Conclave: A Review - Committing a Cinematic Cardinal Sin

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A well-crafted and well-acted film that ultimately condemns itself to hell with an inexcusable plot twist that is so inane as to be infuriating.

Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan (adapted from Robert Harris’ book of the same name), tells the story of Cardinal Lawrence, a man struggling with his faith who must navigate palace intrigue in the Vatican as the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope.

On the surface, Conclave has a lot going for it. For example, it stars a cavalcade of top-notch actors, with Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini, John Lithgow as Cardinal Tremblay and Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes among the cast.

In addition, it is directed by Edward Berger, whose last film, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), was a phenomenal, Academy Award nominated piece of work, my favorite of that year because it was so beautifully shot and masterfully executed.

On a personal note, as a Catholic myself (I’m not a good one…but I definitely am one) who has visited the Vatican on numerous occasions, I find the subject matter of a conclave in the wake of a Pope’s death, and the pomp and circumstance and politicization and jockeying for positioning that takes place, to be extraordinarily compelling.

And speaking of politics, in the wake of the US presidential election, Conclave is perfectly positioned to have something interesting to say about elections and liberals versus conservatives and the power of convictions and possibilities of backlash.

This is all to say that Conclave, which was released in the U.S. on October 25th and is still in theatres, had me in the palm of its hand even before I sat down in the theatre to watch it.

And yet…it failed to capitalize on all of its advantages and, in fact, alienated me in such a profound way with an excruciatingly egregious and inane plot twist, which I found to be a mortal moviemaking sin and entirely unforgivable.

In order to avoid spoilers, I will not reveal the specifics of the plot twist but will only say that it occurs in the final ten minutes or so of the film and is so contrived, bizarre, atrocious and appalling, and is such a grievous dramatic error, and so narratively unsound, that it ruined everything good about the film that led up to it and completely scuttled the good ship Conclave.

But besides that…how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Truthfully, it was pretty good.

The film is well shot by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, who uses a soft light and wonderful composition to often times create scenes reminiscent of Caravaggio’s great works.

Fontaine is aided by the spectacular work of the set and costume designers who masterfully recreate the distinct look and feel of the Vatican and the Cardinals’ outfits.

In addition, the entire cast all do tremendous work.

Ralph Fiennes in particular is outstanding. His Cardinal Lawrence is the Dean of the College of Cardinals and must wrangle the Cardinals to come together to vote for a pope and make sure everything is on the up and up…and it is never quite clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Fiennes is a supremely gifted technical actor whose skill is as good as anyone working today, and he brings all of those skills to bear as Cardinal Lawrence, a man who is struggling with his faith and his self.

An Oscar nomination, and even a win, could and should be in Fiennes future for his work in Conclave.

The supporting cast are also excellent.

Stanley Tucci is as reliable an actor as there is and he brings a subtle power to portrayal of liberal Cardinal Bellini that is enjoyable to behold. Tucci expertly embodies the illiberal liberal who is enthralled by himself more than humanity.

John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay is a character that in lesser hands would’ve been forgettable, but here, Lithgow never breaks and lets the audience off the hook, so even after the film has ended, you’re still wondering if he’s a mistreated martyr or an exquisite liar.

And Isabella Rossellini has a small role as Sister Agnes, but every time she is on screen she crackles with an incandescent light and life that is undeniable.

But despite all of the magnificent artistry on display in the form of the acting, cinematography and costumes and set, Conclave commits too egregious a sin to ever be forgiven.

That sin, which is not venial sin but a mortal one, is the cheap, absurd and unearned plot twist that turns a compelling Catholic mystery and thriller into a pandering and pathetic cinematic exercise that feels like it deceived and betrayed you and stole two hours of your life.

For Catholics, Conclave will hold some appeal because it is a look behind the curtain of something familiar but still mysterious, namely the inner working of the Vatican and the conclave. In this way the film is compelling for Catholics…until the plot twist…which not just many, but I would say most, Catholics will find at best annoying, and at most infuriating (I’m in the infuriating camp).

Non-Catholics will find the majority of the film impenetrable for its disorienting maze of Catholic-ness. For example, I’m not even sure I can ask my podcast partner Barry, who is not Catholic, to watch this movie because he’s not going to know, or care, about all the Vatican and Catholic stuff that made at least the premise of the film interesting to me.

