Two film reviews

[selenak]

Star Trek: Section 31: You could very much tell this started out as a series concept, I thought. Presumably if it had been a series instead of a movie, we'd have gotten more time to get to know the crew team individually, the "who's the mole?" part would have played out over two episodes at least, and we would have gotten flashbacks to Georgiou's past with San in every episode, thus giving the audience the chance to become invested in him and their relationship. As it was, it was enjoyable in a popcorn movie kind of way. There were some bits which I thought worked better than others - for example, Rachel Garrett (presumably she's supposed to be THE Rachel Garrett, the future Captain of the Enterprice, when young?) saying she's there to ensure the Section 31 people plus Georgiou don't go on a killing spree, but then she doesn't do anything when Alok Sahar and Georgiou go off to interrogate a guy, and "interrogate" definitely came across as intending torture. Yes, in effect, each of them "only" punched him once without results and then Georgiou got him talking with a whispered threat instead, but it still came dangerously close to my least favourite 24 cliché. Also, I would have required a bit more technobabble at the end making it clear whether Georgiou and Alok were counting on the Big Bad MacGuffin of the story to only destroy the Mirrorverse crossover and be absorbed by it in return, or whether they thought it would still wipe out a quadrant, though in the Mirrorverse as opposed to the Primeverse. There is a difference if this is to be seen as a big atonement/redemption moment. On a more positive note, Alok Sahar as a character did work for me: not only was he a new twist on the Eugenic Wars trope - this time a survivor frozen and defrosted who had been a victim, not (originally) an augment of said war, and then throiugh enslavement forced to work for an Augmented Warlord, which would give him indeed a very informed perspective on Geourgiou but the actor has charisma and gravitas.

Also, I had been curious whether the series that became a movie would press the retcon button on Georgiou's development up to end including s3 of Discovery, and/or how they would handle her backstory, especially since s2 (but not s3) of Disco could have given you the impression of downplaying the enormity of what and who Georgiou had been, but actually for the most part I thought the movie handled that well, in a way accessible to new watchers who hadn't seen her elsewhere. On Discovery, Georgiou once did say to Michael she had poisoned her mother, one of her sarcastic remarks you were never quite sure whether or not to believe literally. Here, we saw the truth about that in a very different context, i.e. it turns out the Terran Empire has their very own Hunger Games, only their case it's a top leadership contest, and the last challenge is for the two finalists to kill their respective families. The young actress resembled Michelle Yeoh enough to make a believable young Philippa, and the moment the enormity of what she did sinks inis really played well. San, see above: I feel we needed to see a bit more of their relationship to get invested in the tragic twistedness of it, especially since "Georgiou creates a monster out of a person she loves, now realises it and tries in vain to save that person" has alreaedy been done really well in the Discovery s3 Mirroverse two parter. Still, it's not a mere repetition of the Georgiou and Mirroverse Michael tale in terms of Georgiou's general development. In s3 of Disco, she thought she still wanted to be Emperor again and just redo the mistakes leading to her downfall, including with Mirrorverse Michael, and by the end of the two parter realised that not only was this not possible but that she did not want to return any longer. In this movie, she tells San in their big showdown "there are no benevolent dictators" when he says he'll rule better than she did, which I don't think she knew or admitted before the s3 experience, and the whole point of joining the Section 31 team was not so much for the adrenaline but because she knew she needed to stop the horror she had literally created.-

All in all: a mixed affair, Michelle Yeoh gets to do her thing and does it well, but I don't mourn for the fact this didn't become a show.


Conclave: I had read the Robert Harris novel this movie is based on, and of which it is a very faithful adaption, save for the change of name and nationality of the leading character to accomodate for Ralph Fiennes playing him. In the book, he's an Italian named Jacobo Lomeli. In the movie, he's Thomas Lawrence. The only scene where this change is a bit awkward is one early on where Cardinal Tedesco (lead candidate of the traditionalistis) says to Lawrence/Lomeli (allied to the reformers) that the next Pope should be an Italian again. Since in the book, he's talking to a fellow Italian, that conversation makes sense despite them belonging into different ideological camps, but in the movie, it's a bit unclear why Tedesco even bothers. Still, Fiennes gives such a great performance that I really don't feel like complaining - and I've seen Ralph Fiennes deliver good performances before, through the decades. He really deserves that Oscar nomination, all the more so because Lawrence is a quiet, subtle character, who has to handle several major organisational horrors and mysteries along with a personal crisis of faith. I've read three Harris novels and they each employ something a mystery/detective structure without being outright mysteries; Lawrence, our pov character, isn't just the man in charge of leading the Conclave, i.e. the assembly of Cardinals who need to elect the next Pope, and the papal elections form the thriller part of the story in both book and film, he also has to figure out several mystery like questions about several of the frontrunners who each have secrets that impact on their candidacy.

