“Conclave” - Thoughts and prayers.

When I was a kid, my understanding of how the Catholic Church chose a new pope was they lit a fire for each cardinal and the color of the smoke determined if that guy was the next pope. Black meant go to the next name and white meant pope found. Being taught as a kid about the magic of God and Jesus, it made perfect sense that God would color the smoke. As it turns out, that is not how a new pope is chosen. In reality, the cardinals all vote and if one person doesn’t have a majority of votes, they burn all the ballots, throw a canister of black smoke on the fire to let people outside of the Sistine Chapel know there isn’t a new pope yet, then vote again. If someone wins enough votes, white smoke canister. The new film Conclave didn’t teach me these things, but it did present a very believable (yet fictional) depiction in which the cardinals behave just like all other politicians in elections - like humans.

In this story, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is leading and administering the papal conclave. Like a Catholic Mass, the film takes its sweet, sweet time actually getting to the point - in this case, the conclave itself. Much attention is paid to the details, trappings, and rituals gone through just to get to the election itself. It’s neat and beautiful and gives a feel for the gravitas of the event, but that kind of goes without saying. They’re electing the next pope, not the next town HOA treasurer.

Eventually, we are introduced to the cardinals most likely to be elected. First up is Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a liberal and supported by fellow liberal Lawrence. Next is Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a traditionalist, archconservative racist who views all other religions with utter contempt. Then there is Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), a milder conservative than Tedesco and every bit a sly politician. Finally, we have Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Nigerian and middle of the road guy on most topics, but socially conservative. Lawrence himself seems like another candidate, but he stresses multiple times that he absolutely does not want to be pope.

As if the competition between the men wasn’t enough, there is a separate mystery thrown into the mix. The deceased pope was up to something but did not let anyone in on what he was doing before he passed away. The only clue they have is the arrival of the recently elevated-to-Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz). After the conclave starts, nuggets of information regarding the pope’s activities start coming to light and Lawrence starts to dig into them. With a smidgen of help from Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), he uncovers truths that affect the conclave in ways that cause a whole lot more black smoke.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen so many movies, but I immediately knew how the conclave itself was going to end. But that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the journey, following Lawrence through the investigation. Nor did it prevent that little part of me that doubted what I thought I knew from holding my breath, even if just a tiny bit, every time they announced the voting results. And I most certainly didn’t guess the why part of the pope’s mystery before it was revealed. And what an intriguing reveal it is.

While I did enjoy the film, the drama surrounding the mystery was somewhat muted. The film doesn’t do enough to invest the audience in either the mystery or the outcome of the conclave. For a film heavily relying on dialogue, surprisingly little is devoted to character development. Beyond Lawrence and Bellini, it was hard to remember who was who. The film had to literally show the leading candidates in turn, as their names and vote tallies were read after the first vote, to make sure the audience could positively identify them. With no real backstories for any of the men (or Sister Agnes, for that matter), there was no real urgency or dread evinced to make the audience want to root for or against any of them.

But again, I did enjoy the film. The mystery is at least interesting, the visual details in the various sets are stunning, and Fiennes and Tucci delivered outstanding performances. That’s not to say the rest of the cast wasn’t also good; they simply weren’t given enough to do to really stand out (Rossellini and Lithgow, in particular, seemed woefully underused). Conclave isn’t necessarily a must-see in theaters...unless you are curious how papal conclaves actually work or just really like Ralph Fiennes.

Rating: Pray for two dollars back.

“Venom: The Last Dance” - Booooooooooo!

With the success of Venom ($856 million box office) in 2018, Sony Pictures executives were probably clinking champagne glasses, fully confident that their fledgling Sony Spider-Man Universe (SSU) was well-positioned for long-term success. You know, the same universe that doesn’t actually include Spider-Man. In 2021, Venom: Let There Be Carnage released and saw a $350 million decline in the box office to $507 million. While still a box office success, this had to cause at least one Sony exec to put his champagne glass down in concern for the SSU.

