I was told a couple of days ago by an astute, always-perceptive friend that Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight was trim, rigrorous and quite satisfying (“Definitely in the vein of All The President’s Men,” he said) so I was ready and waiting for the raves from Venice Film Festival. Sure enough, Variety‘s Justin Chang weighed in with one

“It’s not often that a director manages to follow his worst film with his best,” Chang begins, “but even if he weren’t rebounding from The Cobbler, Tom McCarthy would have a considerable achievement on his hands with Spotlight, a superbly controlled and engrossingly detailed account of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the widespread pedophilia scandals and subsequent cover-ups within the Catholic Church.

“Very much in the All the President’s Men/Zodiac mold of slow-building, quietly gripping journalistic procedurals, this measured and meticulous ensemble drama sifts through a daunting pile of evidence to expose not just the Church’s horrific cycles of abuse and concealment, but also its uniquely privileged position in a society that failed its victims at myriad personal, spiritual and institutional levels.

In a pre-Telluride, non-mp3-supplemented discussion of award-season intrigues, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Stephen Galloway conclude with an ill-considered remark:

Galloway: “The problem isn’t an excess of festivals; it’s that so many follow each other in a crunch — Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York. All the serious-minded movies come tumbling out in the fall, then the rest of the year it’s comic-book pictures. Which is exactly why I’m dying to see a good film now. I’ve wandered through the summer desert and I’m parched. Other than Straight Outta Compton, I can’t think of any recent film I fell in love with and believe should get a best picture nomination.”

HE to Galloway: There was this little film that opened three and a half months ago called Mad Max: Fury Road. (May is relatively “recent,” right?) The most awesomely composed action spectacle in a dog’s age. A masterwork from the great George Miller. Ten days ago Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan insisted that Fury Road was the year’s best film so far. Maybe you need to watch it again?

Cate Blanchett is reportedly attached to play Lucille Ball in an “authorized” biopic that Aaron Sorkin will write. But what’s the big story hook? There are two threads but neither strike me as hugely interesting. One, Ball went from being a modestly successful actress in the ’30s and ’40s into a phenomenally popular TV legend and producer in the ’50s and early ’60s (and to some extent into the late ’60s and early ’70s). It’s historically noteworthy for a woman to have become a small-screen superstar and super-mogul during the stodgy Eisenhower era, but it doesn’t sound particularly grabby as a narrative. And two, Desi Arnaz, her husband and showbiz producing partner of 20 years, was a drinker who cheated on her, but a marriage poisoned by infidelity is not exactly knockout material in and of itself.

Lucille Ball in her dishy phase, probably taken sometime in the early ’40s. The truth? She smoked and drank a lot (you could hear it in that voice that could cut through iron), and she didn’t age all that well. But she didn’t need to when I Love Lucy exploded. She was beyond huge in the ’50s.

The most interesting aspect of the film, if it happens (and you never know how these things will go), will be Blanchett’s performance. She’ll have to somehow channel that deep whiskey-and-cigarette voice that Lucy developed as she got older. Ball was a gifted comedienne who was known throughout the industry as a kind, compassionate straight arrow who cared about her friends. But I honestly don’t see a movie here if the film is going to focus on the ’50s success years. Becoming super successful and then being cheated on does not a good story make. The world is full of people who drink and cat around…so what?

With Reginald Hudlin and some nondescript white guy named David Hill (kidding) co-producing the 88th Oscar ceremony (airing on 2.28.16) and expectations of diversity being kicked around far and wide, the general suspicion is that Kevin Hart might be offered the hosting gig. Scott Feinberg wrote yesterday that he has “a strong suspicion that Hudlin and Hill will tap Kevin Hart for the job — the comedian has said it is his dream to host, promising to ‘turn that event into a youthful night,’ and I think he would be a brilliant choice who would explode the show’s ratings.” Apart from the constant-microphone-adjustment factor (Hart is 5’4″) and the fact that his stand-up material in Let Me Explain never struck me as even vaguely funny, this sounds like a reasonably decent idea. A punch-up. Something else. Unless he bombs like Chris Rock.

Whatever Hitfix was before or seems to be now, the owners want more. They don’t want to be a fanboy site — that’s too “niche.” They want to be big…big like Buzzfeed…big big BIG! And that meant dumping anyone who was clinging to any kind of attitude about Hitfix being a hip insider site for film lovers and award-season assessors. And so three months ago Variety‘s Kris Tapley bailed on/was cut loose from Hitfix because, as I’d been told and subsequently expressed, his In Contention column was seen by Hitfix honchos as “too hip and upscale to appeal to the knuckle-draggers they’re now looking to focus on.” And then Dan Fienberg and Katie Hasty left. And now Hitfix co-founder Gregory Ellwood, who accepted a demotion to roving junketeer and interviewer a while back, has also jumped ship.

Four or five hours ago Ellwood posted the following on Facebook: “Obviously nothing lasts forever, and HitFix is currently going in a different direction. It’s not a bad path, just not the one I would have chosen. [So] after millions of visitors, thousands of stories and cropping way too many photos in photoshop for someone with the title of Editor-in-Chief, I’m officially leaving HitFix. Yes, as they say on my favorite reality TV ‘competition’ show it’s time to sashay away. I’ll no longer be ‘Mr. HitFix.'”

