Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Crisp Criticism - "Mank", "Rebecca", "Soul", "She Dies Tomorrow", "Dick Johnson is Dead", "Hillbilly Elegy", "The Secret Garden", "The Forty-Year-Old Version", "Superintelligence", "Freaky"

by

Julien Faddoul
















Mank *


1930's Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane (1941).

A success in its recreation of the period, presented in evocative layers with the typical Fincher coolness. But in almost every other respect, it’s a slog and a failure. From a scholarly aspect, the film is mostly poppycock; no attempt is made to explain the psychology behind the political and socio-political decisions of the time, let alone of these specific individuals, assuming that anyone who is watching should already be intimately familiar with Citizen Kane (1941).

 

d – David Fincher

w – Jack Fincher

ph – Erik Messerschmidt

pd – Donald Graham Burt

m – Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross 

ed – Kirk Baxter

cos – Trish Summerville

 

p – Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas Urbanski

 

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tom Pelphrey, Arliss Howard, Tuppence Middleton, Monika Gossmann, Joseph Cross, Sam Troughton, Toby Leonard Moore, Tom Burke, Charles Dance, Ferdinand Kingsley, Jamie McShane