The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) with Russell Crowe and Franco Nero. Some of the YouTube movie reviewers were merciless with their criticisms of this movie. But, I enjoyed it, and thought that it tread into new territory regarding the subject of exorcisms. In this case, exploring evil unleashed by the historical sins of the Church. It was loosely based on the work of real-life exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016), who was featured in an interesting 2017 documentary by William Friedkin (The Exorcist), called The Devil and Father Amorth. I wasn’t expecting too much, except a fun time out with a friend of mine. I will admit that my spag west nerdiness became unleashed over what Franco Nero’s role would be as the Pope who helps Amorth (Crowe) exorcise a powerful demon with a hidden agenda, who has possessed a young boy. Would he get a gatling gun out of a past pontiff’s tomb beneath St. Peter’s Church in Rome, bless an arsenal of bullets, and save the possessed boy, his angsty teenage older sister, and their Spanish castle-flipping mother from the demon a la Django style? Alas, this did not happen. Nero has a small role. But, Amorth came across as sort of the boozey, anti-establusment, anti-hero His Holiness uses to go after the foul-mouthed, cockney-accented demon. I had a few laughs over the possessed boy’s lewd comments. At times he sounded like he was possessed by a character from a Guy Ritchie movie rather than one of Satan’s higher-level minions. As Amorth, Crowe steals the show, and his performance keeps the movie interesting during its slower parts. If you plan to watch The Pope’s Exorcist with the hope of the greatness of The Exorcist, you will be disappointed. If you go with the mindset of Crowe giving a great performance as an Italian priest, Franco Nero as the Pope, and a plot that brings new ideas to the cliched exorcism horror subgenre, you may have an enjoyable time!
I saw Le otto montagne and Master Gardener a couple of weeks ago. Thought both were OK, nothing more. I still enjoy seeing movies on a big screen, and one theater near me will bring in Korean movies that I am unlikely to ever find on Blu-ray, so I try to catch those.
There is so much good stuff that has come out of Korea. I’ve only really gotten into Korean cinema over the past year or two but now I am totally addicted.
I really like how Korean films shatter genre conventions, such as a policier in which the cops never solve the crime spree, or mash together a couple of seemingly incongruent genres, as Bong Joon-ho did with The Host, which is both a family drama and a giant monster movie. And think that Song Kang-ho is the best actor working in movies today. If you haven’t done so already, try to find Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird. As the title indicates, it owes a lot to spaghetti westerns, and in my opinion, it’s the best action of the last 15 years, and Song is a hoot as the rough equivalent of Tuco.
I have seen The Good, the Bad. the Weird and agree about Song Kang-ho. He has been in some classics. The first film he was in that I saw, and the one that first truly got me curious about Korean films in the first place, was Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder. I followed that up with Jae-woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil and I was hooked.
