The act of adaptation can be a particularly tricky line to walk; stray too far from the source material one is adapting, and your product is either regarded as a failure by those familiar with such material, or a triumph by those who deemed it too bland to be interesting on its own. On the other hand, stay too faithful to the story being told, and the adaptation becomes traditionally boring, wherein the lack of alterations to a tale whose origins are mediocre at best then reinforce that mediocrity as it appears on screen. The most audacious adaptations – The Godfather, Arrival, No Country for Old Men, Killers of the Flower Moon, etc. – elevate their source material (regardless of how good it already was on its own) to new heights by switching up approaches, changing plot details so as to make them more accessible to a wider range of people, and filtering all of the character details found in book pages through exceptional performances by remarkably skillful actors and masterful direction. But not every adaptation can reach the same heights, and sometimes all one needs for an adaptation to be successful is a faithful approach to quality source material. This is where Conclave comfortably sits.
 
Based on the book of the same name by Thomas Harris, Conclave’s story finds its center in Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence, who – in the wake of the Pope’s unfortunate death – is charged with running a new Conclave in which all eligible Cardinals will vote to select the Holy Father’s successor. Once one Cardinal receives a two-thirds majority of the vote, that person will become the new Pope, and the face of universal church. Sometimes these elections can take mere hours; sometimes they take days, and with no less than three front-runners making plays for the throne, anything can happen. With the world and the church’s place in it on the brink of total collapse, it is imperative that the Conclave swiftly and decisively select the right representative, both for God, and for the millions of faithful around the globe. This film also stars Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini.
 
How films like Conclave land for someone is all about the approach to watching it. If you go in blind, you’re likely to have a greater reaction to its myriad of plot turns and twists, but you’re also less likely to forgive how the film essentially skips getting to know its characters on a personal level, apart from their individual interactions with Cardinal Lawrence, whom the film is content to have the audience become familiar with through Ralph Fiennes’ layered, deeply understated performance. Having finished Harris’ book mere hours before seeing the film for the first time, I was able to pinpoint in Fiennes’ eyes where all of the character’s internal thoughts came through in the story as outlined in the original text, but for those who haven’t read it, I would imagine that this is a difficult element to understand without any sort of clue given by the film itself. Fiennes is such a skilled actor that in order to play this part right, it requires an almost anti-theatricality, and he nails every beat perfectly, if one knows where to look for them. The same could be applied to both John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci’s characters as well, although we do get to know them more thoroughly through conversations, whereas with Lawrence, the audience is left to simply accept whatever it is about him they can glean from his subtler demeanor. As for Rossellini, while she does feature in one terrific scene towards the third act of the film, the rest of her performance is largely hidden by the needs of the plot, relegating her to more of a background character than a genuine supporting player most of the time.
 
To assuage any doubts that may have arisen: Conclave is a good movie. It’s well-mounted, the no-frills approach to adapting the book works, and all of the performances are played at exactly the right pitch for the story being told. While some of its production elements can feel a tad formulaic at times, they serve their respective purposes in making the story feel coherent, dramatic, and occasionally quite funny, and there are moments of genuine greatness among them, particularly in the cinematography and the costume designs. But herein lies my question: is Conclave a good movie only because the book it’s based on is a good story? Berger’s approach to viewing the Conclave less like the most important thing that could ever occur in a religious sector of the world and more like an overly gossipy workplace meeting that we seem to be in on imbues the film with a sense of fun it may otherwise have lacked, but given its near one-to-one translation from the source material, how much of that credit can be truly given to Berger, and how much goes to Harris’ original text? For me, most of it goes to Harris. Berger is a skilled filmmaker, as evidence by Netflix’s adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front in 2022, but if one is going to adapt books as famous as those Berger has helmed thus far, every production element needs to be firing on all cylinders in order to elevate the director above the material he chooses.
 
As it stands, Conclave is the sort of movie I wish we had twenty of every year. A gripping mystery, told by skilled filmmakers, with some of the best performers in the world chewing the scenery as though they’d not eaten since their last screen test. Even without the level of craftsmanship it would need to be truly competitive in most awards categories (and with one book scene missing that I feel would have elevated it beyond just being very good), it’s a delightfully fun time at the movies, and it’s nice to see that the mid-budget thriller driven by dialogue and character, rather than spectacle, is making a handsome comeback.
 
I’m giving “Conclave” a 7.8/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

The Bikeriders was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and is based on the 1967 photobook of the same name. It takes place between 1965 and 1973, as Kathy (Jodie Comer) recounts the early days of the Outlaws MC (or the Vandals) – an old-school biker club from the streets of McCook, Illinois – to Danny Lyons (Mike Faist), who would go on to eventually author said photobook. From her first day, meeting Benny (Austin Butler) and Johnny (Tom Hardy), to her marriage to Benny, to club picnics and rides across the American Midwest, to meeting members of other clubs, to the introduction of new members of the crew and the departures of longstanding friends, to the eventual evolution of the club into a proper gang, Kathy helps Danny to assemble a portrait of an American society which has since faded into relative obscurity, and hopefully, give their legacy one last good ride. The film also stars Emory Cohen, Boyd Holdbrook, Damon Harriman, Michael Shannon, and Nordman Reedus.  
 
