Jeff Wells

Conclave is drop-dead brilliant — a bull’s-eye master class in audience-friendly mise-en-scene, and a cinematic page-turner like very few films over the decades have managed to be. We all saw it last evening at the Herzog (6 pm), and holy effing moley!

All hail director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), a gifted helmer who’s made a supreme Best Picture contender, as well as the great Ralph Fiennes, whose lead performance as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence is absolutely assured of being a heavily favored Best Actor contender.

Not to mention the fabled Isabella Rossellini, whose performance as the all-knowing and unyielding Sister Agnes easily puts her into the Best Supporting Actress conversation. And there can be no bypassing Stanley Tucci‘s lucid, spot-on performance as Cardinal Bellini in the supporting actor category.

With Conclave, Berger has made a film as complex, riveting, satisfyingly adult, immaculately polished, solemnly spiritual and psychologically gripping as a film of this sort — a procedural institutional thriller — can be.

This Focus Features release (11.1) is obviously a Best Picture nominee — a knockout for intelligent audiences of all stripes and persuasions. Even the younger popcorn lowlifes will appreciate the persistent sheen of quality.

The irony is that Conclave is at heart and itself a popcorn movie, albeit a very high-end one. Why have so few 21st Century films been as good as this? As masterful and assured in the delivery of pure cinematic pleasure?

Believe it or not, a fellow journalist told me last night that a couple of fellows (possibly members of the Nickel Boys team?) were saying after the 6 pm Conclave screening that it’s a respectable but flawed half-and-halfer, possibly because it’s “too white.”

Whoa whoa whoa…too effing white?? This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the essence of woke derangement syndrome. On top of which Conclave features a very prominent black character (Lucian Msamati‘s Cardinal Adeyemi, plus there’s another woke-as-fuck third-act plot element that I can’t mention.

12:47 pm: RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys” is a truly fascinating and innovative arthouse experiment during the first 30 to 45 minutes, delivering nervy and daringly out-there chops with its avoidance of traditional boilerplate camera strategies, going for broke with a tilt-a-whirl visual scheme .

But the determination to mostly go with a vaguely Emmanuel Lubezski-ish strategy of having the camera or audience directly experience the lead protagonist’s POV wears down after a while, and what little narrative tension it has dissipates before long because Ross and Joslyn Barnes’ screenplay, based on Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel, isn’t following a linear plot line, and the film basically goes on way too long (140 minutes).

Ferociously ambitious young directors make this mistake from time to time, over-indulging their whims and darlings, etc. This doesn’t exactly constitute a felony but the film, which tells a sad and brutal tale about a notoriously corrupt Florida reform school in the ‘60s, is definitely hurt by RaMell’s over-reach.

“Nickel Boys” deserves an A for ambition, and the performances are quite good (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is the big stand-out) but it really does tax your patience and gradually runs out of gas, and a few plot events feel a bit confusing.

Doing a little preparation before seeing high-profile festival movies is always a good idea, but I don’t like to over-research them.

This morning I was told about a surprise plot twist in Edward Berger‘s Conclave, which we’ll all be seeing this evening at 6 pm. When I heard it, I went “oh, no.” So I went to the Wiki page that focuses on Robert Harris‘s 2016 source novel, and I read the synopsis all the way to the end. That’s all I’m going to say.

The Venice Film Festival reviews have been arriving like flying grenades…fast and furious and going boom-boom-boom. I’m already feeling like I can’t breathe. But for some reason I’ve found myself settling into reactions to Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl, which feels…I don’t know what it is, but it feels odd.

The only thing that scares me about Babygirl (A24, 12.25…a Christmas movie?) is that it’s been described as “sex positive.” Whenever I hear that term something inside me goes thud. Or do I mean plop?

I explained last May that “sex positive” gives me the creeps because “the best heteronormative sex is usually untidy and objectionable in some way — rude, hungry, raw, animalistic, runting, howling, pervy.”

From a Babygirl review by Flick Feast‘s Dallas King: “Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson have an undeniable, smouldering, palpable chemistry…but while always pushing boundaries, Babygirl never feels like it truly breaks them. Someone shouted the safe word too early!”

From Owen Gleiberman’s Venice Film Festival review:

“Babygirl is a shrewdly honest and entertaining movie about a flagrantly ‘wrong’ sadomasochistic affair. In Bodies Bodies Bodies, director Halina Reijn created a tone of overwrought satirical slasher pulp, but here she settles into a far more realistic mode, and brings it off with flair.

“Babygirl is reminiscent, at times, of Fair Play” — WHAT? — “but it’s also a tale of adultery that pushes genuine emotional buttons, the way Unfaithful did 20 years ago. And that’s rooted in the fearless performance of Kidman.

“Straddling the identities of mother, boss, defiant adulterer and trembling sexual supplicant, Nicole Kidman’s Romy, a rich CEO, is like a walking mood ring. Her performance takes off from a long-standing (hidden) reality: that people who are hooked on wielding power can have primal fantasies of being sexually submissive.

