As far as vanity projects (this was a script that Fincher’s dad had tried to make for a long time and could never find backing for) this wasn’t terrible, but it does too little with its 130min runtime, possibly because Fincher seems more interested in certain aspects of Mankiewicz’ saga than others. The stuff about Upton Sinclair’s campaign clearly is where the film is at its most incisive, and as someone who knew very little about this, kinda made me wish the movie had focused on that aspect more instead of the somewhat turgid scenes showing the Creative Process of drunk Mank fighting with himself and Welles. The movie clearly takes Pauline Kael’s infamous take about Welles having little to do with the Citizen Kane screenplay to heart, but in the process makes him into a caricature that kills off most of the scenes he’s in. On the other hand Charles Dance is woefully underused as Hearst, even though his confrontations with Mank are clearly shown as the tinder that led to the greatness of Citizen Kane.

It ends up a weird product that will have little appeal to anyone not steeped in classic Tinseltown, while providing little insight to those that are. Sure, the acting works (though I don’t totally buy Oldman as a 45 year old, especially when his brother, who was just 12 years younger, show up), the score is fantastic and the cinematography sparkles. And this being a Fincher movie the directing is sharp and no-nonsense. But overall it’s tough to shake the feeling that this is yet another Netflix production, made more out of an abundance of funding than creative impulse

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For the record, my teams:
MLB: Mets / Soccer: PSG
NCAA BB: Arizona / NCAA FB: Michigan
NBA: Spurs / NFL: Jets

sums up my feelings about the majority of Netflix's film output better than I've ever been able to.

I was enjoying the film prior to falling asleep due to my old age acting up. As someone who enjoys that era of filmmaking but is not particularly steeped in the history at this point in my life, it hit that sweet spot of giving me the aesthetic while not having to watch a film I've seen numerous times to do so. I think I'm also just to have anything to wash the taste of Tenet out of my mind.

So, I don't have really anything to offer at this point and I'm actually looking forward to going back to this and give it a proper go even if, in the end, its offerings end up being slight.

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A lot of you players ain't okay.

We would have been better off with an okaycivics board instead of an okayactivist board

But as somebody who plays a lot of video games, I do have to admit I was often distracted by a form of digital artifacting that's super common when you fake depth of field (it's easiest to see in replay modes on sports games) and unintentionally create a sort of halo around the frame of the model/actor. Including with how often the grey tones were more flat than truly black and white, this was one of Fincher's least pleasant movies to look at - which is a shame because a lot of the shots themselves are as epic and perfect as usual for him.


I really enjoyed the stuff that ran parallel to modern times, but like the movie it's often alluding to found the narrative structure didn't always keep momentum going - and honestly, found the political angle a lot more interesting than all the Orson Welles stuff, which mostly just feels like a consequence of the script's source material more than absolutely necessary to this story. Even if the shot of Welles entering the hospital is one of the highlights.


I'm not sure where I'd rank this in Fincher's overall body. All the flaws for me were pretty nitpicky, but I'm also not sure who this movie is for other than movie geeks so I found it hard to recommend to other movie geeks at work afterwards because they'll either get to it eventually or not and nobody's life will be any different.


The script rips, though.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I agree on the flaws being nitpick-level in general, but they did add up to something oddly distasteful I thought. A couple examples: the Netflix International Pictures card at the start, or the digitally inserted reel splotches when he goes to talk to his buddy about the anti-Sinclair campaign. Both are extremely small aspects of the project, easy to minimize, but they also feel like very pointed additions to make it seem like it's an attempt at replicating the feel of a Golden Era movie, but purely through a lazy Easter Egg methodology. It would've been a lot more convincing if, say, the dialogue had more of the razor-sharp wisecracks this era's films are so famous for. Instead of that we get several scenes where Mank is hanging out with other screenwriters in which the barbs feel flat and drab

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For the record, my teams:
MLB: Mets / Soccer: PSG
NCAA BB: Arizona / NCAA FB: Michigan
NBA: Spurs / NFL: Jets

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"The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in." - James Baldwin

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"I *always* quote myself. I'm the only reliable source on *most* subjects" - OKP's First Lady of Knowledge, Janey

I honestly blame his dad’s script. Really rote stuff.

That and, as noted above, Oldman is obviously too old for the part. It wouldn’t feel that way necessarily if they never said aloud what Mank’s age is.

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My movie reviews: https://letterboxd.com/RussellHFilm/
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