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Mank
**** In his first movie in six years, filmmaker David Fincher (Fight Club, The Social Network) hasn’t lost his ability to beguile, fascinate and vex. Working from a screenplay by his late father, Jack Fincher, the director has concocted a superb cinematic portrait of Herman “Mank” Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), co-writer of Citizen Kane. In 1940, a bloated Mank drunkenly dictates the script to his formidable transcriber, Rita Alexander (Lily Collins). He’s preparing the project for Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to direct, but flashbacks insinuate that Citizen Kane is powered by a personal grudge Mank holds against William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance). Tormented by his tacit participation in a Hearst-backed smear campaign against the writer and liberal California gubernatorial candidate Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye), Mank models the megalomaniacal Charles Foster Kane on Hearst. Was Citizen Kane’s origin that simple? Hardly, but you don’t have to buy the theory to dig the movie. Beneath the seductive sheen of Erik Messerschmidt’s black-and-white cinematography lies Fincher’s conviction that Hollywood—like the melting ice sculpture of an elephant at a party Mank attends—should be liquefied for its sins. Mank may not be cheery, but no one goes to Fincher for good vibes. Gleeful pessimism is his drug of choice, and for us, it can be an improbable and exhilarating high. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Netflix.
Wander Darkly
*** Adrienne and Matteo (Sienna Miller and Diego Luna) are not-so-happy new parents. They fight at home, at parties, in the car…until a head-on traffic collision cuts their final argument short. This propels Adrienne into an out-of-body experience, trapping her in a limbo where she’s forced to silently and invisibly observe the paramedics fail to revive her, and her subsequent funeral. And then she wakes up. She’s not dead, but she’s convinced she is, triggering an existential crisis that causes her to reflect on the truth behind her relationship with Matteo. This is the point where the film becomes visionary, evoking dreamy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-esque reveries across memory in order to pinpoint where their love began to fade. In these retrospective journeys through the most salient events of their relationship, Adrienne and her imagined version of Matteo communicate frankly about their ups and downs—something they struggled to do in the real world. Reminiscent of a less esoteric She Dies Tomorrow (another three-star 2020 release), this confident directorial debut from Tara Miele is a psychological probe into the ways we reckon with trauma, effectively blurring the malleable lines between reality and memory. R. MIA VICINO. On Demand.