Mank (2020)

Mank has a lot of problems. David Fincher's new film has some nice elements to it, but the screenplay (by Fincher's dad) doesn't really build its tension the way it needs to, and so the important scenes don't land when they should. Worse yet, the Finchers have us jumping around in time in a way that doesn't allow the film to build up to anything. We'll be in the middle of an important and emotional scene and – what do you know – we're jumping forward seven years in time for five minutes... only to jump right back to where we left off? These jumps are unmotivated and unrelated to anything thematic. They just seem to be there. The whole thing is quite frustrating. 

The tone of this movie is off, too. Mank takes a comical approach to most of its subject matter, but then it's filmed in black and white as if its going to be a serious noir picture instead of a jaunty comedy. Meanwhile Reznor and Ross's score bounces around as if this is Sullivan's Travels. It just doesn't work.

The Battle of Neretva (1969)

I have been trying to watch The Battle of Neretva (Bitka Na Neretvi) forever. I finally found it on YouTube this afternoon and watched it tonight. This is a war film about Yugoslav communists fighting the Germans, the Italians, and German allies in Yugoslavia during WWII while trying to get hundreds of wounded and sick people to safety. The film stars an international cast headlined by Sergei Bondarchuk, Franco Nero, Yul Brynner, Hardy Krüger, and Orson Welles and it is an epic. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this movie. The only thing I can think of that compares to it is Saving Private Ryan, which was made in the late 1990s. The battle sequences in The Battle of Neretva are insane. Just insane. I cannot believe this was made in 1969. This movie absolutely blew my mind. Half the film I just sat with my jaw dropped. It's a superb achievement.

Zac Efron and Orson Welles

I wasn't really bored by Me and Orson Welles so much as I am not quite sure what the whole thing was about.

As far as I can tell, Me and Orson Welles was one long theatre joke. The film is about a young aspiring performer who gets serendipitously cast as a minstrel in Welles' legendary 1937 modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. Christian McKay plays Welles, and actors play Joseph Cotton and John Houseman and all kinds of other famous people. In addition, about a billion names are dropped in the film. So many, in fact, that you'd have to be a theatre historian to get all of the references in Me and Orson Welles. I might be exaggerating a bit, but my point is that the film trades on theatre and movie in-jokes and does so with a wink.

(To be fair, one of my favorite moments in the movie is a reference to The Third Man where Joseph Cotton steps out of the shadows to give Zac Efron some advice.)

So, Zac Efron. I love him. The thing is, he is kinda... well... bad in this movie. I mean, he is cute, he steals focus, you always look at him when he is onscreen, even when he isn't in the center of the frame. But, he doesn't always know how to read his lines. And he doesn't quite know how to get a laugh. Oh, well. He is pretty, anyway.

Me and Orson Welles is a weird Richard Linklater film. It is a whimsical little thing with very little substance. Watching Orson Welles chew scenery is fun, and theatre jokes are cute, but the whole thing had worn rather thin for me by the end.

I should mention, however, that James Tupper, who plays Joseph Cotton, gives a really great performance. He was my favorite thing in the movie.