I saw "Melania" at four o'clock in the afternoon on opening day at the AMC Assembly Row in Somerville. It was playing in the 12-screen complex's smallest auditorium, all the way in the back, where posters advertised coming attractions "Sisu: Road to Re- venge," "Americana" and "Ella McCay," three films that opened and closed last year. The room was packed near capacity with women in their 50s, audi- bly wine-drunk and unable to keep themselves from making catty comments whenever Joe Biden or any other Democrats appeared onscreen. There were only two males besides myself in the theater, one wearing an American flag patch on his jacket the way motorcycle gangs wear their colors, the other with a shaved head and the thumb-shaped proportions of guys who make front-facing camera videos in their pickup trucks. I didn't ask them how they liked the movie, but the whole place did applaud when the Bidens' helicopter left after the inauguration.

Going to see "Mela- nia" was clearly a pilgrimage of sorts for these people, their way of "owning the libs." They seemed happy to have been suckered, the President once again fleec- ing his followers with the multiplex edition of Trump's NFTs or the Trump Bible. I know every- thing's a grift all the way down, but you'd think peo- ple would see through something this contemptu- ously slapdash. There's more than one scene in the movie where everyone just stands around watching TV. The porcine Ratner can be glimpsed on the mar- gins of the action, and is sometimes heard shouting obsequious comments from out of frame. ("Congrat- ulations, Mr. President!") He's often pointing a Super 8 camera, from which we occasionally see the jerky, unfocused footage. At least Leni Riefenstahl could frame a shot Zero out of five