MANK: 4 STARS

Mank

William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles will forever be connected in our imagination courtesy of “Citizen Kane.” In the film, often regarded as one of the best ever made, Welles plays a thinly veiled version of newspaper magnate Hearst as self-absorbed, power-mad and wounded.

“Mank,” a new film directed by David Fincher and streaming on Netflix on Dec. 4, isn’t a making-of story about the film, but more the unmaking of its screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).

Former drama critic, playwright, columnist and Algonquin Round Table wit, Mankiewicz moved to Hollywood with the promise of a contract and a career. Heading west from New York, he quickly found himself working steadily ghost-writing films. As his reputation grew, so did his bank account.

"Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots,” he telegraphed to writer Ben Hecht.

Known as a hard drinker and inveterate gambler, when we first meet him in “Mank,” he’s bandaged up from a recent, drunken car accident. Welles (Tom Burke) and John Houseman (Sam Troughton) have sent the writer to a ranch in the sunbaked Mojave Desert to dry out with the help of a German nurse (Monika Grossman) and a secretary (Lily Collins), and to work on the script for what will become “Citizen Kane.” 

At one point in the film Mankiewicz says, “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.”

Fincher, working from a script penned by his late father, columnist Jack, supplies a vivid snapshot of a man from a particular point of view. 

Shot in luscious black and white, the story is told on a broken time line, à la “Citizen Kane,” as the action springs back and forth between the past and the present.

Oldman, as Mankiewicz, staggers through the movie causing a scene at a costume dinner party at Hearst’s San Simeon estate and platonically courting his friend, movie star Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), who also happens to be Hearst’s mistress.

He’s poured into bed by his long-suffering wife (Tuppence Middleton) and goes to war with Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), professionally and politically-- "If I ever go to the electric chair,” he says of Mayer, “I'd like him to be sitting in my lap."—while ignoring potentially career-saving advice from his brother (Tom Pelphrey). Each vignette adds DNA to the portrait, as his disillusionment with Hollywood, politics and power grows by the moment.

“Every moment of my life is treacherous,” Mank says. 

Oldman plays Mankiewicz as a sharp wit who has grown tired of the world he inhabits. Drink, as his brother Joe says, has made him the “court jester” of Hollywood, a man whose genius is squandered in pursuit of booze and a sure bet at the racetrack. There’s a mischievousness to the performance that is tempered by the profound sadness of someone who sees their genius reduced to doing creative work for hire.

His script for “Citizen Kane,” which was supposed to be credited solely to Welles, earned him an Oscar and may have been his last chance to speak his truth to power. “Write hard,” he says. “Aim low.”

Oldman is suitably ragged and ribald, bringing a lesser-known historical figure to bawdy life, but it is Seyfried who almost steals the show. As Marion Davies, she is the epitome of old Hollywood glamour, but behind the sequins and wide eyes is a deep well of intelligence that Seyfried slyly imbues into her character. When she and Oldman are side-by-side, the movie sings. 

In many ways “Mank” echoes “Citizen Kane.” In structure, in its fragmented storytelling approach and its luscious recreation of the period, but as a portrait of a man it feels lesser than. Mank is an engaging character but the depth that Kane plumbed to portray the character is missing.

It succeeds as a look at power and its corrosive effects but as a character study its colorful but feels slightly under inflated.

THE LEGO STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL: 2 ½ STARS

Lego Star Wars

When I recently spoke with Anthony Daniels, the “Star Wars” legend who has played C-3PO for almost fifty years, I let two bad words escape my mouth.

“You said the two horror words in the English language: ‘holiday special,’” he said with a laugh. “It remains one of the most shocking, undignified pieces of non-entertainment. Something so abusive of the basic premise of ‘Star Wars.’” 

To be clear, he was talking about “The Star Wars Holiday Special,” not the new “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special,” a new animated movie now playing on Disney+, but his reaction speaks to the legend of the 1978 Christmas show.

It’s been called "the worst two hours of television ever." It’s so cringy Nathan Rabin wrote, "I'm not convinced the special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine." 

Against that intergalactically awful backdrop comes a new special that shares nothing with the original save for the “Star Wars” DNA and the celebration of Life Day.

Chronologically placed after the events of “Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker,” as the film begins ‘twas the night before Life Day, in a galaxy far, far away. Jedi Rey and roly-poly robot BB-8 are on a journey to Kashyyyk, the tropical, forested Wookiee home world in a quest for a deeper understanding of the Force. 

Back at the Millennium Falcon preparations are underway for the Wookiee festival of Life Day celebrations as Rey is diverted, thrown off course by a key that unlocks the galaxy’s past. Travelling across space and time, she goes on an intergalactic adventure that puts her in contact with many of “Star Wars’” most beloved and villainous characters. 

Question is, will she make it home to celebrate the most important day on the Wookiee calendar with her pals? 

If you are going to riff off one of the silliest shows of all time, you should be at least sorta silly. The bland humour of “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” doesn’t compare in any way to the inventive, anarchic spirit or the frenetic storytelling of the big-screen LEGO movies.

