In the separate realm of fiction, my feeling is that a palace intrigue is dramatically most effective when the palace is rotting from the inside -- and that Conclave in particular would have gained from a pinch more cynicism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 13, 2025

What unfolds as the cardinals go to war with each other… is as tantalising as a murder mystery. The candidates become suspects, leaks happen, and questions arise about who is telling the truth.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 3, 2025

Conclave does not deserve its drama queen reputation.

| Dec 20, 2024

... Not just dramatically satisfying, but philosophically satisfying.

| Dec 12, 2024

It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2024

The tone is wry, the plot sturdy, the main course a thick porterhouse slab of grass-fed, richly marbled acting, delivered to your seat.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 7, 2024

Here, jostling for the papacy makes the Machiavellian moves of Succession look like child's play.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2024

Director Edward Berger allows us to peer in, like children planted at the doorway, to giggle at how pedestrian and mortally flawed it all is beneath the gilded finery and incense.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 3, 2024

You may think that being locked in a room with a bunch of pompous elderly men deviously attempting to shaft each other wouldn’t be a lot of fun. But trust me on this: Conclave is a blast.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 3, 2024

Conclave is a papal thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and it stars a magnificent Ralph Fiennes. If he doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat and also yours. Luckily, the film is also well written, smart, taut and visually stunning.

| Dec 3, 2024

It all unfolds with such precision: an unlikely potboiler that Berger presents not only thoughtfully, but viciously and deliciously.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 2, 2024

Ralph Fiennes is on sumptuous form as the deeply troubled Cardinal Lawrence at the centre of a murky Vatican plot. The result is a high-camp gripper, like the world’s most serious Carry On film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2024

Fiennes ... makes something believable of Lawrence’s battle for truth and integrity. Isabella Rossellini works magic with a minute supporting role. But few will survive the final scenes without pondering the Italian for “magnificent hokum”.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 29, 2024

A major awards contender, this is a deftly executed and gripping tale of secrets, lies and human ambition. Fiennes is magnetic, while the supporting cast conspire to wrap this tale of faith, power and morality in sumptuous dramatic cloth.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 29, 2024

It’s the quietly magisterial Fiennes who steals the show.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 26, 2024

Conclave has now been brilliantly translated to the big screen. It’s high entertainment, all components expertly marshalled.

| Nov 22, 2024

It's very entertaining, although I have to say I didn't believe a minute of it.

| Nov 13, 2024

As with All Quiet On the Western Front, Berger is concerned with machinery and modernity and how they clash with tradition.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 8, 2024

Ralph Fiennes’s best role in recent memory.

| Nov 2, 2024

Instead of rising to the awe-inspiring heights of their settings, the refinement of the performances is narrowed to monotony.

| Nov 1, 2024