Regardless of all that, the bottom line is that I simply cannot, and will not, recommend Conclave to readers because the plot twist near the end eviscerates any artistic good the film achieved which led up to it.

If you’re interested in watching a challenging yet entertaining piece of Vatican/Pope artistry, I recommend you go back and watch The Young Pope (2014) series on HBO starring Jude Law. That overlooked, off-beat, exquisitely avant-garde series is very insightful and spiritually invigorating.

And if you’re just looking for a great story of Catholicism and Catholic priests, I highly recommend you check out Xavier Beavois’ 2010 film Of Gods and Men. It is a extraordinarily moving and spiritually insightful piece of work.

Both The Young Pope and Of Gods and Men are everything Conclave should be but ultimately isn’t. Go watch them, and skip Conclave…I certainly wish I had.

©2024

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 108 - Wes Anderson Four Short Films - The Roald Dahl Collection

On this episode, Barry and I talk all things Wes Anderson and critique the four short films he recently made for Netflix based on the Roald Dahl short stories The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Poison. Topics discussed include the joy of short films, the challenging style of Wes Anderson and the awful marketing of Netflix. As a special bonus - watch Barry’s own classic short film "...With No Hands"…which stars me!! It was the first time Barry and I ever met.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 108 - Wes Anderson Four Short Films - The Roald Dahl Collection

Thanks for listening!

©2023

Wes Anderson's Roald Dahl Collection (Netflix): A Review of Four Short Films

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A compelling and often captivating collection of four short films from an often times singular cinematic genius.

Idiosyncratic filmmaker Wes Anderson, who earlier this year released the feature film Asteroid City, is back after a brief respite with four short films streaming on Netflix.

The films, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Ratcatcher and Poison, are all adaptation of literary works by Roald Dahl. Dahl is best known for his children’s stories such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (which was adapted to film by Wes Anderson in 2009), but these Dahl short stories adapted by Anderson are of a more grown-up variety than Dahl’s dark children’s stories.

Anderson is a filmmaker of considerable talent and skill, and his early filmography boasts a plethora of quality films such as Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tenenbaums, which are among my favorites. With the lone exception of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is his very best film, the more recent cinematic output from Anderson has often been sub-par due the burden of either a formulaic story where adults behave like children and children behave like adults, or a mountain of painstaking yet pedantic cinematic style.

For example, Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which many adore, was an aggravating bore to me because of the kid/adult – adult/kid formula. I simply had seen Anderson’s shtick too many times by that point to be entertained, never mind captivated, by it.

As for Anderson’s style, he is as impressive a visual storyteller as we have, but he often of late becomes so enamored by the beauty and intricacy of his creation that the rest of the cinematic experience, be it the storytelling or acting, gets lost under a mountain of manic meticulousness and artifice. A perfect example of this are Anderson’s last two feature films The French Dispatch and Asteroid City, which felt too cute by at least half to be truly worthwhile cinema, despite being gloriously and gorgeously photographed.

Which brings us to these four new short films. In these films, Anderson doesn’t diminish his artistic assault on the cinematic senses, but instead he heightens it, turning the Wes Anderson of it all up to eleven. Remarkably though, this approach, which I have found off-putting to the point of being irritating in recent feature-length Anderson outings, works incredibly well in the short film form.

Anderson’s intricate sets and staging, his actor’s performance style and his lush, exquisite visuals, turn what could have been rather mundane short stories into always engaging, often compelling and sometimes captivating short films which feature an ensemble of actors, which include Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Rupert Friend and Ben Kingsley, playing a variety of differing roles in all four of the short films.

The longest of the films is The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which runs 41 minutes. This film stars Ralph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ben Kingsley, and they give top notch performances and fit seamlessly into Anderson’s contrived performance style.  

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a winding tale that stars Cumberbatch as Sugar, a wealthy bachelor who uses his inherited fortune to fuel a gambling compulsion. Through some pretty extraordinary narrative twists and turns Henry Sugar ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his life.

Anderson shoots this film, and the other three shorts, like an extravagant stage play. Anderson’s use of stage theatricality in his works has gone through an interesting, if sometimes unsuccessful, evolution. For example, in Rushmore (1998), the main character, Max, puts on a stage play at his high school. This stage play is a very cinematic, and derivative, Vietnam story, which includes multiple explosions. In contrast from the cinematic stage play in Rushmore, in Asteroid City (2023), Anderson makes a film with a play and the making of that play at its narrative center. The ridiculously cinematic stage play in Rushmore was hysterically funny, but the stage play aspect of Asteroid City was an albatross and a banal burden to the film.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, particularly Ben Kingsley’s work in it, and having not read the short story, was pleasantly surprised by its narrative twists and turns.

