“Enter a seduc­tive­ly camp John Malkovich

Jude Law haunts Pao­lo Sorrentino’s glo­ri­ous fol­low-up to The Young Pope, but Malkovich’s purring pon­tiff-in-wait­ing is divine.

…rich and rav­ish­ing and glo­ri­ous­ly enig­mat­ic. It pro­vides anoth­er deep dive into the hid­den world of the Vat­i­can City, mar­vel­ling at its mys­tique with agnos­tic fer­vour… Sor­renti­no pos­sess­es style to burn and ele­gance to squan­der. The New Pope loops and darts from one gor­geous set piece to the next, whether it’s a reli­gious tableau set to haunt­ing dance music or a noc­tur­nal stroll through a win­try Venice. The whole thing is so immac­u­late that it risks hold­ing the view­er at arm’s length. But then the direc­tor will gen­tly lance us with a moment of emo­tion­al truth…”

“Faith, Hope and Sponge Baths

In Pao­lo Sorrentino’s visu­al­ly arrest­ing, breezi­ly provoca­tive fol­low-up to ​“The Young Pope”…

…Sor­renti­no wastes no time indulging his knack for soft-core irony deliv­ered in divert­ing visuals…glides along on a vel­vet raft of con­ver­sa­tion about mir­a­cles, the sacred and the pro­fane, the mys­ter­ies of faith, and the real-world issues that dog the church — pedophil­ia scan­dals, ret­ro­grade atti­tudes toward homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, lousy treat­ment of women…Sorrentino’s real inter­est, though, is always in chic, seduc­tive, mild­ly provoca­tive spectacle…it tracks the machi­na­tions of the small cir­cle of car­di­nals and laypeo­ple who oper­ate behind the papal skirts, is not phi­los­o­phy or God but the exer­cise of pow­er. It has strong ele­ments of work­place sit­com, but it even more close­ly resem­bles anoth­er ven­er­a­ble genre: the Mafia movie…”