The College of Cardinals, roommate vampires, Venom, and Bruce Springsteen come together, and the thing they have in common? Well, they’re all in movies or shows that are out to watch this weekend. This is a strange mix of options, I’ll admit, but hey, it’s the week before Halloween, so weird and unusual fare is on brand. On the bittersweet side, two perennial Vulture favorites — What We Do in the Shadows and Somebody Somewhere — are both back for their final seasons. Here’s the rest of the picks.
Featured Presentations
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Conclave
As its namesake suggests, this thrilling drama from Edward Berger, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel of the same name, is set around a private election to decide the next pope. Ralph Fiennes leads Conclave as Thomas Lawrence, the dean of the College of Cardinals, the select group responsible for choosing the next leader of the Catholic church. The papal conclave also includes Stanley Tucci, Sergio Castellitto, Lucian Msamati, and John Lithgow.
➼ An election that’s a thriller? I mean …
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Venom: The Last Dance
The Sony spidey movies sans Spider-Man have not been having a great run lately (see: Madame Web, Morbius). Venom: The Last Dance doesn’t quite break that spell either. Tom Hardy returns as Eddie Brock, the human host of the symbiote Venom, as the two run away from space aliens hell-bent on killing them and everyone else on Earth. You know, the standard stuff. There’s a couple of laughs here that land, and I truly didn’t even know Rhys Ifans was in this, so that was a fun surprise, but if you haven’t liked the past couple of Venom movies, The Last Dance won’t move you.
âž¼ If you can handle more Venom, the first flick is on Disney+, while the second one, Let There Be Carnage, is on Starz.
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What We Do in the Shadows season six
Turn up and pour one out for the final season of one of TV’s great comedies, destined to be underappreciated now and later celebrated as a high-water mark of actually funny TV in an era full of post-comedy sad-coms. Sure, it’s a show about goofy vampire roommates who live on Staten Island, but at its heart, it’s about all the friends they made along the way, usually before gruesomely killing them. — Kathryn VanArendonk
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Somebody Somewhere season three
One of the loveliest shows on television ends with a characteristically touching and funny final season that finds Bridget Everett’s Sam adjusting to major changes in the life of her best friend, Joel (Jeff Hiller). If you need to have your faith in humanity restored repeatedly this fall, this beautiful series will absolutely make that happen. — Jen Chaney
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Before
A psychological thriller seems to be Apple TV+’s bread and butter. This time, it’s Billy Crystal taking the reins as a child psychologist named Eli who forms a bond with a young, troubled boy (Jacobi Jupe). And of course, to amp up the mystery, this kid has some kind of connection with Eli, though you’ll have to tune in to figure out what.
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Lioness
Taylor Sheridan’s series dropped “Special Ops†from the title but maintains its grimy yellow filter. Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, and Morgan Freeman co-star in this series about how “there’s no such thing as a moral war,†which definitely sounds like the type of thing someone says before doing a war crime. — Roxana Hadadi
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Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The thing about a music doc is that it’s pretty self-explanatory. If you’re a fan of the Boss, you’ll want to check this out; if not, keep scrolling.
Genre Fare
Like a Dragon: Yakuza
An adaptation of a Sega video-game series, this yakuza story follows a former gangster who gets pulled into a conspiracy involving his friend and his clan. Expect neon lighting, elaborately choreographed action scenes, and underworld infighting in two timelines. — R.H.
Back in Theaters
Longlegs
Longlegs sang, “Let me in nowwwwww,†and movie theaters obliged. Just in time for Halloween, Osgood Perkins’s summer horror hit starring Nicolas Cage is making its way back to movie theaters, only until October 31.
Double Feature
Abigail
Another vampire comedy to satiate your thirst, Abigail didn’t make the biggest splash in theaters, but it’s still a fun riff on the horror genre nonetheless. A group of ragtag characters (Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Angus Cloud, Will Catlett, and Kevin Durand) are brought together to pull off the job of their lives: kidnap the young ballerina daughter (Alisha Weir) of a wealthy crime lord. But they quickly learn this young girl isn’t too helpless.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of October 18.