Those movies break the rules, whereas “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” feels tame, afraid to take chances in the melding of two beloved franchises. It often seems like an excuse to take threadbare holiday themes of the importance of family and finding the true spirit of the season and moulding them around familiar characters. 

The good news is “The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special” is a step up from “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” But, then again, almost everything is. See the above comment from Anthony Daniels. Other than some silly Dark Side moments, it feels like a franchise unwilling to really let go and have some fun. It needs a touch more “What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb?)” and touch less of playing it safe. 

SOUND OF METAL: 3 ½ STARS

Sound of Metal

“Sound of Metal,” a new drama starring “Rogue One’s” Riz Ahmed, is a cautionary tale about getting what you wish for.

Ahmed is Ruben, a drummer in Blackgammon, a heavy metal duo fronted by his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke). The pair live in an RV, criss-crossing the country on tour before going into the studio to make an album. He’s an aggressive player, part Lars Ulrich, part Chuck Biscuits, whose booming style is the sound of frustration and bellicosity manifested on stage six nights a week.

At a gig in Missouri his ears ring and soon stop working. On stage and off all he hears is a muffled roar. A visit to the doctor reveals he has lost more than seventy percent of his hearing is gone and won’t come back.

“Eliminate all exposure to loud noises,” he’s told. “Your first responsibility is to preserve the hearing you have left.”

As he and Lou try and plot a way forward, Ruben becomes obsessed with the idea of cochlear implant surgery rather than accepting his hearing loss.

At a cost of $40-$80,000 they are out of reach for now so in the short-term, Lou takes Ruben, who has been sober for four years, to a “clean” house, run by deaf counselor Joe (Paul Raci). He’s welcome to stay but this is a solo gig. As Ruben learns how to be deaf, Lou must give him space. In the coming weeks anger and dissatisfaction lead to acceptance as he learns about his new life but never lets go of the idea that implants will allow him to return to his old life.

“Our main tenet is that deafness is not a handicap,” says Joe, “not something to be fixed.”

“Sound of Metal” makes you walk a mile in Ruben’s shoes. Applying immersive sound design, writer-director Darius Marder toggles between Ruben’s point-of-view and real-world sounds. The muffled sound of the world filtered through his damaged ears portray his sensory deprivation in an intense way. As his desperation and frustration grow the sound design hammers home the devastating effects of hearing loss.

In addition, Marder close captions much of the film, dropping the subtitles when Ruben is learning sign language, once again involving the audience in his learning curve.

As Ruben, Ahmed brings a nervous energy to the role. He’s always in motion, unable to find a still moment for contemplation or acceptance. As his frustration gives way to a reluctant acceptance, he brings us along for the journey, giving us insight into a person’s whose life has been blown apart.

Raci as Joe, a Vietnam vet who lost his hearing in the war emerges as a force. In real life Raci grew up with deaf parents, is a Court Certified American Sign Language interpreter, and the lead singer for a heavy metal band that performs in American Sign Language. With great warmth, tinged with firmness, he steals every scene he’s in.

“Sound of Metal” is specific in its setting, but ultimately is a story of accepting the curveballs life throws at you.

LEAP OF FAITH: 3 STARS

Leap of Faith

Formatted almost like a film school lecture, “Leap of Faith,” a new documentary about the making of “The Exorcist” and now streaming on Shudder, is a master class in how a classic movie was made.

In the almost fifty years after the release of a movie that was heralded as everything from “religious porn” to “pure cinematic terror,” “The Exorcist” has not lacked for critical analysis. Thousands of gallons of ink have been spilled printing books and articles on the subject while in the internet age everyone who has ever stepped into a theatre seems to have written something about the film.

“Leap of Faith” does everyone who has ever posited an opinion on the film’s meaning one better. It goes to the source with an in-depth interview with the movie’s director William Friedkin.

Documentary filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe goes long with the director on the creative process, nailing down the definitive stories of how the 1973 horror film came to be. Much of the information was covered in the 2014 autobiography, “The Friedkin Connection,” but here the director’s way with a story and Philippe’s use of visuals makes the stories cinematic.

This isn’t a casual fan doc. Friedkin and Philippe dig deep to uncover the film’s visual influences—everything from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1955 “Ordet” to Magritte’s “The Empire of Light” series—to how recording the score ended a long-time friendship. There is great detail on the casting, the filming of controversial scenes and why star Max von Sydow, who once played Jesus in a film, had so much trouble performing one of “The Exorcist’s” most pious and famous sequences.

Over and over Friedkin talks about following his instincts and making decisions that either seemed counterintuitive or deemed too costly by the studio.

“I didn’t question my instincts,” he says, which I suppose is at least part of the reason the film is called “Leap of Faith.”

There’s the obvious reason and then there’s the small leaps of faith that those working with Friedkin had to take along the way. Hearing about his battles with everyone from studio heads on down to get his vision to the screen is an interesting reminder of Hollywood when creative vison could trump corporate interference.

