Film picks: Conclave, A Long Shot, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Conclave (M18)

120 minutes, now showing
★★★★☆

Following the unexpected death of the pope, it falls on Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), dean of the College of Cardinals, to organise the papal conclave, a gathering of cardinals from around the world given the task of electing the new pontiff. As the clerics prepare for sequestration, Lawrence receives disturbing information about several candidates.

Under magnificent frescoes that speak of divine grace, men with all-too-human flaws gather to choose God’s representative on Earth. These esteemed men in their 60s and 70s behave like any group under pressure – they form cliques, gossip and backstab.

Lawrence is a tragic figure, a decent man given the messy job of managing a group of political rivals and, worse, forced into choosing between friendship and duty. Fiennes brings great depth to the character.

Director Edward Berger, whose Oscar-winning All Quiet On The Western Front (2022) demonstrated his gift for revealing irony through contrasts, brings the same skilled eye to this mystery thriller that is expected to be a front runner come awards season. His camera glides effortlessly between Vatican splendour and human frailty.

A Long Shot (PG13)

117 minutes, now showing exclusively at The Projector

Set in 1990s north-eastern China, this crime drama follows Gu Xuebing (Zu Feng), a former sharpshooter-turned-security guard at a struggling state-owned factory. When he catches a teenage boy attempting to steal from the facility, Gu decides to mentor him rather than turn him in. But as corruption and crime escalate around the factory, both must face difficult moral choices.

A reviewer in entertainment publication The Hollywood Reporter notes that “what’s ultimately most memorable in A Long Shot isn’t the gunplay but the setting itself – it resembles a small city after it’s been hit by a major dystopian catastrophe”.

This moody film marks the feature debut of director Gao Peng, who graduated from Beijing Film Academy in 2007.

A Long Shot won the Best Artistic Contribution Award in the main competition section of the 36th Tokyo International Film Festival, where it was also nominated for Best Picture.

On Jan 11, after the 7.15pm screening, Gao and Zu will be present for a virtual question-and-answer session.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (PG)

82 minutes, premieres on Netflix on Jan 3
★★★★☆

Nifty Odd-Jobbing Robot, or Norbot (Reece Shearsmith), is a smart gnome pre-programmed for home improvement, and Wallace (Ben Whitehead) has quite the business, renting it out around his neighbourhood in 1960s Northern England to pay the bills.

Aardman Animations’ Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, co-directed by Academy Award-winning series creator Nick Park, is his second British stop-motion feature comedy after The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005) and a sequel to the short The Wrong Trousers (1993), where diabolical penguin Feathers McGraw first appeared, disguised as a chicken.

Foiled by Wallace and Gromit, the interloper has since been hatching his revenge from a high-security zoo across town. Cinema’s inventory of villains has none more sinister than this inscrutable jailbird with his dead eyes: He hacks into Norbot and engineers an army of evil gnome-bots for mayhem.

The tactile, lovingly handcrafted plasticine animation is a marvel. Even Wallace comes to see there are “some things a machine just can’t do”. – Whang Yee Ling