Review: "Mank" is a Distracting Messy Homage

Scene from Mank

No matter who you are, there's a good chance somebody at least once has told you that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies ever made. The mythology surrounding it has only ballooned in the near 80 years since its release, finding director Orson Welles being considered a filmmaking pioneer who took down Hearst with this swift commentary of greed and corruption. While history has been favorable, there are those like director David Fincher who want to posit that Welles wasn't the mastermind behind this story. There was one man in particular named Herman J. Mankiewicz - a studio savant who navigated the studio system in the 1930s before making this screenplay that changed the world. 

It's a juicy enough hook for Fincher to apply his familiar hostile view of humanity to. After all, who doesn't love an underdog story, where history can be rewritten to immortalize the real heroes? The issue with Mank isn't so much what it intends to achieve, but that it does so in a bit of a clumsy way. Based on a screenplay written by his father Jack Fincher, it's a story that glamorizes early Hollywood with endless references and pastiches that help to explore the "movie magic" concept. However, there's little else going on here that feels essential. For a story about writing a universally acclaimed hit, it sure lacks the payoff that could make this into a modern masterpiece. It's a bit of a misfire, finding Fincher giving too much into sentimentalism that clouds his technique, keeping the story from ever meeting its full potential.

The First "Mank" Trailer Reshapes the Narrative Around "Citizen Kane"

Scene from Mank (2020)

If you ask anyone to rattle off a list of the best movies ever made, there is a good chance that Orson Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane will be on that list. For reasons that I don't need to get into, it has been praised and reassessed for almost 80 years, finding new audiences appreciating the craft that goes into telling a compelling story about a tycoon. Even if there's plenty of great stories behind its making, one has to ask if there's anything worth making an entire movie out of. 

Apparently on that list is David Fincher, making his cinematic return for the first time since Gone Girl. With one of the few major Fall releases still on the docket, Mank looks to be a period piece that captures the dark drama in full detail, making you understand the pain and sacrifice that goes into making cinema. It's a story of the screenwriter, Herman L. Mankiewicz, and his battle to get recognition for his script. While this sounds like Oscar-bait on its surface, Fincher's increasingly proficient, technologically-groundbreaking works don't take these stories lightly. One has to wonder what drew him to this story. If nothing else, the first official trailer looks to promise one of the most visually astounding works of 2020, if not the Citizen Kane (some pun intended) of recent Hollywood biopics. 

Netflix, FilmStruck, and Streaming Services' Problems with Film History

Scene from The Other Side of the Wind

For a lot of cinephiles, today is a very special occasion. Today is the day in which the long awaited Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind finally meets the light of day. Thanks to a lot of meticulous effort and the powers at Netflix, the film is currently available to stream online, including an additional documentary on the assembling of this perceptively lost film. With all of this said, there's a certain irony in the film being released by Netflix of all streaming services within the same month of the demise of FilmStruck. The Other Side of the Wind, at least aesthetically, is more suited to the classic and foreign cinema service that will be going belly-up on November 29, which will see a lot of Welles' other titles disappear. While this isn't exactly Netflix's fault, it may as well be because for those looking for great cinema in the vein of Welles, there's a good chance that it won't be there for much longer. 

Why Orson Welles Makes Me Sad

Orson Welles in Touch of Evil

Orson Welles is a genius.

It is a simple idea that many, myself included, believe to be true. Over the course of his career, he found exciting ways to captivate audiences and make you care about the magic of the arts. From his early days producing radio dramas like "The War of the Worlds" to Citizen Kane and beyond. The fact is that you can look at his body of work and find a treasure trove of art that, even if you don't like it, can appreciate its craft. However, there's a certain something that comes as a downside of being a curious cinephile like myself: you learn too much. For whatever reason, I see Welles' career more as a tragedy than a triumph, and it at times depresses me to think of what he inevitably became. While I respect the man's work, including and up through his untimely death shortly after F for Fake, I also have trouble thinking of him too much for a lot of other reasons. He was an artist, but also sort of a jerk.

Nothing But the Best: "How Green Was My Valley" (1941)

Scene from How Green Was My Valley 

Welcome to the series Nothing But the Best in which I chronicle all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners as they celebrate their anniversaries. Instead of going in chronological order, this series will be presented on each film's anniversary and will feature personal opinions as well as facts regarding its legacy and behind the scenes information. The goal is to create an in depth essay for each film while looking not only how the medium progressed, but how the film is integral to pop culture. In some cases, it will be easy. Others not so much. Without further ado, let's start the show.

10 Best Picture Nominees That Bombed at the Box Office

Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs

It is likely that by this point you are aware that director Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs bombed at the box office. It is even possible that people are already calling an end times scenario for the prestige picture that features some of the best acting and writing of the year (I think so, anyways). However, if you're wanting to go that route, I want to warn you that this isn't the first film, nor is it likely the last, to be a great film that bombs. In fact, there's been several films that have "bombed" through out The Academy Awards history. The following is a look at 10 different films that made it to Best Picture despite not turning a profit. A lot of them are likely to be more surprising than you'd think.

Birthday Take: Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane" (1941)

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

Welcome to The Birthday Take, a column dedicated to celebrating Oscar nominees and winners' birthdays by paying tribute to the work that got them noticed. This isn't meant to be an exhaustive retrospective, but more of a highlight of one nominated work that makes them noteworthy. The column will run whenever there is a birthday and will hopefully give a dense exploration of the finest performances and techniques applied to film. So please join me as we blow out the candles and dig into the delicious substance.