Oscars 2021: Ranking The Best Picture Nominees From Worst To Best

8. Mank

Despite being the nominations leader with 10 bids, Mank is the low point of the line-up by a mile. Not an inherently terrible film, Mank simply fails to engage its audience beyond the surface level attraction of David Fincher's painstaking re-enactment of 1930s Hollywood.

The film follows screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz as he attempts to combat his alcoholism and fellow industry heavyweights while writing a first draft of Citizen Kane. The film is not without merits, the aesthetic is gorgeous as are the combined visuals of era appropriate production and sound design. Mank can almost feel like a time capsule of other movies from the time period.

Sadly, this is not enough to save it from the drawn out and uninteresting narrative that make Mank one of Fincher's worst efforts to date. With other stronger films such as One Night in Miami or The Mauritanian being shut out of the Best Picture race, this feels like it sailed into a nomination on the back of its other below the line nods. The craftmanship is indeed top quality, the storytelling is not.