Kate Plays Christine
Grasshopper Film | Release Date: August 24, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
75
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
2
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerRichard BrodyAug 22, 2016
The new movie by Robert Greene is a tour de force in the blending and bending of genres. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineChuck BowenAug 15, 2016
It movingly posits acting as a metaphor for the search for connection, through visceral texture rather than platitude. Read full review
100
The Film StageDaniel SchindelJan 30, 2016
As an exploration of identity as it is felt, projected, and interpreted, this is masterful. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnJan 30, 2016
Sheil is an ideal vessel for the film's inquisitive style. Read full review
91
The PlaylistNikola GrozdanovicJan 30, 2016
There's a tangible sensitivity to Kate Plays Christine that is constantly present as the project explores two personas and a gamut of topics (gender politics, gun control, and depression among them). Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 22, 2016
A fascinating process movie about acting and storytelling, but also a curious meta-contemplation of our own voyeuristic attraction to tragedy. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzAug 24, 2016
The process of transformation is the story, and the story truly belongs to the artist. Read full review
80
CineVueBen NicholsonOct 12, 2016
Greene seeks a deeper truth amidst the fragments of arch drama and investigatory reportage; artifice and reality bleed into one another with ease, the transitions smoothed by Sean Price Williams' photography. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 25, 2016
This isn’t a straight documentary — part of what makes the film so suggestive is the idea that we’re seeing a double performance pitted against our own prurient interests. As for the movie’s final scene, you won't witness something as confrontational all year: a yowl from beyond the grave. It’s a small piece of revenge for a lost soul. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 24, 2016
I would simultaneously argue that Sheil and Greene go off the rails several times during Kate Plays Christine, most notably in their overly artful and self-conscious attempt to re-enact the shooting but also that they get viewers closer to the real Christine Chubbuck than I would have thought possible. Read full review
80
VarietyGuy LodgeJan 30, 2016
Greene encourages our curiosity (and even a hint of caution) about documentary perspectives and techniques that other films prefer viewers to take as given. Read full review
80
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJan 30, 2016
Greene makes it clear early on that his interests lie less with a news report than with what Werner Herzog dubbed “ecstatic truth”. The dial swerves between “catching something” to “clearly rehearsed” and back again, and all to the betterment of the final project. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Aug 23, 2016
There’s an emotional dimension to Kate Plays Christine—an empathy linking an actor to the human headline she’s dressing up as—that’s nearly abstracted into oblivion by the film’s neurotic self-examination. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 15, 2016
Although Greene swerves unnecessarily into obvious audience indictment at the end, Kate Plays Christine makes for a twisty, unsettling probe into our fascination with transforming lives, and deaths, into digestible storytelling. Read full review
70
Screen DailyGraham FullerJan 30, 2016
Robert Greene’s latest fusion of reality and meta-fiction is fiercely intelligent, but inescapably tars itself with the ghoulishness it critiques. Read full review
67
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerJan 30, 2016
Much of Kate Plays Christine is more of a form exercise than it is a documentary portrait, which works to both the film’s benefit and detriment. Read full review
40
EmpireAndrew LowryOct 17, 2016
Neither tribute nor analysis, this doc offers an inappropriately off-beam treatment for such a serious subject. Read full review
40
The New York TimesStephen HoldenAug 23, 2016
The film’s method of circling around its subject, then closing in at the end, feels coy and withholding, as if Mr. Greene reserved the few juiciest moments for last. Read full review
30
Village VoiceMichael AtkinsonAug 23, 2016
Kate Plays Christine is a documentary, but often a totally fake one, cheekily defining itself as its own making-of DVD supplement and documenting its own evaporation into near-nothingness. Every scene cries — or whines — about the entire project's inherent impossibility. Read full review
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