Mank (David Fincher, 2020) • Page 6

I don't think Oscar season is why studios don't take risks anymore, everything has just gotten so corporate

 

I enjoy them too but actually found their stuff when the shutdowns first started and they didn’t have many theatrical releases to talk about a lot better than otherwise. Oscar stuff especially. They had Toshiro Mifune and Criterion Channel eps! They talked about Four Weddings and a Funeral one show! I fell off in the last couple months and tuned in again for the Mank episode and was a little disappointed. I don’t know if you ever listened to K. Austin Collins on the episode of Diversity Hire he was on but the disappointment he has with the Ringer and people he thinks should know better but churn out empty Ringer/Simmons-esque content has stayed with me. With some of the people they have, their content could be so much stronger.

 

Criterion Episode was their best ever

 

There is a big gap between stuff like Green Book and Andrei Tarkovsky. Even if we limit the conversation to English-language films that are pretty mainstream, the Oscars miss.

 

This was fine. Some of the impersonations skate a little too close to SNL-quality, especially Welles, but it is decent enough.

 

fincher casting someone who looks so much like himself to play welles seems loaded

 

Amanda Seyfried is about as much of a lock you can get in a year like this.

 

Also I’ve watched this three times and it fucking rules. Ready for all the 2025 “wait Mank is actually great?” takes.

 

mank is great in 2020

 

It’s not good

 

Rarx&Mecreation

 

Mank&Recreation was right there

 

I enjoyed it

 

thanks mick

 

I may watch it again one day, mostly because Fincher’s dumb comments about Orson Welles made me apprehensive about the film.

Right now it is roughly The Artist 2.

 

except the artist wasn't good

 

big hmmm there

 

sounds like an apt comparison then

 

I truly can’t fathom watching this 3 times in one week.

 

Given the outsized reputation of Orson Welles, it is strange that this is the second movie in roughly a decade (Me and Orson Welles) that decided to center its story in proximity to the man instead of the man himself. It is like if you made a movie about a family that lives next to the Corleones.

 

I liked Me and Orson Welles okay at the time. McKay in that movie was better than Oldman in this one is my hot take.

 

One of the most justified criticisms of this movie is 65 year old Oldman playing 43 year old Mank while 33 year old Tuppence Middleton plays his 43 year old wife. Seyfried is also playing like 7 years older but that’s less egregious. The different standards for casting and age for men and women have long been a problem.

 

Yeah Oldman clearly looks way older than 43.

 

I could justify it just because alcoholism fucks you up, and the pictures of I’ve seen of Mankiewicz looked older than his age as well.

but still, I laughed extremely hard when I found out Oldman and Seyfried were supposed to be the same age.

 

i can see that criticism better than most made against this. at the same time, as much as oldman fucking sucks, he's great in this.