Il Papa è morto

Film: Conclave
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

I tend to think Ralph Fiennes rarely gets the credit that he deserves. Fiennes makes a really good villain (see the Harry Potter franchise, In Bruges, and Schindler’s List. He’s good in straight dramas—see his run in the James Bond franchise. He can also do comedy, as in In Bruges (again) and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He’s an actor who I will watch when I come across one of his movies almost automatically, so when I saw Conclave streaming on Peacock, I knew I’d get to it sooner rather than later.

My own religious opinions are fairly well known on this blog. I’m not merely someone who is irreligious but someone who is generally anti-theistic, believing that religion does more harm than good. It’s a constant part of my movie watching, though, because so many horror movies rely on religious themes. Conclave isn’t a horror movie, but it very much is a religious one, taking place essentially entirely in the Vatican.

Soon, Germany Will Be Empty

Film: All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

There seems to be no end to movies about war. There are, of course, films that depict war as something glorious, as a thing to be, if not encouraged at least welcomed. Certainly, there are those that depict war as something to be sought after as well. And then there are those films that show war as something terrible and a hell unto itself. Films like Come and See, Paths of Glory, and Das Boot depict war as senseless, endless brutality and a desperate hope to avoid death. The original All Quiet on the Western Front remains one of the greatest anti-war statements in history. To that we can add the 2022 German reimagining of the same name, also know by its German title of Im Westen nichts Neues (which means “Nothing new in the west” if my German hasn’t failed me).

This is, in fact, the third version of this story that I have seen. The first I saw was the 1979 made-for-TV re-imagining starring Richard Thomas, which is very much the weakest of the three. The 1930 film won Best Picture, of course, and as mentioned is still an extremely powerful film. And then there is this latest version, which holds nothing back on the true horror of trench warfare.