It’s been nine years since writer and director Jeff Nichols last released a feature film, and the movie world as a whole has felt his absence. Since Loving was released in 2016 to very little fanfare (which it ultimately deserved to have), few filmmakers have been able to replicate or even approximate what Nichols brought to the table as an artist. Here was one of the few filmmakers left making mid-budget films for adults that were centered around movie stars but didn’t seem to be especially interested in whatever awards contention they could possibly be slated for along the way – the kinds of movies summers and falls were chock-full of and used to be built around. (Midnight Special is the sci-fi exception.) There are still a select few who do this kind of work – hell, Richard Linklater, who released Hit Man this year – is one of them, but they’re becoming fewer and fewer as studios seem increasingly to only be interested in pushing large-budget projects for large box office returns. (Disney even ultimately let this movie go after removing it from the schedule following the SAG-AFTRA strike of last summer; originally produced under the 20th Century Studios banner, the film is now distributed under Focus Features, one of the few major studios left that seems genuinely interested in these kinds of projects beyond their awards prospects.) Now, Nichols has returned to the silver screen to deliver not only one of the best movie of the year, but exactly the kind of film that movie fans like me have been craving to return to theaters for a long time.
 
There will be inevitable comparisons to Goodfellas based on the earlier stylization of The Bikeriders, especially in the first act, and they wouldn’t be unfair comparisons, generally speaking. The overall edit and – to put it simply – “vibe” of the film feels very much like the Scorsese epic of 1990, complete with freeze-frame title cards, voice-over narration, and a soundtrack reminiscent of the time in which the film takes place. But Nichols is no Scorsese (who are we kidding, no one is), so as much as the film initially attempts to replicate or otherwise embody those stylistic choices, it can’t stop itself from moving too fast at points, which ends up leaving the first act as a whole somewhat of a mess; not one that can’t be cleaned up, and it’s only a spill really, but somewhat of a mess, nonetheless. That said, the film does eventually settle into its own groove, a thoroughly masculine endeavor of honor, legacy, loyalty, brotherhood, etc, without ever feeling as though it’s obsessed with the masculinity it offers. And who better to carry that cool masculinity than one of the biggest movie stars of the moment, Austin Butler.
 
The Bikeriders has other stars doing good performance work – Jodie Comer in particular is quite underrated here as she gets to be the emotional core of the film – and of course there’s a bit of bizarre vocal experimentation (we will never know what Tom Hardy truly sounds like and while Comer’s accent does eventually stop being as distracting, it takes a minute for it to get there), but none of them come close to replicating the true “movie star” power that Austin Butler has in holding the camera’s gaze. He has a presence on screen that’s difficult to quantity exactly, but can only remind the viewer of someone like a Brad Pitt or Robert Redford to Glen Powell’s Clooney or Paul Newman. Audiences may see the film for all sorts of reasons, whether they’re Jeff Nichols fans, Tom Hardy fans, Mike Faist fans, or otherwise, but they’ll leave talking about Austin Butler. It’s his effortless cool that lets the engine of the movie come roaring to life, and it’s his scenes in the movie that keep it from losing focus too often to recover.
 
All that said, this isn’t a perfect movie, and just as the first act feels a little bit too fast for all the stylization it offers, the third act is perhaps a little bit too slow and lacking in some much-needed stylistic adrenaline. That’s not to say the ending isn’t good – that’s in safe hands – but from the break into act three almost until the ending itself, the film sort of feels like it doesn’t know how to end the story it’s telling, as if it’s simply waiting for the credits to eventually fade in and let us know it’s over. Even as much as we enjoy hanging out with all the guys in the club (the original ones, anyway), we know that the journey has to end, but we’re made to wait too long for that ending to get started, which only serves to feed the slight-but-noticeable pacing problem the film occasionally falls back into. Still, even with a few minor complaints like light pacing issues and strange accents, there’s little that can damper the movie’s “good hang” time.
 
My biggest hope for this movie, even if it is a stretch, is that audiences will turn out for it enough so that studios get the message that these kinds of movies are wanted in theatrical spaces, and that we want to see movie stars looking cool with great screen presence in a movie about dudes just rocking so hard. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but it’s a dream film fans need to keep alive, and it’s a dream quite clearly that filmmakers like Jeff Nichols believe in as much as we do. I’ve waited for a long time for a film like The Bikeriders to come back to the silver screen (even Hit Man didn’t get that opportunity properly) and I’m happy to say that, at least for me, it was well worth the wait.
 
I’m giving “The Bikeriders” an 8.2/10
 
- The Friendly Film Fan