Mank

 Lank

David Fincher's 2020 film Mank. 

"Thalberg! The boy genius!” // “Your Flatbush was showing.” // “Life’s never a disaster, except when the movie is.” // “Here’s to banks reopening!” // "‘Forty million Nazis can’t be wrong!’" // “What are you doing this for?” “Posterity.” “Posterity my ass.” // “And that, my friend, is the magic of the movies.” // Bad dialogue courses throughout, only to be outdone, and most embarrassingly, within the fanboy inclusion for “buffs” of the introduction of the members of the Paramount writing department. // A pastiche: the black-and-white digital, non-chemical cinematography, the faux reel-change markers (which feel like an affront) // In lieu of much mise-en-scène, Mank dunks the viewer in Old Hollywood atmosphere — comfort images. The good actors in it (Bill Nye plays Upton Sinclair) consist of Gary Oldman (Mank), Amanda Seyfried (Marion Davies), and Tom Burke (Orson Welles). The rest of the cast either can’t act, or were hardly directed. // David Fincher’s screenwriter on this film is his father Jack Fincher. The script’s the thing! It’s the fraternal-paternal connection that runs throughout the Mankiewicz dynasty; maybe their Rosebud is Welles's Citizen Kane itself. Mank ends with a News on the March-style set of newsreels that put a tidy bow on this Biopic. •