Conclave

Conclave, a thriller enveloping us in the skullduggery surrounding the election of a new Pope, is essentially cosy Sunday night telly with a Hollywood budget. Director Edward Berger knows he’s got a potboiler on his hands and he wrings out plenty of surface pleasures to distract from the thin cloak-and-dagger plot. Volker Bertelmann’s doom-laden score is a moody triumph and compositions of Cardinals huddling in cloisters and stairwells, as shot by French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, are beautiful enough for the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. 

The actors are as compelling. Ralph Fiennes is magnetic in his dour stoicism as Cardinal Lawrence, who’s attempting to judiciously oversee this surprise election while battling a crisis of faith. Stanley Tucci takes a welcome break from TikTok to play Cardinal Bellini, the moderate candidate, which he performs with effortless charisma, reminding us he's wasted flogging pasta recipes. Pretty much everyone else is chewing the Vatican's scenery: John Lithgow rolls out his sinister grandfather act and Isabella Rossellini is fun, if underutilised, as a no-nonsense nun. 

Conclave’s politics are pretty good too. It sharply demonstrates that mealy-mouthed centrists are not the solution to combating right-wing nuts like Sergio Castellitto’s Cardinal Tedesco, who rants about multiculturalism between puffs of his vape (an affectation which has quickly become cinematic shorthand for 'morally dubious'). You’ll be thoroughly entertained, but Conclave will disappear from memory quicker than a puff of white smoke. Well, maybe not its daft but humanistic ending, which should keep right-wing columnists busy until the Oscars.

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Released 29 Nov by Black Bear; certificate 12A