“For decades, prominent male executives have been keeping B&D sex workers in business, but in movies we haven’t seen the corporate gender tables turned in quite this way. For a while, Babygirl comes on like a less glossy 9 1/2 Weeks, as Harris Dickinson’s Samuel breaks down Romy’s defenses, notably in a scene where people from the office are having cocktails after work and he sends her over a drink…of milk. He’s saying, ‘You’re my baby girl.’ And when she drinks it down, she’s saying, ‘Yes I am.'”

…would be fascinating, jolting and almost certainly astonishing. Imagine a Lego recreation of the 9/11 attacks from every perspective…a Lego recreation of the horrors of Dachau, Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen…a Lego recreation of the 1969 Manson family murder spree or the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga.

But a Lego version of the musical life and career of Pharell (pronounced phar-ELL) Williams? Later, bruh. Much later.

Morgan Neville‘s Piece by Piece will screen tonight and tomorrow at the Telluride Film Festival (I heard last night it’ll be shown at this afternoon’s secret patron’s screening at the Herzog), and I am telling you here and now that I will not sit through a Lego movie at this festival….I won’t! Unless, as noted, it’s about some horrible, ghastly tragedy. Then I’m wide open.

I didn’t have a chance to watch the Harris-Walz-Bash discussion in Savannah until this morning. She handled herself pretty well. Well-planted, self-assured. Looked and sounded like a person of some force and gravitas. Dignity, maturity, unruffled.

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Heartfelt oogah-moogah to Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling for once again inviting me to his annual La Marmotte birthday dinner.

As per custom a splendid, flush time was had by all — Deadline’s Pete Hammond and enterprising, job-whispering wife Madelyn Hammond, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, hotshot Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg (a late arrival), Netflix award-season maestro Lisa Taback (an end-of-the-night joiner), Netflix talent relations and award season strategist Kelly Dalton, Miramax vp publicity Julie Fontaine, and Daniel Launspach.

These photos feature Roger + myself, and Roger and Lisa.

HE to Durling: “Thanks once again, o my brutha, for your profound generosity & kindness. You’ve always invited me to your Telluride birthday gatherings because we’re palsie-walsies but also because a seat at your table is a roundabout statement of support or at least respect for who I am industry-wise, my column and my opinions. And in fraught, turbulent times, this means a lot.”

I’m always been reluctant to pose for any photo hence my initial squeamishness when Madelyn suggested a shot, but it turned out okay or good enough. The Lisa-Roger photo is perfect.

Thank you, Venice naysayers, for stating opinions that seem to indicate that Pablo Larrain‘s Maria, which is screening this weekend in Telluride, is a half-and-halfer that isn’t quite worth the candle. Thank you bless you…now I can bypass Maria without a moment’s hesitation.

Jordan Ruimy: “You shouldn’t skip Nickel Boys! It’s going to be the talk of Telluride. I can almost guarantee that.”
HE: “Why? I don’t get it. Those poor reform-school lads had a miserable time at the hands of racist bastards. So?”
Ruimy: “I understand your reservations, but I’ve just heard too many great things about it. Watch it just to stay on the beat when the rave reviews drop.”
HE: “Jesus, you’re killing me.”
Ruimy: “Hah.”

Julie Huntsinger quote: Nickel Boys “is such a towering achievement. I couldn’t believe it. My jaw dropped to the floor. You almost can’t speak after because it’s cinematically engaging, arresting. It is emotionally rewarding. It should be one of the most talked about films of the whole year.”

Why would Angelina Jolie want to even try to simulate the voice of one of the greatest all-time opera singers? What’s the point? I’ve been presuming all along that Jolie’s singing would be Marni Nixon-ed.

Everyone’s here in cool, radiantly sunny Telluride, and there’s nothing much to do at 3:13 pm except plan which screenings to catch at which juncture. And take a nap. And smell that mountain air.

It all starts tomorrow, and over the four-day span most of us will catch not more than 15 or 16 films — it won’t be physically possible to see more. Which is a shame as almost everything scheduled (roughly 35 features) looks good to very good.

I’m hearing and presuming that at least two hot films not listed on the slate (The Apprentice and A Real Pain) will be screened on a TBA sneak basis.

HE has been invited to Roger Durling’s annual La Marmotte birthday celebration gabby-gab, which starts around 8 pm. (Seating is a very delicate matter so I’ll be arriving early.)

HE’s first viewing will be Friday afternoon’s (2:30 pm) secret patron screening at the Werner Herzog (A Real Pain?), followed by a 6 pm Herzog showing of Edward Berger’s Conclave, the Ralph Fiennes Vatican melodrama that’s sure to be an Oscar contender. I could catch Nickel Boys at 8:45 pm but no thanks…sadistic Jim Crow bastards make life hell for reform school lads of color in the ‘60s…later.

One film at a time, one day at a time…

Note: My first name is spelled Jeffrey — two syllables, not three.

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