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Herman Mankiewicz was a Hollywood screenwriter in the 30s and 40s, though now less well remembered than his director brother Joseph. Nevertheless, he won an Oscar for Citizen Kane.We meet him first in 1940 when he's laid up after a bad car accident. Ironically, although Mank is a sad alcoholic, he wasn't driving at the time. He starts to write the screenplay that Orson Welles has commissioned from him. Welles wants it done in two months.We flashback frequently to the 30s, each scene change heralded as if from a screenplay: EXT MGM STUDIOS. NIGHT. We meet such luminaries as Louis B Mayer and, importantly William Randolph Hearst who has a soft spot for Mank. Mank is not afraid to speak truth to power (possibly the drink talking) and may be the most honest and decent man in Hollywood.In 1934 Hearst uses his wealth and influence to skewer the political ambitions of novelist Upton Sinclair who is running for Governor of California as a Democrat but is widely held to be -- shock, horror -- a Socialist. It is this, it seems that leads Mank to attack him in Kane.The film shimmers in black and white with 'end of reel' markers digitally inserted. I remember these well but had completely forgotten about them. It was nice to see them again.There are a lot of good one-liners which are seriously underplayed, almost thrown away. Mank's wife Sarah is known to everyone relentlessly as 'Poor Sarah'.It's streaming on Netflix but it's also on at the Waterman's, so go along, see it on the big screen and help keep London's best repertory cinema going.

Susan Kelly ● 1207d

In 1950s Vermont, newly-weds Fred and Rosie arrive at Bennington College where Fred is to be an assistant to Professor Stanley Hymen. They are to stay with him and his wife Shirley for a few days. Shirley is Shirley Jackson, acclaimed novelist, alcoholic and all-round unpleasant person. The youngsters get manipulated into moving in indefinitely, with Rosie acting as cook/housekeeper to the older couple and more or less carer for the agoraphobic Shirley at the expense of her own studies.Meanwhile, a student has gone missing from the college. Is this anything to do with creepy Stanley who treats all the college women -- students and faculty wives -- as his personal harem? Shirley starts writing a novel about a missing student and enlists Rosie for 'errands' such as stealing the girl's medical records.But Rosie has a dark side of her own and soon she and Shirley are friends, to the extent that damaged women like Shirley can have friends. You start to fear for the sanity of the young couple and even their safety.Stanley and Shirley reminded me a little of the couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Shirley, like Woolf, is an anti-Semite married to a Jew. Their four children seem to have been magicked out of the film. Jackson was dead at 48 from drink, heavy smoking and addiction to prescription drugs. It's a performance totally without vanity by the splendid Elisabeth Moss.Dark, gripping, enthralling. Best film of the year since Parasite.On general release at the end of October.

Susan Kelly ● 1265d

Edward and Grace have been married for 29 years and have been coasting for many of them. One day Edward announces that he's leaving, having fallen in love with the mother of one of the boys at his school. Grace is heavily in denial and convinced that he can be made to change his mind, while their son Jamie is caught in the middle.It's hardly a new story but this domestic drama is played out with great skill by Annette Benning and Bill Nighy, with Josh O'Connor as Jamie -- his rather lugubrious face perfectly suited to the role. The story is  focussed, with other characters having only the briefest of roles to play.It's normal in these circumstances to say 'Bloody men' but Grace is intensely irritating, clingy and needy, which is why her son so seldom comes to visit. Now he's stuck with her, afraid that she will commit suicide. She plays all sorts of manipulative games: she buys a delightful puppy and calls it Edward -- 'Stay, Edward!'; she insists on meeting to sign the divorce papers before refusing to do so; he has to change his mobile number to avoid her nuisance calls. She's not going to be moving on in a hurry.Screenwriter and director William Nicholson based the story on his parents' divorce which happened when he, like Jamie, was in his late 20s. It's even set firmly in his home town of Seaford. He's updated it to the 21st century although the marital home is curiously dated, as if stuck in a time warp. The other woman's house, on the other hand, is decorated and furnished like the lounge in a care home. Nul points to the designer.I have seen Benning's English accent described by one reviewer as 'the worst since Dick Van Dyke', which is baffling, as it's perfectly fine. The whole film is well worth seeing -- a domestic drama which never descends into melodrama.

Susan Kelly ● 1313d

Being asked to see a film where the lead is Adam Sandler would normally be declined given his usual film output but this film has picked up great reviews including Sandler's performance so I took a chance.Written and directed by the Safdie Brothers, it is a tale of wheeling and dealing in the Jewish diamond district near Times Square in New York. Sandler is the pivot - he is on screen nearly the whole two hours of the film and is like you have never seen him before. A middle aged man who has clearly been successful as a diamond trader, with hair, glasses and cosmetic teeth wearing latest fashion brands to look younger and trying to make a financial killing with his acquisition of an Ethiopian "rare" diamond. Problem is he has a bad basketball gambling habit which means he owes everyone money and is playing off everyone he has borrowed from alongside having an affair with his office secretary which his wife wants to divorce him over.The film is very high energy throughout after a very weird pair of opening scenes, with a lot of shouting (nobody whispers) plus a lot of NY slang that was not always easy to follow,The film is shot in a very cinema verite style (if you have seen any of John Cassavetes films you will recognise it straight away) and held my attention to the end but at two hours is too long (I still pine for 90 minutes features as being the ideal).  The rest of the cast are unknowns but are all great especially the basketball star so Sandler is not allowed to walk away with the film.

Joe Conneely ● 1516d

A lifetime of BBC TV adaptations of Dickens main novels left me interested in seeing this film given its promise to be different. The director Armando Iannucci as anyone who saw Death of Stalin will know, likes to mix things up whether it was the accents in that earlier film or in this case the ethnicity of the cast, having decided to use Dev Patel in the lead role.To be honest after 10 minutes that aspect quickly falls away and doesn't intrude on the story.Using a set up of DC doing a theatre reading of his novel allows the adult DC to feature all through as both actor and narrator as his story is told in flashback. The film certainly goes at a pace with many of the well known characters in the novel appearing rapidly but by half way I was finding it all too much a kaleidoscope of events and almost cartoonesque in its depictions. There is an all star British cast with alongside Dev Patel in the lead role, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Lawrie and Peter Capaldi as Mr Micawber alongside many lesser known but impressive actors, but for me the one character who I found grabbing my attention most whenever he was on screen was Ben Whishaw. As Uriah Heep he avoided the caricatures this role normally attracts and instead conveyed the bitterness and venom that finally leads to his undoing.  The novel was allegedly Dickens favourite of all those he wrote - I came out after two hours viewing thinking the reason may well be the story showing the many up and downs he suffered in his own life which at the pace this adaptation operates felt like a roller coaster ride.

Joe Conneely ● 1523d