Mank

David Fincher's first feature since Gone Girl (2014) sees the director delve into the gestation of the Oscar-winning screenplay for Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. But, unlike previous chronicles about the film's making (RKO 281), Fincher hones in on Welles's veteran co-writer, Herman J Mankiewicz, played to a dissolute tee by Gary Oldman. It's 1940 and Mank is holed up in a desert bungalow, bedridden and barely sober. As he toils over his script, there are flashbacks to 1930s Hollywood, including Mank's encounters with ruthless studio chiefs Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg, as well as his friendship with vivacious movie star Marion Davies (a luminous Amanda Seyfried) and her ageing press-baron lover - and Kane template - William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance). Utilising Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography and a period-authentic score, Fincher takes us on an enthralling, era-evoking journey that brilliantly captures Hollywood in its 30s heyday. Although a political subplot threatens to slow the sprightly pace, the script (by Fincher's late father, Jack) is peppered with enough pithy asides and wry observations to more than compensate.