20 Worst Best Picture Film Nominees Since 2010
17. Mank
By far the worst film in what was honestly an absolutely smashing Best Picture line-up, David Fincher's Mank is in a similar ballpark to the aforementioned Lincoln. It's a very well-executed bit of film-making, but it's thoroughly inadequate as a story.
The cast is excellent, the recreation of old Hollywood is thoroughly impressive and the visuals and production values are just as stunning as you'd expect from a David Fincher film, but that's all Mank really offers.
There's no character arc, there's no emotional story-line, there's no suspense. It's nothing more than an episodic series of emotionless dialogue scenes with very little in the way of story, making this a real chore to get through.
To sum up: very well-made but dull as dishwater. Some might defend this choice because this was 2020 and there weren't many other options... right? Wrong. There were plenty.
Da 5 Bloods, One Night in Miami, Qua Vadis, Aida?, Another Round or, going for a really left-field pick, The Invisible Man. Those would all have been amazing and totally deserving nominees, but instead we got two and a half hours of emotionless recreations of 1940s Hollywood and Gary Oldman getting drunk.