The Two Popes

An outstanding conversational drama with a fantastic cast. Light on its feet, funny and touching. The popes are both nice people and, thanks to the excellently written dialogue, you get an exact idea of both of their viewpoints. The scenes with Anthony Hopkins having a Fanta and a pizza inside the Sistine Chapel and he and Pryce watching football and drinking beer are priceless. An unbelievably humane and positive movie. (06/09/2020)

The advantage of this film is that even if no one is particularly interested in the subject, there is a pretty good chance that everyone will enjoy it. Why? Because Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce could very well be explaining how to peel potatoes and their rendition would still make it an acting tour de force. Their Oscar nominations rank among the most well-deserved ones. The sentence that comes to mind, "it didn’t happen but could have," rings true in every scene. This film almost felt too short, which has not happened to me in quite some time and I consider it to be the biggest surprise of 2019. (02/02/2020)

I liked the way it was filmed, acted, voiced, performed. I don't care that it's a movie about Catholic bigwigs. Overall, I don't even think the film had aspirations to be a faithful historical reproduction. I think it wanted to show two gentlemen getting on in years and becoming friends, even though they root for different teams. The fact that they both tried out for the papal chair is simply taking advantage of the alluring setting. An enjoyable film, it flows very nicely; the two hours passed like a breeze. I just walked away satisfied, absolutely not wanting to think about everything the Pope symbolizes, how much that circus costs to maintain, what all he's covered up. For me, it's a nice film with no critical overlap. (25/01/2020)

In this pleasant conversational film, you will see the pope watching Inspector Rex and enjoying a slice of pizza. Meirelles wins viewers over with his depiction of the pope as a man who also needs to confess and who may also have doubts about his mission. The friendship that is gradually established between these two priests, who are incompatible from the start, becomes the film’s main storyline. Both of the lead roles are very well cast. Hopkins portrays the German radical with his typical gusto and Jonathan Pryce’s naturalness is absolutely sufficient for playing his gentler opposite. (08/01/2020)

An amazing humanization of two characters about which you may hear but it is almost impossible to get a little bit closer to. The closest I was able to get was when Pope Benedict XVI came to Stará Boleslav 10 years ago. But even that is nothing in comparison with this movie, which is humorous, enjoyable, interesting and mainly full of dialogues between two completely different people that have, precisely thanks to their differences, a lot to say to one another. The movie has great dialogues that may be unnecessarily long in the 2nd half; otherwise it would have been good enough for 5 stars. (31/12/2019)