Film reviews: Conclave | Moana 2 | Strange Darling

Moana 2 (PG) ★★★☆☆

Strange Darling (18) ★★★★☆

Adapted from Robert Harris’ 2016 papal potboiler of the same name, Conclave is the sort of middlebrow thriller that could use a trashier aesthetic to make its overblown story a little juicer and more scandalous. Set in the cloistered environs of the Vatican during the shrouded-in-secrecy transition period following the death of one Pope and the election of another, it stars Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the progressively minded Dean of the College of Cardinals whose job it is to oversee the titular conclave.

Ruling himself out of the running due to his own crisis of faith, Lawrence chooses instead to quietly back his openly liberal colleague, Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci). But when Bellini comes nowhere close to securing the necessary two-thirds majority on the first ballot, the politicking of all the candidates intensifies as a new cardinal arrives unexpectedly in their midst and rumours abound regarding the respective suitability of the frontrunners for the job.

Directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger, the film’s initial pleasure comes from the seeding of these various scandals, something its top-tier cast — which includes Isabella Rossellini as a nun keeping a close eye on proceedings and John Lithgow as a devious centrist hoping to secure the papacy as the “least worst” option — imbue proceedings with the requisite sense of mystery. Everyone brings their A game and they attack the dialogue-heavy script with a potency that matches the stabby violins of its turned-up-to-eleven score. So it’s a shame Berger’s own tasteful efforts to ground the intrigue and melodrama ends up muting it so much that its explosive final act twist ends up being more of a damp squib. Still, Fiennes is fantastic.

Originally developed as an animated TV show for Disney+, Moana 2 emerges as an entertaining follow-up to the studio’s 2016 hit musical about a young Polynesian adventurer who embarks on a quest to save her homeland. Set a few years on, this time out Moana (voiced once more by Auli’i Cravalho) must set out to find a missing island as part of a convoluted plot to reunite the people of the ocean and prevent a prophecy foretelling their own destruction from coming true.

Once again weaving Polynesian folklore into the recognisable structure of a Hollywood blockbuster quest narrative (this one borrows elements from The Empire Strikes Back and Pirates of the Caribbean), the film ups the stakes by making Moana more aware of everything she could lose, but ups the fun factor too courtesy of Dwayne Johnson’s return as Moana’s vainglorious demigod best friend Maui. Time will tell if the songs resonate with kids as much as the first ones have (Lin Manuel-Miranda isn’t involved this time), but in the context of this film, they soar well enough.

In a year of innovative horror (The Substance, Long Legs, Woman of the Hour), indie hit Strange Darling distinguishes itself with a chronology fracturing structure that reorientates what we think we’re watching in some entertainingly twisty ways.

Essentially a cat-and-mouse serial-killer thriller that purports to be taken from true crime case files, writer/director JT Moller’s sophomore feature upends the clichés of the genre not just in the way he’s assembled the story, but also in the performances he gets from stars Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald.

With the former deftly navigating his character’s surface sleaziness and the latter bringing real depth and complexity to the final girl trope movies of this ilk get off on exploiting, the film plays around with genre and gender expectations in some provocative and uncomfortable ways. That’s all to the good; provocation is part of the appeal of good horror and this one, mercifully, isn’t shy about pushing buttons.

Shot on 35mm, it also looks great (it’s the first feature credit for actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi) and the ethereal folk-pop soundtrack (written and performed by Z Berg) adds to the off-kilter and unsettling mood.

Conclave and Moana are in cinemas from 29 November; Strange Darling is available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital from 2 December