The Swan, which features a terrific performance from actor Rupert Friend, is a mere 19 minutes long, but it grabs you from the get go and never lets you go. It tells the story of a young boy in a bird sanctuary and it’s a remarkable little story.

Anderson’s stellar use of straight lines within his frame to accentuate depth, movement and stillness, as well as his masterful camera choreography, are all on full display in all of these shorts, but none so gloriously as in The Swan.

Poison, which also runs 19 minutes, features solid performances from Cumberbatch and Patel, as it recounts a potentially perilous snake bite situation.

Anderson skillfully heightens the drama of this scenario and gets a helping hand from his actors Cumberbatch, Patel and Kingsley, all of whom fully commit to the circumstances. The turn near the end is quite interesting on a variety of levels…all I’ll say about it is that the poison isn’t what you think it is but is more toxic than you imagined.

The final film is The Ratcatcher, which also runs just 19 minutes. The film tells the story of a small English town that hires a ratcatcher to rid it of its rat infestation. Fiennes and Friend star in this one and do admirable work.

I found The Ratcatcher to be the weakest of the four films, mostly because I found the theatrical artifice of it to be the most objectionable. For example, there are props that are mimed instead of being real. So, Fiennes must pretend to hold an object in his hand instead of actually holding one. Having worked in the theatre for a great deal of my life, I found this level of theatricality to be quite off-putting (or maybe just triggering!) as it was just too silly.

In addition, Anderson pushes the envelope…even for him…when he tries to shoot some darker, confrontational type of sequences that to me were unsuccessful as they fell a bit visually flat. That said, it was nice to see Fiennes “sink his teeth” into the role of the ratcatcher, as he’s quite good.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the short films of the Roald Dahl Collection by Wes Anderson and recommend them to anyone who wants to be entertained and enraptured, even if it’s just for a brief twenty-minute stint. Oddly enough I think if Anderson had lumped these four stories together and put them out as a feature film, much as he did with The French Dispatch, I would’ve disliked it. I think the sickly-sweet visual style of Wes Anderson coursing through these short films would’ve been too much to handle if force fed to me in a two-hour feature film.

For some strange reason, Netflix has not even packaged these films together, so you have to search each one out individually on the streaming service. If you search Roald Dahl collection on Netflix, you’ll get not just the individual Wes Anderson short films but also movies like Matilda…which is sort of weird. It’s also weird that if you watch one of the Roald Dahl Wes Anderson short films, it will not automatically roll into the next Roald Dahl Wes Anderson short film. I have no idea why that is…just that it is.

My recommendation is to seek out and watch these four Wes Anderson short films. Watch them at your leisure and enjoy them for what they are….which is pieces of short, fascinating cinematic art from one of our most singular filmmaking talents.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 91 - The Menu

On this episode, Barry and I indulge in a seven-course discussion about the dark horror/comedy The Menu, starring Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy. Topics debated include the difficulty of making foodie movies and their deliciousness when they're well-done, the endangered adult-oriented mid-budget movie, and the glory of pizza with peanut butter cups. 

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 91 - The Menu

Thank you for listening!

©2023

The Menu: A Review - A Deliciously Dark Comedy/Horror Experience

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A clever, entertaining and darkly comedic swipe at foodie culture that is buoyed by solid performances.

A lot of people seem to love the Knives Out movies and often describe the reason for doing so being that the movies are “fun”. These people of course are unrepentant philistines and incorrigible buffoons as both Knives Out movies are utterly appalling and are the antithesis of entertaining.

The Menu on the other hand, is exactly what the Knives Out movies should be but aren’t, as it’s clever, funny, dark and above all else, entertaining.

The Menu, which is currently streaming on HBO Max and is still playing in some theatres, stars Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor Joy and chronicles a collection of rich assholes and food snobs as they shell out big bucks to attend an exclusive restaurant on a secluded private island operated by celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Fiennes).

The prestigious dining experience is limited to just 11 people, and they are all sinners in one form or another. There are the three-frat boy/hedge fund crooks, the rich couple with the philandering husband, the narcissistic faded movie star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant, the big-time food critic (Janet McTeer) and her sycophantic editor (Paul Adelstein), and finally devout foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his last-minute date Margot (Anya Taylor Joy).

