Popular reviews

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  Review by brat pacino 4

  i got shot at on my drive home from watching mank and mank was still the worst part of my night

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★★ 40

  This gets so much better as it goes. It starts on such an odd note where it reads like you walked into the theatre an hour late. I think it’s just so frantic in that first act and the more it really starts to settle and invites you into what it’s trying to do, you come around to it. There’s a lot of good in here, but for someone like Fincher—a master at making the audience care about anything he throws at them—I was bored way more than I should have been.

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★★★★ 26

  Why the fuck is no one talking about the fact that Bill Nye the Science Guy played Upton Sinclair in this movie

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  Review by Jim Cummings ★★★★★ 11

  They let him make a love letter to his dad and I think that’s wonderful.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★ 21

  good movie but give me Steve Kornacki busting out the Big Board and breaking down where all the different bits of Citizen Kane came from.

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  Review by hunter strawberry ★★★ 72

  basically this movie is Orson Welles trying to get Mankiewicz’s ownership share diluted down to .03%

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  Review by Taylor Williams ★★★★ 11

  Every scene with Amanda Seyfried is the best scene

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★ 14

  Frequently funny and engaging look at the cynical intersection of wealth, media, politics, and an industry of make-believe. A lot of interesting ideas (including an unexpected detour into "movie magic" as less of the warm, cute, romantic nostalgia an awards movie like this typically calls for but material propaganda and another tool for the rich and powerful to use to snuff out of leftist politics) but the manner of structure and execution is all, unfortunately, a bit too conventional and by the very end outright careless with its history. The last few minutes in particular should leave an appropriately sour taste in the mouth of any Welles heads out there.

  There are some solid sequences when the conversations and politics…

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  Review by John Frankensteiner ★★½ 33

  Adult son David Fincher needs help from his dad to craft a cinematic love letter to the Luigi of Citizen Kane, Herman J. Mankieiecz (Oldman), or Mank, as he referred to no less than 700 times in this lifeless cosplay of The Golden Age of Hollywood. The biggest problem with this sort of retro filmmaking is it never truly feels like the era it’s imitating, so you have the biggest stylistic decision destined to fail as the movie will seem neither like a throwback, nor contemporary, obviously, just some hokey middle ground while feeling like the director is constantly elbowing you in the ribs like, “Heh? It’s just like the ‘40s, right?” And this decision will inevitably be at the…

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  Review by Lucy ★★½ 10

  best picture marathon: film #3

  “i couldn't have put it better myself, which may be why i write for the movies”

  to put it plainly: my GOD this is boring. if i had been shown this movie without any prior knowledge, no way would i have been able to guess it was made by david fincher. i’m not necessarily saying that i dislike seeing a director step out of their comfort zone artistically, but when the end product of that step is this dull... well that’s another story. i can only recall a few sequences where i really felt captivated, or interested in the slightest, otherwise it always seems to fall short. i’m glad others are getting something out of this because while i don’t really dislike it i remain totally perplexed by it. this is simply ‘not my cup of tea’ (and what a bland cup of tea it is)

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  Review by matt lynch ★★½

  "Oh, Mank, are you ever serious?"
  "Only about something funny."

  An ice-bath sorta-satire concerning the intersection of art, commerce, and politics but made by this smirking misanthrope/moralist as openly contemptuous of people's intrinsic flaws as he is completely obsessed with them. Ahistoricity isn't the problem here, nor are the relentlessly affected period flourishes (some of which work and some of which super don't); the real thing is that all this bickering and backstabbing and competing ego and attempted mythmaking produced fucking CITIZEN KANE and its legacy, and Fincher characteristically thinks that's not only extremely ironic and funny but also incidental, and you can't do that and also ask me to be curious or to be moved. Also the really-makes-you-think timely political parallels are trite and whatever Oldman's doing, no sir, I don't like it.

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  Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★½ 20

  Have you ever heard the story of the organ-grinder’s monkey?

  As a Fincher-head and a massive old Hollywood fan, it actually pains me to give it a rating this low, but I have to be honest with y’all, it just didn’t completely live up to my expectations.

  My main issue with the film was ironically its screenplay. While I wouldn’t normally think it fair to compare this film to Citizen Kane, the movie references it so often that practically begs the audience to. While Kane is laser focused on the rise to power, and understanding the psyche of its protagonist, Mank seems to meander often, resulting in a disjointed storyline.

  In a movie about a man who takes credit over…