There’s a choice of two top movies this week – Conclave’s twists would be great for adults to chew over in a Westside bar or restaurant after the screening at Odeon Luxe Broadway Plaza.
And the latest big Disney release, Moana 2 – showing at both Plaza and Cineworld Broad Street – could encourage families to perhaps head over to Ice Skate Birmingham in Centenary Square afterwards.
The aquatic fun of this film might even put little ones in the mood for a bonus trip to the National Sea Life Centre in Brindleyplace, too. You know they deserve it!
CONCLAVE (12A, 120 mins)
Just when there is a vacancy for a new Archbishop of Canterbury in the real world, Conclave looks behind the scenes in the Catholic Church after the pope dies from a heart attack.
Whether you see the search for a replacement as a case of life imitating art or the other way around, it’s a mystery thriller you need to see as soon as possible to avoid spoilers.
You certainly don’t have to be a Catholic – or even religious – to enjoy the film’s marvellous multinational machinations and twists and turns. For those of faith, Conclave, like Hugh Grant’s Heretic, might make think about your own direction of travel.
Ralph Fiennes is outstanding as a beleaguered cardinal called Lawrence, with Stanley Tucci (Bellini) on top form, too.
What would be worse? Becoming the next pope or – being charged with finding the right one?
The verdict: *****
Based on the novel by Robert Harris, Oscar-nominated director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front, 2022) captures every close-up with the kind of intensity that makes you feel like you are there and capable of influencing the chit-chat.
But it is also very cinematic, too, with elevated shots of wondrous architecture and ‘graphic’ floors so rarely seen outside the likes of Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour, 70mm version of Hamlet (1996) and Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998).
Conclave could have been a boring, wordy exploration of an unseen, dusty world, but All Quiet’s Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann accentuates all of the above positives by further pushing the boat out Clint Mansell style (Black Swan), without ever heading into bombastic territory.
Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine has the fabulous Jackie (2016) on his CV so all of Conclave’s bases are comprehensively covered.
The script might not have the devilish intent of Heretic’s brutal control freakery, but where and how it takes you to the big decision on who gets the nod is jaw-dropping all the same. Unless someone spoils it for you, you simply won’t see the twists coming at Odeon Luxe Broadway Plaza.
Smoke up the chimney please!
MOANA 2 (U, 100 mins)
Still searching for his career-defining role, Dwayne Johnson (Red One) returns as the unmistakable voice of the demigod Maui in this sequel to the 2016 animation about the daughter of a village chief who was chosen in ancient Polynesian times by the ocean itself to return a relic.
Three years later, storm god Nalo has sunk a key island. Can Maui and Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) – now with a cute, younger sister – help to bring it back to the surface to restore links to life for all those who depended on it?
The verdict: ***
Moana 2’s action and watery scenes are very well animated and, although the songs don’t match the first movie’s level – never mind the true greats – there’s some catchy numbers wrapped around community ideals and personal motivation.
Once destined to be streamed as a series, the sequel exists primarily to offer more of the same but younger kids will love it without knowing the first film, and, as with Bambi, be introduced to the concept of death.
But what the adult world really needs is for The Rock to find his own career-defining role a la Terminator for Arnie and Rocky / Rambo for Stallone.
In a Hollywood first, Johnson is even going to return with his Mr Motivator-style schtick in a 2026 live action remake of the first Moana film. Might they not have just done that here?
Despite Moana 2’s excellence with body movements and hair, cinema at its very best should always be about the new and animations should be more challenging than this like, say, The Iron Giant.
Instead, Disney has become overly dependent on recycling. And lines as daft as ‘You look like a kidney stone’.
Not that Nicole Scherzinger will be complaining about the rewards for playing the feisty character’s mother again. Nice work and all that…
Your reviewer: Graham Young has been reviewing films for the media in Birmingham for the last 35 years, serving the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post, Sunday Mercury, BirminghamLive and BBC WM. He was the 1996 Regional Film Journalist of the Year, and runner-up 1997-99.