Julian Slowik is less a chef than a cult leader, and his staff, most notably his maître d’ Elsa (Hong Chau) are a militant group committed to obeying his each and every command. On this particular night Chef Slowik, who despises both the uncouth and the too couth, has the ultimate menu prepared for his unsuspecting guests.

I’ll refrain from going any further in describing the plot but I will say that The Menu is sort of a comedy/horror/thriller that skewers foodie culture and keeps you guessing, and intrigued, from the get go.

The comparison to the most recent Knives Out movie Glass Onion, is obvious since the film begins with a group of pretty insufferable people going to a private island for a special dinner and then a whole bunch of stuff is revealed.

The difference between the two movies though is that The Menu is better crafted and considerably more effective due to a far superior script, direction and most of all, performances.

Anya Taylor Joy plays Margot, the protagonist of the story, and she is simply a very charismatic and magnetic screen presence. The luminous Taylor Joy knows how to fill a screen (despite the fact that she appears to have never eaten a cheeseburger in her life – which is a joke you’ll get once you see the movie) and how to tell a story with just a simple glance.

Taylor-Joy is aided by the sublime Nicholas Hoult. Hoult, who is absolutely spectacular on the Hulu series The Great, once again sparkles in The Menu as the dedicated, die-hard foodie. Hoult’s commitment to his comedy is unwavering, and he never winks at the camera and lets you know he’s in on the joke.

Ralph Fiennes has long been a superb actor, but in recent years he’s transitioned to roles in more broad-based movies, and The Menu fits him to a tee. Fiennes’ Chef is an artistic avenging angel, filled with copious amounts of self-righteousness and self-pity.

Janet McTeer, who was so good on Netflix’s Ozark, is terrific as the pompous, know-it-all food critic, and Paul Adelstein is a subtle scene stealer as her ass-kissing editor.

Usually when a movie features John Leguizamo, one of the worst and most annoying actors of his or any other generation, I either refuse to watch it or am resigned to hating it. The Menu is the lone exception because it uses Leguizamo’s repugnance as a feature not a bug by casting him as an annoying, has-been actor.

The Menu, which is written by Will Tracy and Seth Reiss and directed by Mark Mylod, isn’t a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but for what it is, it’s mostly well-done.

For example, the movie’s premise is very clever and its politics are clear but never heavy-handed, and to its great credit it never becomes self-indulgent are self-aware, which makes it devoid of preachiness and results in a rather enjoyable viewing experience.

The best part of the movie is that, unlike the Knives Out movies, it earns almost all of its moments, and never insults the intelligence of its audience because it takes its premise and its plot seriously and never diverges from that. There is a scene, in fact, where any questions about the reality and veracity of the scenario playing out in front of viewers is directly addressed, and it’s very smart.

Mark Mylod has mostly directed TV prior to The Menu, as his credits include a bevy of Shameless, Succession and Game of Thrones episodes. His direction on The Menu is solid but not spectacular, and he gets the job done with minimal flair.

While The Menu has some plot points that don’t quite work, and some characters that aren’t totally fully formed, and some performances that could maybe have used better actors (I’m mostly thinking about Reed Birney’s role of Richard – the cheating husband), overall, the film works as a compelling and amusing piece of entertainment.

If you’re looking for dark fun and some laughs at the expense of pretentious foodie culture and the uber-rich, then The Menu will be a tasty and very satisfying meal, I recommend you dig right in.

©2023

Netflix's The Dig is not a White Supremacy Rallying Cry

Estimated reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

Netflix’s The Dig is a movie about a famous archeological discovery, not a pro-Brexit, white supremacist rallying cry

Only a woke academic could find hidden villainy in this perfectly benign and mildly pleasant British film. 

The Dig is a Netflix film starring Ralph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James that dramatizes the 1939 excavation of an Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo that transformed our understanding of the history of early medieval England.

The film, directed by Simon Stone and written by Moira Buffini, has been nominated for five BAFTAs including for Outstanding British Film.

But not everyone is so enamored of the movie, as some see it as a pro-Brexit film espousing white supremacy.

