Having sat through, and stayed awake for, Madame Web, Morbius, and three Venoms, I'd be among the first to cheer the death of Sony's Spider-Man(-free) Universe series. But I'm not sure that Kraven the Huntershould be the thing that kills it.
Not that the material demanded or invited it, but I think I now know why Ralph Fiennes was never seen out of his clerical robe in Conclave. Because if we ever saw him shirtless, or even got a gander at his bare arms, that entire papal drama would've collapsed through one simple question: “How did a cloistered, late-middle-aged cardinal get so freakin' jacked?!”
It goes without saying that the long-awaited arrival of a Wickedmovie is being met with feverish anticipation by many sects of the musical's fan base. The best news about director Jon M. Chu's film version is that it matches devotees' collective excitement with unmissable, infectious excitement of its own.
There's a kick in watching actors play their widely recognized “types” so flawlessly, and with such fresh enthusiasm, that these roles feel like ideal distillations of their portrayers' talent and presence. I'm thinking of Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywoodand Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich… and also, now, Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain.
Hugh Grant is is stunningly threatening in this Beck/Woods horror thriller, his recognizably benign shrugs, cheerful mugging, and self-effacing manner never masking the fact that there is one person in charge of this situation, and it isn't one of the visiting Mormons.
In director Edward Berger's Conclave, both the narrative and the principal characters are hiding secrets that shouldn't be spoiled to those who haven't seen the movie and didn't read novelist Robert Harris' 2016 source material. But one secret about the film absolutely can, and should, be revealed in advance: This thing is an almost ridiculous amount of fun.
First M. Night Shymalan makes his chanteuse daughter a significant part of his thriller Trap, then Todd Phillips floods his Joker followup with songs, and now this. Is no genre safe from the global Swift-ification?
In the spirit of the five-word pitches each of this quintet requires, here are similarly succinct (if 295-words-longer) takes on what resulted, discussed in order of attendance.
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