Then Morbius and Madame Web were inflicted upon audiences and, to put it mildly, audiences hated both movies. In fact, they hated them so much that both quickly became box office bombs (Madame Web bombing far more than Morbius). At this point, the execs had to be sweating bullets because the SSU suddenly looked like a smoldering disaster. “But,” they thought, “at least audiences will stick with the SSU after seeing Venom: The Last Dance, right? Right?!”

Before I tell you anything about Last Dance, tell me if you think this is a good sign...IMDb and the wiki page for Last Dance state its running time is one hour and fifty minutes. When the end credits started rolling, I checked my watch and only one hour and thirty minutes had passed since the start of the film. So, either we went through a time tunnel or a whole bunch of footage was recently chopped from the movie. Considering how terrible Last Dance turned out to be, I can’t imagine the circle of hell the cut footage came from.

My friend described Last Dance succinctly - that it comes off merely like a collection of things those same champagne swilling execs insisted must comprise the movie. Venom horse, venom fish, venom frog, different colored symbiotes (like Venom) with maybe some random powers, Area 51, a sing-a-long in a VW bus with a hippie family, a dance number, a rocket launcher, a tiny glimpse of the creator of the symbiotes (Knull), Las Vegas, monsters with wood chipper mouths, Eddie Brock/Venom (Tom Hardy) riding on the outside of a cruising jetliner, and, for some reason, Chiwetel Ejiofor. And none of those things worked.

You might think I’m being harsh, but the movie takes exactly zero seconds to start sucking. It begins with an exposition dump to explain the movie we’re about to watch, except the dump itself is confusing. Then, it retcons the mid-credit scene from Let There Be Carnage (probably because Marvel Studios made them after a test screening) to effectively negate it. This is explicitly stamped home when Venom states “I’m so done with this multiverse shit” during a badly edited scene of Eddie/Venom making itself a drink at the bar. Only a few minutes into the film and we’re already wondering if Madame Web isn’t the worst movie of the year.

The film only becomes less coherent from there. All of those exec-ideas I listed two paragraphs ago are essentially rolled into a giant ball of garbage, set on fire, and drop-kicked into your car and all you can do is watch it burn. Cringe along with Eddie as he is forced to listen to hippie dad (Rhys Ifans) and his family sing “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Wish somebody would chloroform you so don’t have to watch Venom and Mrs. Chen (Peggy Lu) dance together to ABBA for no reason in her Vegas penthouse suite. Pop enough ibuprofen to prevent going into a seizure from the terribly shot and edited CGI fight scenes that somehow manage to be boring. Cry into your popcorn every time Ejiofor (as General Strickland) performs as if he forgot he isn’t in a serious movie like 12 Years a Slave or even a good popcorn flick like Doctor Strange. Try not to boo at everyone in the theater laughing at unfunny and poorly delivered wisecracks that were clearly added in post-production by a badly coded AI. You know what? Disregard that last one - boo to your heart’s content.

I could go on (and on), but I think you get the point. If Morbius and Madame Web haven’t fully killed the SSU, I have a really hard time believing Last Dance will do anything more than keep the franchise on life support, if it doesn’t pull the plug altogether. And that has to terrify the execs looking at their December calendars and seeing the release date for the next SSU movie - Kraven the Hunter - fast approaching. Probably a good idea to keep that next bottle of champagne on ice.

Rating: Ask for all of your money back for all of the Venom movies and boo loudly while you do it.

“Smile 2” - Down the rabbit hole.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Disney’s classic Alice in Wonderland (1951). As I have grown older, I have consumed many different versions of the story, including the original novels by Lewis Carroll and the two video games presenting a nightmare version of the story (Alice and Alice: The Madness Returns). I also own more than a couple pieces of merchandise depicting the various characters and story. Don’t worry, none of my passwords are related to Alice in Wonderland - let’s not be silly. Imagine my delight at the realization that Smile 2 is essentially a version of Alice in Wonderland.