Louise D’Arcens, a Professor of English at Macquarie University in Australia, recently attacked the film because it commits the cultural sin of  “nostalgically appealing” and “romanticizing” an “imagined continuity between Anglo-Saxons and modern British people that does not speak to the complexity of Britain today.” The horror!

D’Arcens complains the film “re-animates key tropes from the persistent British and American ideology of Anglo-Saxonism”, which she claims “was vital to underwriting white racial supremacy as a mandate for Britain’s imperial power and the expansionist concept of Manifest Destiny…”

When viewed through this distorted lens, The Dig transforms from a tame historical drama/love story into a nefarious Brexit propaganda film surreptitiously waving an ‘England for the English!’ banner.

I didn’t see any white supremacy or Brexit sub-text in The Dig, but rather an utterly banal, benign and innocuous movie examining the universality of life, death and the impermanence of things.

The Dig is one of those proficiently shot, well-acted British dramas with which we’ve become so accustomed. It isn’t great and it isn’t awful. It’s fine. It’s a middlebrow piece of entertainment geared toward Anglophiles who’ve already devoured Downton Abbey and are looking to satiate their taste for all things British.

Not surprisingly, there are numerous contradictions and illogical observations in D’Arcens’ misguided analysis.

For instance, a major narrative in the film is about class struggle. Protagonist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) is a self-taught, working class excavator from Suffolk, who is hired by wealthy landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan). Their budding relationship must navigate the suffocating class structures of the time period.

The class narrative is also highlighted when Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), a pompous archeologist from the British Museum, invades Sutton Hoo, belittles Basil and ultimately takes credit for his tremendous discovery.

Yet D’Arcens interprets the Phillips-Basil clash as not being about class but rather “highlighting ongoing tensions between Britain’s rural counties and its metropolitan centre” with rural meaning pro-Brexit/bad and metropolitan anti-Brexit/good.

This assessment seems oddly regressive as it lionizes the elite (Phillips) and vilifies the working class (Basil).

D’Arcens also bemoans the film “drawing uncritically on a historical tropes of expansionism – despite the fact the violence of colonialism and occupation is well understood today.”

This is directly at odds with the disparaging appraisal of Basil as a bad guy avatar for Brexiteers. Basil is the victim of the colonialism of educated metropolitan Philips. Like countless British colonialist before him, Phillips comes to Basil’s “foreign” land of Suffolk, takes power, steals treasures and brings them back to London. Yet, incongruously in D’Arcens’ deconstruction Phillips is also a heroic symbol of anti-Brexit sophistication.

D’Arcens then writes,

“One of the great reckonings in the film comes when Basil’s wife, May, urges her disaffected husband to return to the dig. She tells him:

 ‘You’ve always said your work isn’t about the past or even the present. It’s for the future, so that the next generations can know where they came from. The line that joins them to their forebears.’

This appeal to the idea of genetic continuity is rousing and profound, but also exclusionary and insular. May assumes racial and cultural uniformity in Britain, and shared forebears for all.”

Good lord, this is in no way an appeal to “genetic continuity” or an assumption of “racial uniformity”.

A major storyline in the film is that WWII is about to begin and the survival of Britain is at stake. This isn’t about genetic continuity or racial uniformity because the ethnogenesis of Anglo-Saxons developed between migrant Germanic tribes that came to the island back in the 5th century and indigenous Britons, thus Germans conquering Britain is not a genetic or racial threat. Hell, the royal family has German bloodlines.

The existential crisis facing Britain in the film is not a racial or genetic one, it is a national one as it is their (multi-racial) nationality that will disappear if the Germans prevail, not their race or genetic line.

D’Arcens continues, “(May) speaks to the film’s 21st century viewers, many of whom would not see an unearthed Saxon as a forebear, and might rightly wonder what “future generations” the film has in mind for Britain.”

If multi-cultural 21st century Brits, regardless of their race or ethnicity, don’t acknowledge a centuries dead Saxon king as a forebear for their nation, that says more about their historical ignorance and ethnic arrogance than anything else.

D’Arcens closes by lamenting, “…as cinematic archeology (The Dig) looks far more to the past than to the future.”

Considering The Dig is a movie set in the past and tells the story of characters discovering an even older past, this is an incredibly inane climax to a wholly inadequate analysis.

In conclusion, The Dig is not a great movie, but it also isn’t a dangerous one. It’s a mildly pleasant film that will most definitely not turn you into a brutish Brexiteer or Anglo-Saxon supremacist…I promise.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021