The Pope Was Dead to Begin With

Conclave opens with Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) arriving at The Vatican following the death of the incumbent Pope. It then falls to him to arrange and administer a papal conclave, summoning the world's cardinals to convene in seclusion and vote on who should become the next Holy Father. The principle runners are Stanley Tucci's Aldo Bellini, who wants to continue the previous Pope's liberal approach to modernising the church, Firebrand traditionalist Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castlellitto), conservative contender to be the first African Pope Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) and John Lithgow as popular but potentially dodgy Canadian Joseph Tremblay. There is also some intrigue surrounding the arrival of the Archbishop of Kabul, who claims to have been raised to the position in secret by the previous Pope. Shifting alliances and schemes play out as the contenders politic for the top job.

Everything on display in Conclave is as tights and pristine as it gets. Director Edward Berger brings the same meticulous and organised framing he displayed in All Quiet on the Western Front, the adapted script by Peter Straughten is watertight and the cast speaks for itself. The main worry going in was that everything would be very earnest and "Oscary" but a little boring. Fortunately that couldn't be further from the case. Sure, there is plenty of texture here, with rumination on the meaning of faith, moral examinations and a spotlight shone on the current political climate, but none of it gets in the way of delivering a crowd pleasing thriller. Strained alliances, shifting leaders and revelations ensure the two hours fly by.

The script strikes a subtle balance between giving us characters to get behind and leaving in some moral ambiguity. Of course it would be bad if the ultra conservative, roll the years (all the way) back candidate won but where is the line between voting with your conscience and simply being spiteful? What, if any, concessions should you make to win people to your cause? Shouldn't somebody bring some genuine Christian morality into the debate? Fiennes is the objective overseer but how hands on should he be in keeping the competition clean and is there a chance he harbours some ambition of his own? There is also the question of how many dominoes the deceased Pope set up in the awareness of his impending demise.

The film also takes a balanced view to the Catholic faith itself, positioning The Church as like any other profession in that it contains both the good and the bad. It is freely acknowledges that some truly terrible people have held the highest office and cardinals are portrayed as far from squeaky clean. It never descends to religion bashing though and Cardinal Lawrence delivers a Homily for the ages on the value of faith and need to embrace fallibility.

The setting does come with some limitations, chiefly the lack of female representation. Isabella Rossellini is on hand and the script does try to give her an impactful speech but it still feels like a bit of a waste. There is potential terrorist activity afoot outside the conclave that the cardinals are supposed to know as little as possible about (outside events may influence their decision making) but ultimately it ends up feeling a little contrived in order to produce the desired ending. Not that said ending isn't satisfying.

Conclave is slick political thriller first, earnest drama second and all the better for it. Make time for this sermon and you'll be treated to great visuals, a sweeping score, best in Sunday class acting and a truly diabolical vape hit.

9 past indiscretions resurfacing out of 10

Comments

Wasted Men

From Scum to Starred Up, neither the big nor small screen are short of brutally frank depictions of life behind British bars. Wasteman adds a taut, modern take to the pile and shows that life isn't getting any easier inside. Philip Barantini (creator of Boiling Point and Adolescence) is on board as a producer so you know it's going to feel real and the Safdie brothers were at one point attached to direct, so you know it's going to be gut-clenchingly tense. It doesn't disappoint on either front. David Jonsson plays long term convict Taylor. A timid drug addict, he cuts the hair of the top-dog inmates in return for a regular fix and is existing rather than living as the years of his sentence tick by when he gets some unexpected news. Prison overcrowding means he is up for early release, provided he can keep his nose clean for a couple of weeks, something made increasingly tricky by the arrival of his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth). Dee encourages Taylor to make contact wit...

Hell to Pay

They Will Kill You begins with a soaking wet Zazie Beetz waiting to start her maid job at swanky apartment building, The Virgil. Her character Asia is a former convict who has no idea her new employers are devil worshipers who sacrifice their staff to Lucifer. The building residents have no idea that Asia is actually there for reasons other than a steady paycheque and is not about to go gently into that good night. The touch paper is soon lit on a relentless blend of slapstick horror action that leaves little room for you to catch your breath across its ninety minute odd runtime. The most obvious comparison here is to 2019's Ready or Not and its sequel (which coincidentally released one week before this film), where an unsuspecting bride is left fighting for her life when her wealthy in-laws opt to make her a human sacrifice. While They Will Kill You shares that movie's comedic spirit we are much deeper into supernatural territory here. The grand old building and seemingly ...

You Screen, I Scream

The worst thing about Scream 7 isn't actually the film itself. It's the at best cowardly, actions of production company Spyglass Media who fired the star of the previous two films, Melissa Barrera, for daring to have an opinion on genocide. In addition to leaving an icky taste in the mouth, this move cost them fellow star Jenna Ortega and the guy who was supposed to direct the seventh instalment Christopher Landon, resulting in a return to the drawing board to completely rework the film. The only actually good thing about Scream 7 is also nothing to do with the actual film. Series mainstay Neve Campbell missed the previous instalment after producers lowballed her, but the production chaos of their own making means they've had to go crawling back. So Neve returns with a reported $7 million payday, a producer credit and a story based solely around how legendary her character Sydney is. Go her. The actual film doesn't warrant much discussion at all, given it does little mo...