“Leap of Faith” isn’t a flashy film. It’s a detailed, if straightforward, making of documentary that connects the dots between the filmmaker and his faith in an interesting, if long-winded way.

RUSTIC ORACLE: 3 ½ STARS

Rustic Oracle

“Rustic Oracle,” a hard-hitting new drama written and directed by Sonia Bonspille Boileau and now on VOD, begins with a trigger warning. “This film contains scenes and themes that may be traumatic or cause anxiety to some individuals.”

It is a sobering start to a movie that explores a story experienced by countless Indigenous families who have faced trauma caused by the disappearance of a loved one.

Set in the mid-1990s, the story involves single mother Susan (Carmen Moore) living in a Mohawk community with her two daughters, 8-year-old Ivy (Lake Delisle) and teenager Heather (McKenzie Deer Robinson).

The sisters are very close but Heather and her mom regularly bash heads. After one big blow out Heather disappears. She doesn’t pick Ivy up from school and is nowhere to be found. Fearing the worst Susan contacts the police. When they are no help Susan and Ivy begin their own investigation, beginning with an older boy, a suspected drug dealer, Heather was last seen talking to on the schoolground. As they hit the road, following clues throughout Ontario and Quebec, Ivy is plagued by nightmarish visions of her sister’s fate as she tries to make sense of a senseless situation.

There is a naturalism to “Rustic Oracle” which perhaps stems from the origin of the story. Boileau based the film on her teenage experience growing up in Kanehsatake, a settlement on the shore of the Lake of Two Mountains in southwestern Quebec. The realism and heartbreak on display is deeply felt and deeply affecting.

The crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women is one of the most important, yet frequently overlooked, social ills in our country. Heather’s story, as seen through the eyes of an innocent, 8-year-old Ivy, is fictional, but it is an important entry into a much larger story.

As the film’s end credit sequence tells us, “Although Indigenous women represent only 4% of the Canadian population, they represent one-quarter of the country’s missing and murdered cases and at least half of all sex trafficking victims. It is currently estimated that we have lost close to 4,000 of our Indigenous sisters in the last 40 years.”

Written, directed and produced by an Indigenous team, “Rustic Oracle” is a powerful story that with several unforgettable moments. In one heart-wrenching scene, Ivy sees her sister’s missing posters covered by mundane places to let and lost animal flyers. It’s a small moment that brings crystal clear clarity to years of institutional cover-ups and ignorance. It’s in moments like this that the film is most effective.

THE DONUT KING: 3 ½ STARS

The Donut King

COVID-19 has forced film distributors to get creative. Some are side-stepping traditional theatres completely in favour of drive-ins or streaming services. Other movies they release to iTunes and there’s even a resurgence in direct to DVD titles.

“The Donut King,” a new rags-to-riches-to-rags documentary from director Alice Gu may have the most unique release plan yet. Its distributor, Films We Like, is making the doc available to stream via top artisan donut (or, doughnut) shops across Canada. Each purchase of a stream, the press release says, “will help support these local purveyors of sweetness.”

Ted Ngoy is not a name you will recognize, but his influence in California is immeasurable. A refugee from the genocide in Cambodia, he relocated to Los Angeles in 1975 looking for a better life.

“I could choose any country,” he says. “But I chose America because I love America.”

After a series of odd jobs he enrolled in the three month training program at Winchell's Donut House. A good student he absorbed everything about the business and soon went out on his own.

“It was kind of ironic,” says food journalist Greg Nichols. “They trained the enemy.”

Within four years he had 25 donut shops and would soon build an empire of 65 stores so pervasive it kept Dunkin' Donuts out of the L.A. marketplace.

“It spread like wildfire,” he says.

He was a self-made millionaire who lived a high life, made $100,000 a month and lived in a giant mansion, complete with a chandelier that wouldn’t be out of place in Versailles and an elevator.

“My parents enjoyed the fruits of their labour,” says one son.

Ngoy had the trappings of wealth but also used his money to sponsor and mentor thousands of other Cambodian refugees. It is estimated that almost 90% of all the donuts sold in California are made by Cambodian immigrants who can trace their businesses back to the Donut King.

His great success, however, was followed by a great fall as his American Dream becomes a nightmare.

“The Donut King” isn’t all sweet, but it is a treat. The detailed background accounts of the fall of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge are wrenching and Ngoy’s fall from grace, having thrown away the family’s business and money, is shocking.

“It’s a monster in me,” he says of his gambling addiction. “The more you chase, the more it is gone.”

Gu presents the downfall effectively with a series of fast cut talking head style interviews with friends and family. By the time they sell the last donut shop for $85,000 in cash—which goes missing—the story functions as a cautionary tale of unchecked ambition.

By the end “The Donut King” takes a more traditional approach, winding things up with a Food Network style wrap up that tells the story of the next generation of Donut Kings and Queens. It’s an uplifting end to a story with more flavours than your corner donut shop.