Songbird pushes buttons that feel ugly and inappropriate, all of which makes giving the film any sort of fair assessment difficult to do.

The Stand In moves through the motions with a plodding laboriousness that grows increasingly irritating, and almost all of the supporting players are never around long enough to make anything more than a passing impression.

Mank is nothing more than a metaphorical celluloid sled of failed dreams and misguided ambition burning to ash in a fiery furnace fueled by frustratingly combustible emptiness.

There is a breathless sonic majesty to Darius Marder’s superb Sound of Metal that left me a discombobulated mess long after the drama had ended.