Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

More Film Festivals are coming up soon, with ReelAsian, Cinefranco and BITS, Blood in the Snow, just around the corner.

But this week, I’m looking at three great new movies. There’s a consortium of cardinals locked in their chambers; a monster discovered in a closet by a NY actress, and a Toronto man forced out of his closet by the police. 

Your Monster

Wri/Dir: Caroline Lindy

It’s present day Manhattan. Laura (Melissa Barrera) is a triple threat — she can sing, dance and act. She’s helping her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) write his breakout musical, soon to open on Broadway with her in the lead role. But when she gets sick — the big C! — and needs surgery, he dumps her — out of the blue — while still in hospital. And casts another actress (Meghann Fahy), in her part. The surgery is a success but Laura is a total wreck. She’s doubly devastated, both from the sudden end of her five year relationship and for being cheated out of her big break. Her anger, frustration and self pity are all ready to explode. That’s when she makes an unexpected discovery. There’s a monster in her closet!

The creature (Tommy Dewey) is an actual monster, bearded with long hair, sharp teeth and leonine features, who talks like a dude. Apparently he has lived there all her life (she grew up in this house) she just never saw him before. It’s hate and fear at first sight. He threatens to tear out her throat and eat her alive — and tells her to leave the place and never come back. Meanwhile, Laura shows up for the audition uninvited and becomes the understudy for her own role. But things gradually warm up at home, as Laura and her monster get to know each other. But can she take him to the Halloween Ball? Will she ever get to perform her role on stage? And will her boyfriend ever take her back?

Your Monster is a very cute, rom-com/horror with a fair bit of singing, too. It’s a riff on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast but with a funnier monster and brooding beauty with a lot of anger inside. Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey have lots of chemistry while Edmund Donovan is suitably villainous as the bad boyfriend. He looks strangely like Jared Kushner. The movie as a whole is enjoyable and adorable.  It takes a funny concept to its extreme. I like the costumes, I like tight script — the whole movie is much better than I expected. There’s a play within the play (half the scenes are rehearsals or performances) but even the “real” home scenes are theatrical. Your Monster will make a great date movie, but just keep in mind there’s a bit of horror within this rom-com.

Drive Back Home

Wri/Dir: Michael Clowater

It’s 1970 in the village of Stanley, New Brunswick. 

Weldon (Charlie Creed-Miles) is a mechanic who lives with his mom, his wife and his son in the house he was born and grew up in.  One night he gets a long distance phone call from Toronto. His estranged younger brother Perly (Alan Cumming) — an advertising exec who he hasn’t heard from in many years — has been arrested for gross indecency (meaning consensual sex with another man). The cop lays it out. If you can pick him up and take him home, all charges will be dropped. If not, he’s going to prison for five years. So Weldon loads up his pickup truck with enough sandwiches and gasoline for a long trip and leaves his village for the first time in his life. He’s terrified of having to speak French so he takes a circuitous route avoiding Montreal altogether.

He picks up Perly from the cop shop but there is no love lost between them. Perly is a city boy who wears a jaunty cravat while his big brother is a hick, who’s never seen a high-rise apartment or an answering machine. He just wants to drive back home. Perly isn’t a happy camper either: His marriage is a shambles, his career has tanked and his dog is dead, since the cops arrested him. But what’s left for him in Toronto? And so they begin their long journey home. But what secrets will be revealed along the way?

Drive Back Home is a bittersweet drama about family and trauma. It’s done in the style of classic  Canadian Road movies,  like Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road, but this one is about leaving the big city. Their trip through rural Ontario and Quebec alternates between scenic beauty, rustic kindness, and vicious, small-town bigotry. Canada was still rife with homophobic hatred at the time —  it was only decriminalized a year earlier, and there are disturbing gay-bashing scenes in this film along with a lot of homophobic F bombs.

The two main actors are English and Scottish but both quite good, and maintain decent Canadian accents, gruff for Creed Miles and arch for Cumming. The rest of the cast features prominent Canadian actors, with Clare Coulter as Adelaide, the hard-ass mom, Guy Sprung, as a Francophone farmer, Dan Beirne as a priest and Alexandre Bourgeois as a young guy they meet in a roadhouse bar. Drive Back Home is a moving look at Canada’s bad ol’ days.

Conclave

Dir: Edward Berger

A hush hangs over the Vatican; his holiness the Pope is dead. And the world’s Cardinals, in red robes with white mitres, are congregating to choose the next pontiff from within their group. Ballots are secret, but until one receives 2/3 of the votes, they are literally locked-in, no contact with the outside world. What are their criteria for the next pope? He must be virtuous and humble, but also healthy and strong. And he must be honest as the Pope is infallible. Bishop Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is the Dean in charge of the highly secretive process. The most popular candidates: Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a modest liberal reformer, Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a bombastic traditionalist, and the highly respected Adeyami (Lucian Msamati). But Lawrence is privy to new information just before the lockdown. A drunken monsignor alleges the Pope fired Tremblay (John Lithgow) just before he died. And mystery man, Benitez (Carlos Diehz), appears out of nowhere claiming to be the Cardinal of Kabul, Afghanistan. And then there are the nuns, including Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) who remain silent but see and hear everything. Which bishop will they choose to turn the conclave’s smoke from black to white?

Conclave is a stunningly- good thriller about secrets and subterfuge within the Vatican. The constant changes of political alliances as well as shocking revelations will keep your rapt attention until the very end. It presents a Vatican that’s both exquisite and decadent, with black mould spreading on it’s columns. It’s all the work of German director Edward Berger who made All Quiet on the Western Front, with Volker Bertelmann’s powerful music, and fascinating camerawork. It was filmed at Rome’s famous Cinecitta studio who are always deft at recreating the Vatican. I love this constant attention to detail — red sealing wax, Latin prayers, and tortellini soup.The acting is superb, especially Ralph Fiennes. I’ve never been a fan, but he is just sooo good in this role, maybe his best I’ve ever seen. Altogether, this makes Conclave a great night out.

Your Monster and Conclave both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings. And Drive Back Home is having its Toronto premiere tonight at CAMH on Queen West as part of the Rendezvous with Madness film fest.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.