Conclave (2024)

Jack and I really liked this story about choosing a new Pope in the Vatican. It's well described as a thriller and is on many Oscar short lists. Ralph Fiennes is very good as the dean of cardinals, as are Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and many more. Isabella Rossellini is possibly the only woman with lines––this movie fails the Bechdel test. To pass, a movie must feature (1) two named female characters (2) that talk with each other (3) about anything other than a man/men. Oh well, I can't speak for the Catholic church.

Director Edward Berger works from Peter Straughan's screenplay based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. I'm streaming the tense soundtrack by Volker Bertelmann (also known as Hauschka) on Apple Music as I type.

Shout out to the magnificent photography by Stéphane Fontaine, editing by Nick Emerson, and production design by Suzie Davies, particularly the set dressing in the dormitory.

Fiennes was last blogged for The Menu, Tucci for Beauty and the Beast, Lithgow for Killers of the Flower Moon, Rossellini for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Straughan for Our Brand Is Crisis, Bertelmann for Jules, Fontaine for Jackie, Emerson for Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, and Davies for Mr. Turner. Berger may be best known for All Quiet on the Western Front, which, as noted in that blog post, I couldn't watch.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are burning the white smoke with a 93% average and its audiences aren't far behind at 86. We rented it from Apple TV on December 3, but apparently now it's for sale for the same price on that platform and available on Peacock with a subscription.

Saturday Night (2024)

We thoroughly enjoyed this dramatization, in real time, of 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1975. Gabriel La Belle is an adorable Lorne Michaels and has sweet chemistry with Rachel Sennott, who plays his then-wife Rosie Shuster. For those who don't know, Michaels has been producing SNL since that first show and Shuster was a writer on it for the first thirteen years.

The enormous cast features Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris (no relation, although Lamorne used to say there was when he was a kid), Nicholas Braun as both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman (the copious trivia tells me that Braun was tapped to play the second role of Kaufman after another actor had to drop out), Cooper Hoffman as executive producer Dick Ebersol, Michael Rhys as George Carlin, Tommy Dewey as Michael O'Donoghue, Willem Dafoe as network exec Dave Tebet, and J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle in a scene that was apparently taken from a much later event.

Jason Reitman, whose late father Ivan directed movies starring many of the SNL Not Ready for Prime Time Players, keeps the action tense as we get closer and closer to 11:30. He co-wrote the script with Gil Kenan and they apparently shot many versions––following different characters and editing them together later. Shout out to editors Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid.

Jon Batiste's original (and adapted from traditional SNL riffs) soundtrack can be streamed on Apple Music. He recorded the score live on the soundstage with several original SNL musicians and appears on screen as Billy Preston playing Nothing from Nothing, which is among the many songs to be heard. Another is musician Naomi McPherson performing beautifully At Seventeen as Janis Ian.

After we watched the movie we watched that premiere episode with our subscription to Peacock. Not every sketch holds up but, hey, they can't all be winners. There have been 978 episodes, including one airing tonight!

LaBelle was last blogged for The Fabelmans, Sennott for Bottoms, Lamorne Morris for Game Night (before he was so good in sixteen episodes of Woke and seven of Fargo), Braun for Zola, Hoffman for Licorice Pizza, Rhys for It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Dafoe for Kinds of Kindness, Simmons for Being the Ricardos, Reitman for The Front Runner, and Batiste for acting in The Color Purple and for scoring Soul.

Smith played one of Julianne Moore's character's children in May December and I particularly liked Dewey in 44 episodes of Casual, among his dozens of credits. Kenan is new to me, as is Reid, and Orloff co-edited Plan B

Rotten Tomatoes' critics aren't quite ready for prime time, averaging 78%, while its audiences are more so at 84. We rented it on December 7 from Apple TV.

Megalopolis (2024)

Oof. I, for one, really wanted to love director/writer Francis Ford Coppola's lifelong dream project about a dystopian future American city but Jack and I found it a self-indulgent mess, albeit with beautiful production design and cinematography. The talented cast, headed by Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito, works hard to make something of Coppola's disconnected script about the rivalry between Cesar [sic] and Cicero for control of "New Rome," representing New York with flying cars, etc. 

Our favorite character was Aubrey Plaza's reporter named Wow Platinum, played with her reliable snark and cunning. My least favorite character was Nathalie Emmanuel's Julia Cicero, daughter of Esposito's character, who is inexplicably in love with and protective of her father's rival, despite his having no redeeming qualities. Hundreds of other actors, including Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Coppola's sister Talia Shire, her son Jason Schwartzman, and Dustin Hoffman, do what they can under the circumstances .

Osvaldo Golijov's majestic soundtrack can be streamed on Apple Music.

At first we were captivated by the aforementioned production design by Beth Mickle and Bradley Rubin and photography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. As an acrophobe, I noticed how many scenes involved heights and scaffolding. I thought of Batman's Gotham City, Blade Runner, and finally Babylon, which was worse than this by far. We enjoyed shots of (or were they computer-generated?) the Chrysler building, a circus sequence, and an antique subway car with wicker benches, which kept us entertained from time to time but... 

...at some point during its 2:18 running time I wondered if we should just turn it off, but Jack reminded me we had paid $19.99 to rent it so we should keep going!

My friend in Los Angeles, who knows a lot about movies, said "the story was so convoluted and characters so underdeveloped that it was hard to care about any of them," and that two groups of people walked out of the theatre before it was over. 

