Conclave — Rent or buy from Apple TV+
Ralph Fiennes gives a career highlight and Oscar-nominated performance in director Edward Berger’s sumptuous adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel of papal intrigue. When a beloved pontiff dies, Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) is tasked with the infuriating and faith-testing job of wrangling together all the potential successors as they participate in the ancient ritual of a conclave to elect his successor. What follows is a thrilling exploration of behind-the-curtain Vatican intrigue and political back-stabbing that’s carried by an excellent cast that includes Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow. The film earned eight Oscar nominations, though walked away with only one, for best adapted screenplay.
Anora — Rent or buy from Apple TV+
The big winner at this year’s Oscars, Sean Baker’s rollicking farce about a young sex worker who is caught up in a Russian oligarch family drama, is a bittersweet dramedy. Like many of the director’s films it shines a humane light on characters living in the margins. Mikey Madison gives an Oscar-winning performance as the titular Anora, who discovers that the playboy she marries is not the fairy-tale prince she thought he was. The journey she takes with his family’s inept Three Stooge-style goons includes visits to the strip clubs of Brooklyn and the clubs and restaurants of Brighton Beach, and leads her to realise that while real life may not include fairy-tale endings it can lead you to personal Cinderella transformations of a more meaningful and lasting kind.
Babygirl — Rent or buy from Apple TV+
Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson star as the steamy couple at the heart of director of Halina Reijn’s sexually provocative thriller about an older, wealthy CEO who risks everything when she embarks on a torrid affair with a much younger intern. Carried by a fearless performance from Kidman and Reijn’s clinical gaze, the film asks pertinent questions about double standards when it comes to female sexuality, and the consequences women face when they explore their desires.
Your Friends & Neighbors — Apple TV+
Jon Hamm stars in creator Jonathan Topper’s enjoyable dramedy satire as a hedge fund manager whose perfect life disintegrates when his wife cheats on him, he loses his job and then battles to keep his children in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. His solution is to take a long look around him at his wealthy and not particularly nice friends and neighbours, and realise that a sideline in house burglaries may be just the ticket. What could possibly go wrong?
G20 — Prime Video
Viola Davis has plenty of fun exercising her action chops in this implausible but enjoyable thriller. She plays the impossible figure of the president of the US who, when the leaders of the free world at a Group of 20 summit are attacked, kicks into high gear, drawing on her military past to save herself and the world from villainous terrorist enemies.
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