Bored of Superheroes

The Vatican is really made for the screen. Grand, echoing marble hallways, arcane rituals and elaborately-garbed characters. And power, lots of power. Amid this sweeping grandeur, Edward Berger has taken Robert Harris's 2016 novel and surprisingly, turned it into an unusual but classic whodunnit. The only death is that of an un-named pope, which opens the story, but the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence, finds himself turning detective when electoral rivalries threaten to hand control of the Catholic Church back to a reactionary patriarch. Lawrence, played with a visibly heavy heart and weary body by Ralph Fiennes, is in charge of the conclave where the new pope is voted in. To add another level of crime fiction tropery, the cardinals are sequestered in the Vatican itself, making this a locked-room drama of sorts.  The cardinals themselves are played by some of the best character actors working today: Stanley Tucci particularly stands out as the liberal Aldo Bellini...

  No film review this week as I've already seen Gladiator II and I don't fancy Wicked. I was completely drawn in by Cillian Murphy's mesmerising performance as Bill Furlong in Tim Mielants's adaptation of Small Things Like These a couple of weeks back, and it got me thinking about other films I've seen in the past year that complement its quiet, sad little story. Both of these movies are worth a watch and pick up on ideas from Small Things. If you're interested in Ireland in the 1980s, you might like : That They May Face The Rising Sun (Pat Collins) Another novel adaptation, this time from John McGahern's final work. It's another quiet, contemplative sort of film, but much more gentle than Small Things. Ostensibly, it's about British-based couple Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke), who are deciding whether to take over Joe's family farm in rural Ireland or stay in London for Kate's art gallery business. What it's really about is eve...