December Movie Roundup Part 1: Mank & Wild Mountain Thyme

Despite the pandemic, Hollywood is still busy pumping out movies in time for Oscar season, so I'm curled up on my couch and trying to catch up on everything. Today's recommendations include some guaranteed Oscar bait, as well as a movie that had me giggling for an age because it is so epically weird. So no matter what mood you're in, you've covered.

Mank: Directed by David Fincher, written by his father Jack (who died in 2003), starring Gary Oldman, and telling the story of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, as he is in the throes of writing the screenplay for Citizen Kane, a movie that is consistently ranked as one the greatest movies of all time. If you haven't guessed already, Oscar voters are gonna eat this movie up with a spoon. 

I adored Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography (my mind was blown to discover this is the first movie he has ever shot) - despite being shot on digital, it fully captured the look and feel of a classic Hollywood movie, even periodically incorporating the cue marks on the right upper corner of the screen so you felt like a projectionist was changing reels in the booth instead of Netflix just streaming the movie to you in HD. Donald Graham Burt's production design was also impeccable, having to recreate all manner of lavish and extraordinary sets like MGM Studios and Hearst Castle. From a technical and visual standpoint, this movie is an absolute triumph.

However, this film still left me cold. I love black-and-white movies, but Citizen Kane is not of particular interest to me; my tastes lie more towards the screwball comedies and musicals of the 1930s and 40s. I could appreciate that Jack Fincher's screenplay is a wondrous, self-referential, intricate Mobius strip that manages to follow the narrative structure of Citizen Kane itself while telling the story of how Citizen Kane was written. It also has some surprisingly modern parallels about fake news and Republican smear campaigns. I wouldn't be surprised if this screenplay won Fincher a posthumous Oscar, because it is quite a feat. But that's the trouble with this movie. All of it feels like a technical achievement, but not an emotional one. At no point was I compelled by these characters or rooting for them. I was just waiting for this movie to end. Director David Fincher usually has such a weird and compelling original style, but he is so busy trying to make this movie replicate Citizen Kane, that there's nothing that makes it feel particularly Fincheresque. So watch Mank if you want to be informed for your Oscar pool, but if you are looking for something more emotionally resonant, you might need to look elsewhere.

Wild Mountain Thyme: This is a romance set on two Irish farms, starring Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan. That was all I needed to know to immediately watch this movie - how could you not?! However, I had also heard that the movie had a bonkers twist. I was looking forward to it, and as the movie progressed, I found myself increasingly on the edge of my seat, because there was just something a little bit manic about it throughout. I loved it so much, and then the twist happened. And I can tell you that watching this movie is the closest you will ever come to replicating the sensation of being high. I don't know what John Patrick Shanley was smoking when he wrote and directed this movie but oh man. It must have been some powerful stuff.

No further spoilers here. All I can say is that I found this movie utterly bewitching and charming and I will emphatically be in the minority in terms of recommending it. Most people will find it entirely too absurd and also be incapable of looking past whatever Christopher Walken is doing that passes for an Irish accent. But I love Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt and those two are running with this screenplay and delivering excellence. At the very end of this film, there is an extended scene where the two of them are just talking to each other and trying to figure each other out. And I could watch that conversation on a loop. It's like watching a play (which makes sense, as it is actually adapted from Shanley's play, Outside Mullingar), with the most crackling and inane dialogue that captures the Irish spirit like no other. The Irish love their existential melodrama and this movie is absolutely brimming with comic characters who make Sartre look like Pollyanna. 

Wild Mountain Thyme is a beautiful Irish romcom until it turns into a wacky bit of weirdness, and I was 100% on board throughout. This movie will not be winning any Oscars, but guess what. As far as I'm concerned, any movie that makes me giggle like a loon in 2020 deserves to win Best Picture.