. What drags the film down is its relentless mawkishness and predictability.