In the case of Smile 2, Alice goes by the name Skye Riley (Naomi Scott). Skye is a wildly popular singer and recovering drug addict getting ready to go on a comeback tour after recovering from severe spinal injuries suffered in a horrific car crash. That’s a teensy bit more baggage than the original Alice, but it does make it a lot easier for the audience to root for Skye. It also ups the stakes considerably from Smile. This time around, if Skye can’t defeat the entity, there’s a chance the entity could curse tens of thousands of screaming concert goers.

The proverbial rabbit hole presents itself to Skye in the form of a drug dealer’s bedroom. Wait, that came out wrong. Let me rephrase that. Skye is still experiencing massive back pain, but since she is a recovering drug addict, she can’t get any painkillers stronger than Tylenol prescribed to her. So, she goes to her former drug dealer’s apartment to buy some Vicodin. He goes to his bedroom to get the pills, but doesn’t return. Worried, Skye walks to the bedroom door. Hanging on the wall next to the doorway is a drawing of a white rabbit’s head. Fighting her instinct to run away, she crosses the threshold and her life is turned upside down. That’s not just a figure of speech - multiple scenes are scattered through the rest of the movie where the camera is literally shooting upside down.

Once I saw the rabbit drawing, much of what followed in the film took on additional meaning. The drug angle is an obvious one, Carroll’s original novels often interpreted as being opium or laudanum induced hallucinations (this is highly disputed by historians). The painted mural on the wall behind Skye’s bed resembles the singing flowers. In another scene, there is a painting of a white horse in the background as Skye is talking to a person trying to help her, i.e. the white knight. Scattered throughout multiple scenes are what your great grandparents might refer to as looking glasses, including Skye wearing a dress covered in those same literal mirrors at one point. Skye’s manager/mother (Rosemary Dewitt) is the Queen of Hearts, constantly trying to control Skye and admonishing to her act more proper. In addition to the upside-down cinematography, much of what we see may or not be hallucinations occurring in Skye’s mind induced by the entity, i.e. the Jabberwocky. And, of course, that Cheshire Cat smile on everyone’s face that’s only gotten creepier since 1951.

As much as I enjoyed all of the parallels to Alice, I also enjoyed the construction of the horror component of the film. As expected, Smile 2 unfolds in the same way as Smile. An unsuspecting person witnesses a gruesome death and inherits the curse/entity. Over the course of a few days, that person slowly experiences a descent into madness through a series of hallucinations of creepily smiling people tormenting them. Despite that being predictable, the film still manages to surprise and frighten the audience on multiple occasions, while doing an excellent of job of building up the suspense. As one example, the film pulled off the most perfectly executed jump scare. It worked so well that one hundred percent of the audience fell for it, one man so hard that all he could do was loudly guffaw to calm down his racing heart. Epic is the best word to describe it.

The final piece that makes Smile 2 an excellent watch is Naomi Scott’s portrayal of Skye. Actors often talk about dedicating themselves to a character and Skye exemplifies that idea. In other words, she sells the hell out of Skye, convincing the audience that Skye absolutely deserves our sympathy. Every scene is palpable with her emotions, Scott completely drawing us into the scenes with her. It’s exactly what horror movies aim to do, but so few pull it off to this extent.

It’s not a spoiler to tell you that there will definitely be a Smile 3. For one thing, how many horror movies don’t get multiple sequels? For another thing, even if I told you whether or not Skye defeats the entity, it doesn’t mean Skye lives or dies or the entity moves on to another host or not. It’s both the genius and flaw with the nature of the entity. If anything can be an illusion, we’ll eventually stop believing the main character can survive, thus killing all suspense. My hope for Smile 3 is they veer away from the illusions a bit, but go deeper down the rabbit hole.

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back and do it with a smile.