Coppola and Golijov were last blogged for Tetro, Driver for Ferrari, Esposito for Okja (despite dozens of TV and other credits since then), Plaza for My Old Ass, LaBeouf for Pieces of a Woman, Voight for Four Christmases, Fishburne for Ant-Man and the Wasp (after which he was briefly noted for Death to 2020 and Death to 2021 and not mentioned for 89 episodes of Black-ish), Hunter for The Tragedy of Macbeth (and not mentioned as the diminutive madam in Poor Things), Schwartzman for Quiz Lady, Hoffman for The Meyerowitz Stories, and Malaimare for Jojo Rabbit.

Emmanuel has a number of credits, including 38 episodes of Game of Thrones, which I did not watch. Shire is best known for the Godfather and Rocky franchises and has dozens of other credits–we saw her most recently in two episodes of Grace and Frankie and one of Abbott Elementary. Mickle has worked on several movies I've liked, including Sugar, It's Kind of a Funny Story, and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and has been nominated by her peers in the Art Directors Guild for her work on Drive and more. Rubin designed three other features and five episodes of the pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death.

Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences are fleeing for the suburbs with averages of 46 and 35%. We rented it on Apple TV on November 29.

My Old Ass (2024)

We correctly assumed we'd like this dramedy a lot since Aubrey Plaza is in it, playing the 39 year old version of 18 year old Elliott tripping on mushrooms. Maisy Stella, 21 this month, has more screen time than Plaza but she's great and has good chemistry with Plaza as well as with Percy Hynes White. The small cast also includes Maddie Ziegler as Elliott's best friend Ruthie and Maria Dizzia as Elliott's mother.

Writer/director Megan Park's second feature is good fun and was shot in Muskoka, Ontario in Park's native Canada.

The score is by Jaco Caraco and Tyler Hilton with a few songs listed here, including Stella singing One Less Lonely Girl. I could not find a video of her singing it that wasn't on TikTok–I don't have an account–but I think I liked hearing it at the time.

Plaza was last blogged for Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (which I posted eight years after its release), Ziegler for The Book of Henry, Dizzia for Funny Pages, and Hilton for Larry Crowne.

Stella is a Canadian-born singer who appeared in 119 episodes of Nashville, has made a number of videos, performs with her sister Lennon, and has published a children's book. White, also Canadian, is now 23 and has been acting since age two. He played Xavier in eight episodes of Wednesday. This is Caraco's second feature.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences of all ages are averaging a healthy 90 and 89%. We streamed it on Prime with our subscription November 13.

Woman of the Hour (2023)

Not for the faint of heart, Anna Kendrick's directorial debut is based on the true story of an actress who appeared on the long running reality show The Dating Game in 1978, and picked a charming serial killer as her date. We thought it was well done. Kendrick stars as Sheryl, with Daniel Zovatto as the murderer Rodney and Tony Hale as the callow TV host, among others. Several beautiful women play Rodney's targets and the final one, a teenager played by Autumn Best, has the most to do.

Kendrick, who also produced, natch, works from a script by Ian McDonald, and the score by Dan Romer and Mike Tuccillo can be streamed on Apple Music. Seven songs are listed here, including Laura Nyro's Lonely Woman.

I noticed that the captions spelled Kendricks' character's name as Cheryl, but whenever it was printed in the actual movie it was spelled Sheryl. Apparently the real person's name was Cheryl Bradshaw but in the movie her name was Sheryl. That's not the first time the captions have it wrong, nor will it be the last. Here's some trivia about the real Cheryl and the movie.

Kendrick was last blogged for acting in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (as was Aubrey Plaza in today's other post), Hale for Happythankyoumoreplease (in the 14 years since then he's had a ton of work but no leading roles), and Romer for A Chiara. I don't remember seeing Zovatto in Laggies nor Lady Bird, among his two dozen credits, but he was there. Best makes her feature debut. She is "differently limbed," which in this case means she has only a thumb on her left hand, but that's not mentioned. This is McDonald's second feature screenplay and Tuccillo has scored three before this–one shared with Romer, one shared with someone else, and one on his own.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are more timely at 91% than its audiences at 67. We watched it on Netflix November 26. 

Kendrick donated all of her pay to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime. So, if you do see it, you'll be making a donation.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

This three-part anthology with the same actors playing unrelated parts left me saying "Ridiculous" and Jack saying "Hard to like." A one line description might include the words control, suspicion, cult, sex, violence, and other abuse. The stars include Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, and Margaret Qualley.

Some were eager to see it because of the previous collaboration of Stone, Dafoe, and director/co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos in Poor Things, which won Oscars for Stone and the makeup and hair team and nominations for directing, music, and best picture.

Efthimis Filippou co-wrote the script with Lanthimos. Each chapter has the letters R.M.F. in its title, and imdb lists Yorgos Stefanakos, a Greek notary public, as playing the role of R.M.F. I did jot down while watching and groaning that I thought the middle chapter was the worst.

Trippy music by Jerskin Fendrix can be streamed on Apple Music and likely elsewhere. Imdb also has some interesting trivia. 

Stone, Dafoe, Lanthimos, and Fendrix were last blogged for Poor Things, Plemons for Killers of the Flower Moon, Chau for Showing Up, Qualley for Drive-Away Dolls, and Filippou was Oscar-nominated for The Lobster.

Rotten Tomatoes critics, averaging 71%, are much kinder than its audiences at 48. We groaned at it on Hulu on November 4.