Doing a little preparation before seeing high-profile festival movies is always a good idea, but I don’t like to over-research them.

This morning I was told about a surprise plot twist in Edward Berger‘s Conclave, which we’ll all be seeing this evening at 6 pm. When I heard it, I went “oh, no.” So I went to the Wiki page that focuses on Robert Harris‘s 2016 source novel, and I read the synopsis all the way to the end. That’s all I’m going to say.

The Venice Film Festival reviews have been arriving like flying grenades…fast and furious and going boom-boom-boom. I’m already feeling like I can’t breathe. But for some reason I’ve found myself settling into reactions to Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl, which feels…I don’t know what it is, but it feels odd.

The only thing that scares me about Babygirl (A24, 12.25…a Christmas movie?) is that it’s been described as “sex positive.” Whenever I hear that term something inside me goes thud. Or do I mean plop?

I explained last May that “sex positive” gives me the creeps because “the best heteronormative sex is usually untidy and objectionable in some way — rude, hungry, raw, animalistic, runting, howling, pervy.”

From a Babygirl review by Flick Feast‘s Dallas King: “Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson have an undeniable, smouldering, palpable chemistry…but while always pushing boundaries, Babygirl never feels like it truly breaks them. Someone shouted the safe word too early!”

From Owen Gleiberman’s Venice Film Festival review:

“Babygirl is a shrewdly honest and entertaining movie about a flagrantly ‘wrong’ sadomasochistic affair. In Bodies Bodies Bodies, director Halina Reijn created a tone of overwrought satirical slasher pulp, but here she settles into a far more realistic mode, and brings it off with flair.

“Babygirl is reminiscent, at times, of Fair Play” — WHAT? — “but it’s also a tale of adultery that pushes genuine emotional buttons, the way Unfaithful did 20 years ago. And that’s rooted in the fearless performance of Kidman.

“Straddling the identities of mother, boss, defiant adulterer and trembling sexual supplicant, Nicole Kidman’s Romy, a rich CEO, is like a walking mood ring. Her performance takes off from a long-standing (hidden) reality: that people who are hooked on wielding power can have primal fantasies of being sexually submissive.

“For decades, prominent male executives have been keeping B&D sex workers in business, but in movies we haven’t seen the corporate gender tables turned in quite this way. For a while, Babygirl comes on like a less glossy 9 1/2 Weeks, as Harris Dickinson’s Samuel breaks down Romy’s defenses, notably in a scene where people from the office are having cocktails after work and he sends her over a drink…of milk. He’s saying, ‘You’re my baby girl.’ And when she drinks it down, she’s saying, ‘Yes I am.'”

…would be fascinating, jolting and almost certainly astonishing. Imagine a Lego recreation of the 9/11 attacks from every perspective…a Lego recreation of the horrors of Dachau, Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen…a Lego recreation of the 1969 Manson family murder spree or the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga.

But a Lego version of the musical life and career of Pharell (pronounced phar-ELL) Williams? Later, bruh. Much later.

Morgan Neville‘s Piece by Piece will screen tonight and tomorrow at the Telluride Film Festival (I heard last night it’ll be shown at this afternoon’s secret patron’s screening at the Herzog), and I am telling you here and now that I will not sit through a Lego movie at this festival….I won’t! Unless, as noted, it’s about some horrible, ghastly tragedy. Then I’m wide open.

I didn’t have a chance to watch the Harris-Walz-Bash discussion in Savannah until this morning. She handled herself pretty well. Well-planted, self-assured. Looked and sounded like a person of some force and gravitas. Dignity, maturity, unruffled.

Heartfelt oogah-moogah to Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling for once again inviting me to his annual La Marmotte birthday dinner.

As per custom a splendid, flush time was had by all — Deadline’s Pete Hammond and enterprising, job-whispering wife Madelyn Hammond, IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, hotshot Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg (a late arrival), Netflix award-season maestro Lisa Taback (an end-of-the-night joiner), Netflix talent relations and award season strategist Kelly Dalton, Miramax vp publicity Julie Fontaine, and Daniel Launspach.

These photos feature Roger + myself, and Roger and Lisa.

HE to Durling: “Thanks once again, o my brutha, for your profound generosity & kindness. You’ve always invited me to your Telluride birthday gatherings because we’re palsie-walsies but also because a seat at your table is a roundabout statement of support or at least respect for who I am industry-wise, my column and my opinions. And in fraught, turbulent times, this means a lot.”

I’m always been reluctant to pose for any photo hence my initial squeamishness when Madelyn suggested a shot, but it turned out okay or good enough. The Lisa-Roger photo is perfect.