The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

I'm surprised they call out the Conclave as an example of a good movie. It's not a bad movie, but the final twist (I'm not going to spoil it) is way over the top and almost absurdly Hollywood.

I see few Americans in the credits. Did you mean absurdly following in the Hollywood style, or are the handful of Americans involved in that film enough to make it "Hollywood"? Genuinely asking. Is Hollywood a place, a process, or a result?

Without spoiling the twist, I question whether it’s “over the top.” The specific kind of anxiety alluded to by Conclave about popes is almost a thousand years old and has resurged several times.

Great acting, great filming, awful ending.

It wasn't just the ending. Any time a priest casually breaks the seal of the confessional and nobody bats an eye, it creates this weird surreal effect where you can't even tell if the author is aware of what he's doing.

The guy is actually way too unspecific about the details there to make much sense of the canonical relevance, which renders the resulting anxiety rather comical.

This spoiler-dogeing (pun intended) makes this comment too unspecific to respond to unfortunately, as it's not clear what you found unspecific. It's understood enough by the person he's telling it to, and it makes sense to be beating-around-bush about a topic that could get the person who's telling it in trouble.

Fine, Caesar 7 then for spoilers.

Ilupalg pz buzwljpmpj hivba opz tlkpjhs jvukpapvu. Dl kvu'a slhyu dolaoly pa'z joyvtvzvths huk dolaoly opz vbaly nlupahsph hwwlhy uvyths. Npclu ovd shal pu spml ol optzlsm kpzjvclylk pa, dl jhu hzzbtl aoha aol ylza vm opz ivkf pz mbssf thsl, pu dopjo jhzl aolyl dvbsk ohcl illu uv pyylnbshypaf -- sla hsvul hu ptwlkptlua -- opuklypun opz vykpuhapvu av aol wyplzaovvk.

Aol hbkplujl pz zbwwvzlk av mlls opz zavyf ohz obnl ptwspjhapvuz, dolu pa'z ylhssf uv tvyl ylslchua aohu opt ohcpun h aopyk rpkulf.

Very little of "Hollywood" is about the place today. Movies are often filmed outside of it for tax purposes. Referencing it is almost always about either the style or the clique of people who engender the style.

> absurdly Hollywood

Happy-end with sequel hook?

And called out the second part of Dune as a bad film. It got written off as simply a "sci-fi sequel"; I think for that movie in particular it is more fair to say that doing the book justice couldn't be done in a single film as the source material is extraordinarily dense.

LOTR is a fascinating counter example; each book is quite dense but was able to be made into a single (albeit long) film. Part of that I think is because a lot of the density of those books is exquisite detailing of the animated natural world of the books; a picture is worth a thousand words may be obnoxiously overused but apropos in this case. The movies seemed to understand the animate life force of the visual landscape and so were able to say a lot visually.

I just don't see Dune: Part II as a true sequel in the traditional sense of the term (though perhaps the literal sense of the term, despite literalism being apparently despised by the articles author).

> ...but the final twist (I'm not going to spoil it)...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FS7MH5oeW74