Conclave
To this day, I still have not seen Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front. The year it was cleaning up all the big Oscar tech awards, I had forgotten how dull that show was when you hadn’t seen one of its biggest prize winners. But, with Conclave, he’s pivoting away from the war of nations and instead focusing on the war of the spirit. More specifically, the war within the Catholic Church to determine its next leader.
Listen, if you tell me you’re making a Pope Election movie, I’m likely to be there. If you tell me your lead is Ralph Fiennes, that only helps your case. But if you tell me that your movie hearkens back to the political thrillers of the mid 90’s, now you got a stew, baby!
The Pope is dead and all of the leadership of the Catholic Church, including all of its Cardinals and Arch-Bishops, are convening on the Vatican to determine the next Holy Father. Fiennes plays the Dean of Cardinals who oversees the sequestration of the entire voting body, while he’s also a man torn between his faith and a growing sense of doubt that is growing within his core.
What Berger understands that a movie like The Two Popes only kicked the tires on, is that the Papacy is at its heart a political office. Sure, everyone kisses the Pope’s hand and his power of the church is really only second to the concept of God and Christ. But he still had to get there, and Conclave zeroes in on the very mortal and flawed men that rally their own individual bases within the voting bloc to reach that high office. It’s no different than running for Prime Minister in that sense.
There’s the more liberal leaning element led by Stanley Tucci’s Cardinal Bellini, the extremely conservative branch led by Sergio Castellito’s Cardinal Tedesco, the emergent (and equally conservative) African contingent fronted by Lucian Msamati’s Cardinal Adeyemi, the more status quo yet potentially flawed candidate in John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay. And then there’s the mysterious element in Carlos Diehz’s warfront serving Cardinal Benitez.
There’s just an incredible wealth of angles here to mine and Berger does so wonderfully. I was on the edge of my seat for much of its back and forth intrigue. There’s plots and plans and politicking and all the things that are just right in my strike zone as a viewer, and with it all being anchored by a wonderfully soulful Fiennes performance, Conclave becomes both a captivating look at how the sausage gets made in the Holy See and a stirring movie about opening doors and answering phones.
And it has the best ending I’ve seen in years. People were literally screaming. Now you know.
4 stars
Heretic
On the other side of the religious cinema coin, this Hugh Grant-starring horror film has its own aura of curiosity surrounding it. I mean, it’s Hugh Grant starring in a horror film. That combo alone is going to make peoples’ heads tilt like a dog listening to a video of chicken noises. I myself was a bit dubious, as filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods haven’t done a whole lot to win me over though I guess A Quiet Place has a script of what you’d call “clever moments”.
Still, clear eyed, I went to this premiere with little in the way of advance notice on quality. We were the first audience to see it anywhere. That has its own sort of unique aura. So what’s the verdict?
Pretty good actually, surprisingly so even. The elevator pitch is that the two leads are Mormon missionaries (Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher) and they happen to arrive at a very bad house. That’s pretty much it, you can fill in the blanks from there if you want, but if you’ve seen the trailer you know that house is owned by Grant’s Mr. Reed; one of the more fascinating horror villains to pop up in recent years.
While Heretic is fairly low on purely visceral scares, it does exude a nice aura of “thinking person’s horror”. Much of the first act is centered on a conversation between Mr. Reed and the two missionaries regarding the Church of Latter Day Saints, and while some of it approaches the rhetoric of a freshman philosophy major, that’s still more brainpower than the average horror jaunt employs. There’s also the element of what is actually driving Reed’s murderous intent that pulls you along as a viewer, just what is the “one true religion” that he’s uncovered? The reveal doesn’t live up to that build up, I’m sad to say, but that I cared at all says a lot.
There’s an even-handedness that Beck and Woods employ, as well. It would be relatively easy to turn the two missionaries into exaggerated versions of LDS members or to make Reed a parody of smug religious skepticism, but on both counts the film succeeds in creating believable and well fleshed out leads. I was particularly taken with Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton being presented as brave, thoughtful, and open-minded protagonists that are easy to root for. That’s no small task in today’s polarized climate and while I doubt anyone in Salt Lake City is going to be going to bat for Heretic as a must-see among their ward, it certainly does no damage to their community from my atheist perspective.
One of the big surprises of the fest, well worth seeing and a nice change-up for A24.
3.5 stars
Friendship
We are huge Tim Robinson fans over here, so much so that we drove all the way to Nashville to see his live show. Of course we were going to potentially risk missing our flight to catch the Monday morning showing of his big screen starring role.
Pretty much a blend of The Cable Guy, Anchorman and Robinson’s own I Think You Should Leave; Friendship is more or less a Robinson vehicle that your parents could watch. Maybe. I hate to hedge, but comedy is hard. Regular Robinson collaborator Andrew DeYoung’s feature-length debut finds the absurdist comedian starring as a frumpy married dad who happens to get the wrong package delivered to his house. When he brings it over to the new neighbor, he finds that he sparks off a bit of a friendship (he said it!) with the cool weatherman (Paul Rudd) and they start to hang and do cool guy things like climb around in the sewer and have boxing matches in the garage.
Of course, things go south, and a level of obsession sets in that starts to play havoc on everyone’s lives. Bluntly, there are bits here that are the hardest I can remember laughing in the theater. We’re talking literal tears rolling down my eyes. But unlike the more formless chaos of I Think You Should Leave, Friendship makes some sacrifices for more popular audience appeal. This is not necessarily to its detriment, as Hannah made clear in her review, it comes across more like DeYoung attempting to fuse what works best about Robinson’s brand of comedy with the previous generation of films that Rudd was so regularly associated with. And it works. As does its approach of taking the obsessed’s POV while still deftly avoiding a dark or dour turn and instead turning it into more of a Job-like series of misfortunes.
I’ll put it this way, Hannah and I are still quoting bits and pieces a week later. Is it the best big screen comedy since Bridesmaids? Probably so.
3.5 stars