Its obsession with movie history minus tired romanticism makes it strangely enchanting.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 23, 2024

As an example of the screenwriting art, this film itself is pretty great.

| Mar 13, 2021

Mank is a love letter and a poison pen, though like much of its meticulous director's output, this film (that's not a film, though it's often made to look like one) is weighed down by the burden of time.

| Dec 31, 2020

Not unlike watching Oliver Stone's JFK. It's spectacular! It's a tour du force! It's counterfactual nonsense!

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2020

More than a magnificent technical achievement, Mank is hypnotically entertaining.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 8, 2020

I loved looking at it, hearing it, and the actors in it -- particularly Charles Dance... It feels like something I can study -- it just doesn't feel like something I can enjoy watching again.

| Original Score: B | Dec 7, 2020

Fincher's latest is a disappointing slice of Hollywood hooey.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 7, 2020

It won't be for everyone. But in the canon of films about film-making, there are few as textured, as committed and as suffused with real appreciation for the craft as Mank.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2020

In his gleeful curmudgeon of a film, Fincher salutes the unseen hands of masterpieces, writers with only their wordplay to take on the world - as if play had the first thing to do with it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2020

This is masterful filmmaking about Old Hollywood that reflects on this year's tangled election.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 4, 2020

Dor all its skill and scrupulousness, I found the film a strangely remote emotional experience -- a slice of black and white that never quite bursts into living color.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2020

By siding with the writer, David Fincher draws attention to the small print and, in the process, concocts a fabulous and moving yarn of his own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2020

An astutely probing and pain-filled work of speculative historical psychology-and a vision of Hollywood politics that shines a fervent plus ça change spotlight on current events.

| Dec 4, 2020

Mank himself says it, "You cannot capture a man's entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one." And with humor and wit and sophistication and substance, that's exactly what Mank the movie does.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2020

If you care at all about movie history and the intersection of politics, or you just want to watch a filmmaker at the top of his craft, Mank is a must-see.

| Dec 4, 2020

It expresses both appreciation for and wariness of Hollywood's allure and its ability to shape reality.

| Original Score: B | Dec 4, 2020

Mank is a tale of triumph, the kind that's been told countless times on the silver screen, but never quite with this moving blend of realism and regret.

| Dec 4, 2020

A worthy, eminently watchable entry in the annals of Hollywood self-obsession.

| Dec 3, 2020

It is pure pleasure to see a film that respects the audience enough to take on big issues with complexity, humanity, and wit.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 3, 2020

A film at war with itself-simultaneously heartfelt and chilly; ravishing and wooden; boisterous and airless.

| Dec 1, 2020