The film is directed by the same director responsible for the most recent adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and I think you can tell from the way sound is used, but I thought this movie has a far firmer grip on giving personalities on all of its considerable ensemble of characters. (The acting is superb all around.) The cinematography is also gorgeous, and btw, extra points for the Nuns wearing actual post Vatican 2, Italy today clothing, not the pre Vatican 2 uniforms so beloved by American tv and movies. And the various twists and turns of the story are delivered smoothly, ratching up the suspense even when like me you know what's coming. Another pleasant surprise was that while Ralph Fiennes is Lawrence not Lomeli, he still speaks the occasional Italian, including in a key sermon he delivers, Bertinez occasionally switches to Spanish, Tedesco speaks almost exclusively in Italian, and of course there's Latin. (All subtitled when used.) I thought, as I did years ago when reading the book, that despite being a solid electiont thriller with scheming and backroom deals and so forth, it's amazingly uncynical in that everyone, including the less or downright unsympathetic Cardinals, is presented as being genuine about their faith; you do believe these men all originally became priests out of a spiritual longing, no matter what their current state. Which, btw, makes the fictional campaigning and election we're seeing play out here feel ever so much more intelligent and somehow ina better timeline than anything going or having gone on in our reality in recent months or now.

Isabella Rossellini being nominated for playing Sister Agnes reminded me of Judi Dench getting nominated for playing Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, in that these are really tiny roles with just a few minutes of actual screen time, and the nomination is presumably meant for their entire life time of work, but also, in the few scenes they have, the ladies are excellent.

In conclusion: of the two, I'd call Conclave a must and Section 31 a "if you have nothing else on your plate", but Conclave doesn't have Michelle Yeoh, so there's that.

Comments

[lightofdaye]

I think I'm going to wait on Section 31 until SNW S3 comes out. I don't feel inclined to pay out for Paramount+ just for it but when I have it anyway.

[selenak]

It definitely can wait until then.

[profiterole_reads]

I enjoyed Section 31, and I'm glad you liked it well enough, after I saw so much hate on other websites. But of course female-led action movies always get hated on.

[lizbee]

I would definitely not go so far as to say it is a GOOD movie, but I certainly think reviewers are wildly overstating how bad it is. And I have noticed that since Paramount cut the number of people who receive advance review copies late last year (my own podcast dropped off the list), all but a tiny handful of the fan reviewers left standing are men.

(Also, when this project had to be adapted from a TV series into a movie, the two women who wrote the series were not given the opportunity to make the change -- instead the job went to Craig Sweeny, whose sole previous Star Trek work was the script for "Context is for Kings". I dearly wish we could have seen what the women who wrote "Terra Firma" were going to do with this story.)

[kore]

Aww man. That's a real fucking bummer.

[selenak]

I‘ve mostly given up reading or listening to reviews regarding Star Trek save for from selected sources, because good lord, the hate reflex is incredible, especially, as you say, when there‘s a woman in the lead. I don‘t think Section 31 will ever make it on my personal „best of Star Trek“ list, but it was entertaining, and didn‘t infuriate me once, which is far more than I can say about the third season of Picard.

[liriaen]

Conclave was excellent on all counts. I had to go watch it twice, just to bathe in the cinematography again, enjoy the subtle changes of mien, the swift-footed choreography of power players and invisible forces. What you said about the inner integrity of the characters (as in, true to their principles, their calling, their grappling with their interpretation of their faith) struck me as very poignant, too.

[selenak]

I will definitely rewatch, and am glad I cought in the theatre rather than wait till it was streamed - it deserves the big screen.

[liriaen]

It's definitely worth a rewatch, on the big screen, too. :D

[kathyh]

We saw Conclave before Christmas and also thought it was excellent. We were at a talk given by Robert Harris at a book festival in October, principally about Precipice but he mentioned the film of Conclave and showed the trailer for it. He implied he was very pleased with it, which didn’t seem to be the case for all the films of his novels.

[selenak]

Regarding Harris’ reaction, I think it helps that it was a short novel. No subplots had to be cut, no important character establishing scenes. Whereas with, say, Munich, I think an entire important character was axed.

[shadowkat]

Second negative review I've seen on correspondence list regarding Section 31 - how disappointing. I'd been looking forward to it and as a series. But alas, it looks from your review and fresne's that it doesn't work. She said more or less the same thing you did. So, I'll skip, too many other things to watch.

Also the third rec that I've seen for Conclave. Thank you. I'll try to rent on AppleTV next weekend, three rec's to see from three different folks on my correspondence list - means it's worth checking out. (Vertigo got in the way of doing it this weekend, I fell asleep to Ted Lasso instead.)

[selenak]

Re: Section 31 - it's not good, it's not bad, it's definitely entertaining but does suffer from the series-to-movie transition, and now I hear the women who wrote it as a series weren't allowed to adapt it to a movie, which also can't have helped. But I wasn't bored for a minute, in all fairness. But Conclave is terrific.

[shadowkat]

Thanks, that's good to know. Odd that the women who wrote Section 31 series weren't allowed to adapt it into a film. Did they go over-budget? Was it the content? I'm hoping it's not for discriminatory reasons or some type of male power play, because that would just be depressing, not to mention aggravating.

[lirazel]

So glad you also enjoyed Conclave! I love seeing love for it! And I agree that one of the things that makes it special is the lack of cynicism re: faith. You almost never see that anymore--characters who actually believe in whatever their religion is.

[selenak]

It's a beautiful movie, and I am now very much rooting for it at the Oscars.

[jesuswasbatman]

I'm pretty sure that the big event at the end of "Section 31" was intended to lay waste to a large portion of the Mirrorverse, yes. I suspect that this may have had more effect on the collapse of the Terran Empire prior to the DS9 era than Spock's attempt at reform did.