Mank’

When the director Orson Welles hired Herman J. Mankiewicz to write the script for his masterful 1941 debut feature film “Citizen Kane,” the Hollywood veteran saw an opportunity to turn his life experiences — including his personal relationships with powerful bullies like the publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst and the movie studio boss Louis B. Mayer — into an enduring piece of cinema. Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz in director David Fincher’s “Mank,” a look back at the tumultuousness of American politics and show business, in the years in and around World War II. Shot in softly expressionistic black-and-white, this movie is a lovely but sly consideration of how artists try to shape their times by documenting them as bluntly as possible.

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