Review: 'Mank' is a gorgeous dive into film history — and a sharp reflection on our political present

There is some awfully good writing in "Mank," which is only to be expected for a movie about some of the finest writing ever to grace the silver screen. Under the circumstances, it seems fitting to quote a few examples. In one scene, the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (a superb Gary Oldman), laid up with a broken leg and a looming deadline, endures the lofty complaints of his editor, John Houseman (Sam Troughton). "You're asking a lot of a motion picture audience," Houseman says, describing Mank's latest work as "a hodgepodge of talky episodes, a collection of fragments that leap around in time like Mexican jumping beans. The story is so scattered, I'm afraid one will need a road map."

The screenplay under critique will eventually become "Citizen Kane," and as dim as Houseman's opinions may sound 80 years later, they're a reminder of the sheer audacity of that 1941 masterwork, not only in its dazzling technique but also in its defiance of the constraints