Fifty Shades of Chrononberg

If you've been missing pure David Chrononberg then Crimes of the Future has you covered. It has the lot; body mutilation, main character undergoing a metamorphosis, questions about what defines being human, integrity of the mind, the collision of different world views and pretty much every other recurring theme of his is present and correct. So needless to say, it isn't for everyone. The film takes place in the (possibly near) future, when most humans have evolved to no longer feel pain and in some cases grow mysterious new organs. Viggo Maortensen and Lea Seydoux play a pair of performance artists whose act revolves around removing Mortensen's excess organs in front of a live crowd. Fittingly, given its focus on artits, the film takes place in the orbit of the protagonists with little shown of the world at large. Everything is dingy and grimey, hinting things aren't going swimmingly, and there are vaugue hints at ecological disaster but the characters are all far mor...

There Can Only be One

Trailers for Him had Jordan Peele's name slapped all over them, which is understandable from a marketing point of view. In reality it is simply produced by the"Get Out" directors company, Monkeypaw Productions. It is actually directed by Justin Tipping, from a script he co-wrote with Skip Bronkie and Zak Akers. The prevalence of Peele's name in the advertising means the film is bound to draw unflattering comparisons with his own work, which is a shame as the film has its own merits. Cameron "Cam" Cade (Tyriq Withers) grew up idolising Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), star quarterback of the San Antonio Saviours. When White suffers a grisly injury during the Super Bowl, Cade's father tells the young fan that real men like his idol make sacrifices for greatness. Fast forward about a decade and a half and Cam is about to be drafted to the NFL, where he is tipped as a potential challenger to White's "Greatest Of All Time" status. When a mascot in ...

Weightwatchers Extreme

The Cut is a boxing movie with (apart from a brief opening sequence) no boxing in it. Instead it focuses on the equally brutal, but less visibly part of the sport, weight loss, as a former contender spirals into madness while trying to shed an insane amount of heft in order to secure a last minute return to the big time. Orlando Bloom is a boxer (he is never named during the film) who lost his one title shot and now runs a gym with his partner and trainer Caitlin (Catriona Balfe). He retains a reputation for being an exciting knockout specialist so when a title contender dies weeks before an upcoming Las Vegas showdown, scary promoter Donny (Gary Beadle) offers him the chance of a glamorous comeback. The catch? He needs to shed thirty two pounds (over two stone or fourteen kilos) in a week. Caitlin agrees to him giving it a go provided they do things by the book, but when traditional methods fail, John Turturro's Boz enters the equation and pushes Bloom way beyond the bounds of w...

Spooky Tresspaser

The Women In The Yard marks the return of director Jaume Collet-Serra to his horror roots after years in the big budget action space. He puts some scary images together and gives a good cast a chance to shine but is let down by a fairly weak script. The film begins with struggling mum Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) watching a video of her deceased husband. Struggling may be a bit of an understatement, the crash that took her husband also left her with a badly broken leg and she is stuck in a pit of despair so deep it has rendered her almost non-existent as a parent. Her son Taylor has essentially taken over looking after his little sister Annie, the food is running out and when the electricity goes off they have no means of contacting anyone. With tensions already frayed, things take a sinister turn as a mysterious and threatening figure in black appears in the garden, creeping slowly closer as the day drags on. The titular woman in the yard is played with equal grace and mena...

Econ Air

Single location thriller Flight Risk is the latest film to suffer from an "over eager" trailer. That is to say, the trailer covers pretty much everything that happens in the movie, more or less in the exact order it occurs. On the plus side, it isn't a film that was ever going to keep any secrets so it doesn't suffer as much as some others have. FBI agent Madelyn Harris (Michelle Dockery) takes a flight with informant Winston (Topher Grace) but a short way into their journey they discover the pilot, played by Mark Wahlberg, is actually a mob hitman there to end them both before Winston can squeal. There is a brief opening at an Alaskan cabin and the finale is on a runway, but for the most part it's just the three of them in the cabin of a small plane. Events unfold almost like a theatrical play as the three talk and argue with intermittent attempts at murder. The main thing to know about Flight Risk is that it is ridiculous. The decisions the characters make a...

Gimme Shelter

The start of another year means it's time for the annual "Jason Statham is a retired killing machine trying to live a quiet life but being forced to start stacking obituaries" movie. The typically nondescript title of this year's offering is Shelter and Stath's former special forces badass is called Michael Mason. When the British government agency that he used to drop bodies for comes calling at his remote Scottish lighthouse he is forced to take action, something that is complicated by the presence of a young orphan girl named Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). While our protagonist and his reluctant charge tear across the countryside, Naomi Ackie (criminally underused here) and Bill Nighy (putting in just enough effort to get by) scheme against each other at Spy HQ. Jason Statham movies can essentially be judged on three criteria; Does he get to do cool action? Are the bad guys formidable enough? Is the plot and dialogue entertainingly cheesy rather than just e...

No Plane No Gain

In many ways Plane is the most generic action movie you could imagine. A former military man who is now a civilian pilot (played, of course, by Gerard Butler) crashes on a rebel malitia held island and must rescue his passangers from the local warlord. Some aspects are a somewhat different to the norm however, making the film a little different, if not necessarily better, than the premise suggests. Firstly, the focus really is on the plane and the ability of Captain Broddie Torrance (classic name for a Butler character) to fly it. This gives the proceedings a disaster movie feel for larges stretches. The titular plane is very much of the plot driving (or flying) variety, able to withstand hails of bullets while being the only airliner not capable of shrugging off a lightning strike. Butler's Captain Torrence is a little different than you might be expecting also. He isn't an ass kicking kill machine but rather just a very good pilot with a "no man left behind" atti...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog