Mank                    4 ½ stars

Mank, now available on Netflix, is a rarity as it portrays 1930’s Hollywood while also being filmed in the style of the thirties. Directed by David Fincher (of The Social Network and Gone Girl), it stars Gary Oldman as Hollywood screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz who is best known for writing the screenplay of Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane. The film is in black and white and looks much like the movies of the thirties, not only by the tones and shots on the screen, but also by the quick paced dialogue of that era. At the beginning we learn that in 1940 the young 24 year old phenomenon Orson Welles has been given free reign to make whatever movie he wants with whatever resources he needs. Welles has chosen Mankiewicz to write a screenplay about a corrupt media mogul who has even greater ambitions. Throughout the movie we see Mank confined to a bed following a car accident as he dictates to a secretary and receives visits from associates and occasional phone calls from Welles. The rest of the story is done in flash backs to Mankiewicz activities in the thirties where we really get a view of what old Hollywood was like, featuring such figures as Louis B. Mayer of MGM and an aging William Randolph Hearst, the ultrarich media mogul. Amanda Seyfried portrays Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress and confidant of Mankiewicz. There is a good deal of social commentary on the politics of the age, so it helps to have some historical background. It is set in the midst of the depression at the beginning of the Roosevelt administration with labor strikes going on and with Hitler creating a stir in Europe. There is a socialist movement going on in California with writer Upton Sinclair challenging incumbent Republican Frank Merriam for the Governor’s office. The scene featuring a gathering of big wigs and socialites at Hearst castle engaged in a political discussion is fascinating as the socialist leaning Mankiewicz goes toe to toe with the Republican backers in the room. Much like Welles film, Mank can be viewed as an indictment of the superrich who live off the backs of the workers that keep their enterprise going. It is really Oldman who makes the film work though he is much older than Mankiewicz was at the time. Mank leads the Academy Award nominations with a total of ten, including Beast Actor for Oldman, Best Supporting Actress for Amanda Seyfried, Best Picture and Best Director for David Fincher. The screenplay was written by David Fincher’s father Jack who died in 2003 so never got to see it become reality.

Tesla                                    2 stars

The Current War               3 stars

Within one year two movies were released about how the power of electricity was harnessed in America in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Both Tesla, directed by Michael Almereyda and The Current War, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon cover the events when Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse were competing over the building of the fledgling powergrid that would light up American cities into the twentieth century. Immigrant Nikola Tesla also figures prominently in the stories with his designs of an electric motor that could efficiently utilize alternating current. While covering the same subject the two films are very different in focus and style. Tesla, of course centers on the life of the genius inventor from the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Ethan Hawke in the starring role who plays him as a moody, silent individual often lost in thought. He is more concerned with changing the future of mankind with his inventions than seeking personal gain. (He, of course, eventually loses his fortune and dies penniless.) Edison is portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan who is far too old for the part and Westinghouse is played by Jim Gaffigan to comic effect. The Current War stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the genius Thomas Edison who is fighting for DC current to be used as the basis for powering cities while Michael Shannon portrays brilliant businessman George Westinghouse who is selling the idea of alternating current as a more efficient means of transmitting power. As the title suggests the movie centers on the battle between the two over whose company will build and control the transmission of electric power across the country. Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) is a supporting character in The Current War who first works for Edison, goes on his own and then partners with Westinghouse. In both films it’s curious that the filmmakers chose to have Tesla speak without the hint of an accent which seems unlikely for the European immigrant. Wealthy entrepreneur J. P. Morgan features prominently in both movies (Donnie Keshawarz in Tesla and Matthew MacFadyen in The Current War) as the man who ultimately finances the whole enterprise. The style of the two films is what makes the difference between them. Tesla takes a post-modern artistic approach using the character of Anne Morgan, J. P. Morgan’s daughter, to tell the story as the woman who falls for Tesla while also narrating the background of the film’s people and events, but from our present using Google searches and iPads. There are other anachronisms used in the movie such as a cell phone and electric vacuum cleaner. I presume this is a way of showing the influence Tesla’s genius was to have on future developments, but I found it to be distracting. There are even fictional scenes such as an ice cream fight between Tesla and Edison that Anne fortunately tells us never happened. Another device used is to introduce characters without identifying them until later that I found to be confusing. By contrast The Current War is a biopic about the two men done strictly chronologically that puts the names of the characters on screen as each appears. It’s a less artistic approach but it gets the job done. The criticism I have with The Current War is the fast pace of it and quick editing. You need to pay attention, but it is less confusing than Tesla. Both are less than perfect films, but you will learn a lot from them, such as how the execution of a condemned prisoner was used by Edison to further his argument that Westinghouse’s alternating current was too dangerous to use around people. Tesla premiered at Sundance in 2020 while The Current War premiered at Toronto in 2017 and was then shelved for 2 years until its release in 2019.

Hillbilly Elegy                      2 stars

Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy is the screen adaptation of the J.D. Vance memoir about his life growing up in a dysfunctional family in Middletown, Ohio, but with roots in the hills of eastern Kentucky. We see J.D. in two parallel timelines, one as a teenager dealing with his abusive drug addicted mother Bev (Amy Adams) and the other as a Yale Law School student called home to handle his mother’s latest episode of a heroin overdose. The movie is a series of abusive situations in which the family reacts to Mom’s explosive temper, brought on by a lifetime of disappointments. The acting by Adams and especially Glenn Close as the Mamaw, the matriarch of the family is realistic. Close has been transformed with a wig and baggy T-shirts into a gruff meanspirited grandmother who uses tough love to keep her grandchildren from falling into the pattern of failure familiar to her family. (Though there is a scene where she sets her husband on fire, but never mind that.) Close deserves the Academy Award nomination she received for the role. Unfortunately, it takes more than good acting to make a good movie so Hillbilly Elegy doesn’t deserve the same praise and is hard to watch as the characters put themselves through such misery. I didn’t read the book which is reputed to be a social commentary on poor working-class white America. Sadly, the many social and political issues raised in the book did not carry over into the movie that can be described as a series of face-slapping, door-slamming and drug fueled abusive scenes. It’s a collection of talented actors in a movie in search of a purpose. The director of Cinderella Man and The Da Vinci Code has missed the mark with this one.