| Netflix | Release Date: November 13, 2020 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
44
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Jan 26, 2021
The arguments over whether Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made will rage on forever. But the greatest film about Citizen Kane – and just about any other movie – has definitely arrived. David Fincher’s eleventh film is a lavish love letter to old Hollywood in all its glory, cynicism and wild extravagance.
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Nov 6, 2020
Oscars all around. Led by a life-of-the-party Gary Oldman as the boozehound screenwriter of ‘Citizen Kane’ and a sublime Amanda Seyfried as a tycoon’s mistress, this funny and fierce landmark from David Fincher peels away at Hollywood’s Golden Age. The result is a gorgeous piece of cinema that ranks with the year’s very best.
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Nov 6, 2020
Mank taps into a vein of feeling that reaches farther than mere family tribute. The film also serves as a political cri de coeur, one that inspires as much as it dismays. In making a film that’s sort of about the making of another film, Fincher has many metatextual layers to work with, which he does with trademark precision and unexpected gentility.
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Nov 10, 2020
Fincher didn’t set out to make a movie about today’s politics; he’s telling a universal story about trying to change an industry (and a world) in which every system seems freighted with inertia. Mankiewicz isn’t quite a radical, nor is he especially principled. Still, in trying to make sense of his experiences with Hearst through a Hollywood narrative, he transforms a familiar tale about shattered idealism into a revolutionary work of art.
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Nov 6, 2020
Mank demands your surrender, but also your heightened attention. It’s a pleasurably discombobulating experience, sometimes playing like mordant drawing-room comedy and sometimes flirting with expressionist nightmare, as when Welles’ dark silhouette looms over a bedridden Mank and his mummified leg.
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Nov 6, 2020
At first blush, Mank isn’t your typical David Fincher flick. Yes, it’s gorgeously mounted and meticulously crafted. But it doesn’t feel like Fincher’s other movies. And yet, when you look closer…it does. Because like all great Fincher films, Mank is about obsession. The obsession with getting something right. The obsession with creating good art. The obsessions with being remembered long after the whole world has faded to black.
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Nov 13, 2020
Mank has the makings of an Oscar contender, and not just because of Hollywood's traditional love for movies about itself. With Gary Oldman as the alcoholic, self-destructive writer of "Citizen Kane," director David Fincher has made a near-great movie about what's in the argument as the greatest of all time.
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Nov 7, 2020
Mank‘s definitely a film-tailor made for cinephiles; it’s a dense, complicated work with a screenplay as labyrinthine and mired in inside baseball as Kane‘s. But as a stylistic exercise and a work of craft, it’s one of Fincher’s most exciting in years. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, the costumes, the production design, or the score. And the Wellesian flourishes are an interesting stylistic move for a filmmaker usually known for his cold, crisp exactitude.
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IndieWireNov 6, 2020
Though forged in a meticulous 1930s backdrop that merges historical detail with the style and tone of that era, “Mank” is hardly a playful throwback. Fincher has made a cerebral psychodrama that rewards the engaged cinephile audience in its crosshairs, but even when cold to the touch, the movie delivers a complex and insightful look at American power structures and the potential for a creative spark to rankle their foundations.
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Dec 9, 2020
What does come as a surprise, somewhat, is Fincher’s departure from his clinical precision; he adopts a looser approach here, no less precise, but much warmer than, say, the steel-blue, fierce indictment that is The Social Network. “Photographed in Hi-Dynamic Range” to approximate the look and feel of a late-1930’s feature, Mank is incredibly dense, lush, and extravagant.
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Dec 9, 2020
The film conjures a man who is fundamentally, simplistically decent, while his demons only intrude on his integrity in the most superficial ways. Yet, in the end, Mank is not about capturing the totality of a person, but leaving an impression of one, and in that it is certainly successful.
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Nov 12, 2020
Dec 23, 2020
Mank may be Fincher’s most technically challenging production to-date but it suffers from what some might consider to be the director’s Achilles heel: his laser-focus on perfection results in a tepid emotional temperature. It’s hard to feel much of anything for (or about) any of the characters, even the title one.
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Nov 6, 2020
Memorable acting, striking cinematography, and a provocative examination of the nexus between entertainment and media and politics — that’s part of what’s kept the legend of “Citizen Kane” alive for decades, and it’s enough to make Mank necessary, if not entirely fulfilling, viewing for film lovers.
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Movie NationDec 4, 2020
Fincher’s made a sometimes fascinating/sometimes plodding recreation of film history, perhaps with its own share of Oscar bait attached. But his richly-detailed movie just reminds us that the more modest “RKO 281,” about the actual filming of “Kane,” and “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Me and Orson Welles,” about Welles’ days shaking up New York theater, were a lot more entertaining.
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Nov 6, 2020
It’s an admirable effort. It’s just a beautiful thing to look at. And the whole endeavor is such a touching tribute from Fincher to his father. But, in the end, I found myself more interested in the behind the scenes shenanigans that led to the creation of, perhaps, the greatest movie of all time, as opposed to Mank the human being. And Mank focuses much more on the latter.
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Nov 6, 2020
The reclamation project known as Mank falls short. Even with showy performances from Oldman and Seyfried, and its beautiful craft, the film lacks heart. Because underneath the wisecracks and drunken debauchery, in the face of a sweeping political narrative, there’s scarcely an impression of the man.
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Nov 7, 2020
The problem is that Mank never transcends its borrowed cornball arc, depicting its title character as a genius in eternal conflict with villains and phonies like Hearst (Charles Dance, terrific), Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard, even better), and Welles (Tom Burke, blood-curdlingly bad).
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The PlaylistNov 6, 2020
There is some pleasure in spotting the winks and legends and shout-outs, but as with any biopic, of any figure, you can’t just bank on familiarity— you have to give the unfamiliar viewer (and, considering the platform it’s on, there will be many) reasons to care. By the end of Mank, even I wasn’t sure any of this mattered all that much.
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The Film StageNov 6, 2020
The exposition-mountain screenplay leaves little to feel just as a devotion to the written word leaves scant room for anything to look at. I’m slightly unsure what anybody involved was hoping to get from the experience, much less what’s the takeaway sans basic admiration for baseline craft.
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