The ultimate must-see film.

Rating: 9/10 (5 December 2011)

Given that "Citizen Kane" has owned the best-film-of-all-time lists since the mid-1950s and that it was called the same by the ultimate film critic Robert Ebert, I'll have a limited amount to say about it other than to agree that Orson Welles' masterpiece is the film you need to see a few times in order to have a technical yardstick to judge others by. Like many of 2010's Oscar Best Picture noms ("Avatar", "The Hurt Locker", "Up" and "District 9"), the basic plot is not quite up to the technical prowess of the film. Welles uses deep focus, framing of characters in the background, and other special effects techniques that would give today's $200million USD extravaganzas a serious run for their massive piles of money. His aging of Charles Foster Kane from age 25 to old age is as realistic as anything you'll see in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or any modern blockbuster. His use of cutaway titles (such as the neon sign above the night club) which the camera magically flies through presages the interactive titles in "Zombieland" or TV's "Fringe". In short, much of technical aspects of film-making in any post 1941 film will seem derivative to the Welles masterwork. The story itself is compelling but not overly so; however, it does lay the basic arc from super-stardom to has-been to crazed collector living alone in a crumbling palace for several biographies of actual people (e.g., Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley). In short the answer to the central trope of who is the "Rosebud" of Kane's dying words doesn't turn out to be that interesting but the trip to find out is well worth your time.