Gary Oldman

An overbearing soundscape tries to compensate for the film’s glum, inserting acoustic chaos when the drama doesn’t translate to the screen. 

“Mank” succeeds because — like most Fincher films — it always stays attuned to the throughline of its characters’ destructive obsession, using all its stellar audiovisual elements to complement its hefty themes.

It’s time for the Oscars to dispense with the waiting, and instead award the year’s brightest performances the first time around.

If your film is a commercial film, it has to reinvent its genre of choice, be constantly talked about by the press and audiences and/or have a hefty studio campaign budget standing behind it to even stand a chance at getting nominated. And then you’ll still lose to stuff such as “The Shape of Water.”

Despite offering a surprisingly eclectic spread of nominees, the 90th Academy Awards proved to be utterly, boringly predictable.

Perhaps the most shocking is Gary Oldman’s “Best Actor” nomination for his performance as the famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

With the general consensus that there were no major snubs in this year’s Academy Awards nominations, category predictions become all the more interesting.

It’s not a particularly revolutionary performance by Oldman, but there are enough interesting moments deserving of a better narrative framework.

Darius is still charming, with his sunshiney laugh and ability to survive the impossible. Meanwhile, Michael is just annoying.

With “Churchill,” von Tunzelmann and Teplitzky don’t merely settle for telling another historical drama — they present viewers with a complete, flawed human being, one whose controversial but massive influence carries on to this day.