If I could swim, I'd be doing swimmingly

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Movies of 2020...

#9 : Mank


David Fincher directs this act of film-industry ancestor worship, taking as his subject Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J Mankiewicz, played by Gary Oldman. A beautifully polished film that is both a tribute to Hollywood’s golden era and an acute document of the power struggles contained therein.

Obviously heard of this, but can't say it was on the list of films I'd have bothered watching.  I'm expecting it to be lavish in its visuals, extravagant in its acting, complex in its dialogue and plot, exquisite in its period details and well, quite frankly, for me not to give a fuck about any of that.  But, I generally like David Fincher's work (Zodiac and The Social Network in particular, as well as Seven, obviously) so I haven't completely written it off.

And - oh joy - it's in black and white as well.  This could be a very long two and a bit hours indeed...

So, it's basically the story of Herman Mankiewicz writing the screenplay for Citizen Kane and all the history and politics around that.  The acting isn't as over the top and the dialogue is more straightforward than I feared, but apart from that I was pretty much on the money.  The story also has more layers than I expected, but that just meant I made even less effort to follow it that I should have done.  My opinion of this was very similar to my opinion of The Aviator - all well acted, written and shot and all that, but it just passed me by,  

Not sure what more I have to say about this other than that, at times, Gary Oldman looks like Ronnie Corbett as Timothy Lumsden in Sorry!  Which was pretty much the most entertaining thing about the film for me, unfortunately - I just didn't care about it at all and found it all a drag.  I'm also not sure who would care about it - "students of the cinema" I guess, as opposed to "people who like movies". 

it's yet another Netflix film (were they the only people making films last year?) so you know where to find it if you want to watch it.  But don't say I didn't warn you. 

#10 - A step up in quality as we hit the top 10
#8 - An interesting film that slightly misses the mark for me

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