My middle-ground rating is due to Fincher constantly taking half-measures throughout Mank. He never fully commits to the visual style of a 1940s film - there's clearly something missing from the way this was shot and filtered - and the allusions to old films (the cue marks, title sequence, fade transitions) felt unsatisfying because the movie neither feels like an authentic old movie nor like it effectively uses today's tech (which we know Fincher loves) to give us that illusion. Unlike The Lighthouse which was shot on film and looks amazing but also murky and nasty - but that's because it's supposed to be! Mank looks ugly for no apparent reason and on top of that, the script gives us no reason why we should be excited about or very much interested in Herman Mankiewicz. I got the impression that he may be brilliant but he's also a know-it-all and a contrarian - but there's always a considerable amount of distance between us and him, in that he's in every scene but we have no reason to be invested in him! Anyway, there were some great scenes scattered throughout and the references to the politics both of the US and of the studio system at the time felt like a goldmine of period-specific insights that would make any film historian giddy. My mom, who has been studying William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies for quite a time found it boring and said that actually Hearst had a high-pitched squeaky voice and that Marion Davies had a stutter. And the claims that the Kael essay made that inspired this movie are a bit disputed from what I've read. So maybe I'm giving Mank too much credit for what I thought to be historical credibility. Or maybe I can't believe that Fincher could make a bad movie!