By Alexander Payne

Recently I was watching a lot of artsy, farcical stuff when I saw Conclave – yes, projected – and within the first five minutes I thought, oh good, a movie. A real, old-fashioned film like grandma used to make. Also noble. We can’t get enough of it anymore, and when we do, I’m excited.

Sure, I really admired “All Quiet in the West,” even if there weren’t exactly many laughs. But it was also a good film, and it made me think: Who is this Edward Berger?

How does he know how to do all this fancy stuff and also cast so many great actors and direct them so well? I occasionally make films myself, but I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to blow people up, or the courage to ask the art department to dig all those trenches and make all those big puddles.

Then he makes “Conclave,” using the same imagination and meticulousness he put into the great war film and concentrating it like a surgeon into a self-contained story about the intrigue and behind-the-scenes planning when a pope dies. You just can’t believe how captivating it is – funny and exciting and so well cast and well acted. Berger has the wondrous quality of making something that you never forget is a film, but at the same time it’s like you’re actually there.

They are very different films, but they have a unifying theme. Both are about exposing powerful institutions and exposing the massive egos that call the shots for the masses – egos that are alternately noble and ignoble, usually the latter.

What a joy that Edward Berger walks among us. I miss the films we used to have – human dramas and comedies with healthy budgets, great movie stars and visual scope, films like we used to get from Pollack, Forman, Minghella and Pakula – you know, good films.

If this Berger mug plays its cards right, it’s well on its way to being right next to them.

Director Alexander Payne has made eight feature films, including “Election,” “Sideways,” “The Descendants,” “About Schmidt,” “Nebraska” and “The Holdovers,” and has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, including two awards for the Adaptation screenplay.