Variety‘s Justin Chang and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy have reviewed Cary Fukanaga‘s Beasts of No Nation, which screened today at the Venice Film Festival. Both critics agree that it’s riveting to sit through — a beautifully captured if somewhat traumatizing portrait of a child’s experience of guerilla warfare in Africa, and is therefore no one’s idea of an easy sit or an engaging exotic adventure, much less a date movie. But Idris Elba might have a shot at acting honors, although McCarthy and Chang don’t mention a possible category. I’ve been told that Elba’s role is more of supporting than lead, but what do I know?

Chang calls Beasts an “artful, accomplished but not entirely sustained adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 debut novel, never quite finding an ideal cinematic equivalent for the singular spareness and ferocity of the author’s prose. By turns lucid and a bit logy, and undeniably overlong, it’s nevertheless the rare American movie to enter a distant land and emerge with a sense of lived-in human experience rather than a well-meaning Third World postcard.”

McCarthy notes that while Fukanaga’s two previous features “also dealt with brutalizing rites of passage suffered by young people — Central Americans making their way through Mexico to the U.S. border in Sin Nombre, a 19th century English orphan girl’s harsh life in Jane Eyre — Beasts rates as the most disturbing of the three because of the way the pre-pubescent boy at its center is forced to become a ruthless killer.”

“Partisan (Well Go, 10.2) points to nothing more than a man with a vengeful grievance against the world and an ill-defined messiah complex, using his powers of persuasion over the weak and impressionable to recruit a personal army. Why, is anyone’s guess. Cassel’s measured performance keeps the malevolence mostly under the surface. But Gregori is just not an intriguing enough central character to make this extended exercise in dour artiness more than mildly effective.

A 9.2 N.Y. Times story by Ken Belson presents a fairly clear case that Peter Landesman‘s Concussion (Sony, 12.25) isn’t quite the blistering, truth-telling whistleblower drama presented in the just-released trailer.

The forthcoming film dramatizes the true-life saga of Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith), the forensic pathologist who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE — a then-new disease affecting football players — back in ’02, and how the NFL made his life hell as a result. Belson’s story, which relies on Sony hack e-mails, indicates that Sony execs felt it would be less troublesome from an N.F.L. standpoint to sand off some of the film’s edges.

The title of Belson’s piece, “Sony Altered ‘Concussion’ Film to Prevent N.F.L. Protests, Emails Show,” says it neatly.

Concussion doesn’t open for another four months but whatever the final impressions may be, the film has definitely taken a hit in terms of its integrity. However fair or unfair, perceptions are everything. I don’t know if anyone was thinking all that strongly about Concussion as a 2015 Best Picture contender, but anyone who had thoughts along those lines is probably re-assessing them to some extent.

Already a couple of Everest critics are complaining that despite its technical triumphs, Baltasar Kormakur’s film doesn’t deliver enough emotion. Screen Daily‘s Tim Grierson, for one, has written that it’s “oddly uninvolving — it depicts a horrific scenario in an underwhelming, distancing way.” I don’t know what Grierson is on. I was completely caught up in Everest‘s agonizingly gradual death spiral, espeically during the second half. Ten seconds after I read this I sent myself a link to Grierson’s review along with the words “what planet?”

Everest gang early today at 2015 Venice Film Festival: (l. to r.) John Hawkes, Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Emily Watson, Baltasar Kormakur, Jake Gyllenhaal.

Here’s a more eloquent and (if you ask me) perceptive opinion from Variety‘s Justin Chang:

“This is a movie not about a few human beings who tried to conquer a mountain, but rather a mountain that took no notice of the human beings in its midst. Kormakur doesn’t make the mistake of exalting his subjects as extraordinary individuals, or suggesting that they were obeying some sort of noble higher calling. Everest is blunt, businesslike and — as it begins its long march through the death zone — something of an achievement. The specifics don’t get any clearer, but editor Mick Audsley’s cross-cutting among the different climbing factions creates its own propulsive logic. We get to know the characters not just by their appearances and personalities, but by their different positions on the mountain, where many of them find themselves trapped as a freak storm sets in.

I’ve hiked in the Swiss Alps but I’ve never climbed a rocky mountain. Hell, I’ll probably never even visit Nepal much less get close to Mount Everest. (I’m more of a warm weather/balmy climes type of guy.) But after seeing Baltasar Kormakur‘s Everest (Universal, 9.25) I really and truly feel like I’ve done it all — flown into Kathmandu, climbed the foothills, stayed in the base camps, climbed the damn mountain, run out of oxygen, gotten hit by a rogue blizzard and nearly died. And in 3D with actors I know and like dying around me. But I made it down and recovered and got up and walked into the theatre lobby and hit the bathroom with 12 other guys and thought to myself, “Wow, it’s nice to be alive in a warm sophisticated city with all the amenities. But I’m also glad I just went through hell just now…a blind, howling, frostbitten hell at 29,000 feet.”

It’s a helluva thing, this film, because it doesn’t cheat or exaggerate or use CG that you can spot very easily, and because it puts you right into the grim horror of what happened to eight climbers trying to ascend Everest on May 10th and 11th of 1996. Climbers who were eaten by a mountain that does not suffer fools and doesn’t give a damn about anyone or anything. A mountain that looks at climbers making their way up and says, “You guys think you’re tough and ballsy and maybe you are, but you’d better get used to the possibility of a slow painful death and never seeing your loved ones or pets again. Because I will fuck you like a pig if I get into one of my moods.

“I’ve killed more than 250 climbers since the early 20s, and don’t presume you’re not on the list, pal. I can kill anyone, including experienced climbers. Because if you’re fool enough to climb this high and under these conditions, it’s actually pretty easy.”

Everest is realism at its most immersive and forbidding (the 3D is so good you don’t even notice it after a while), and a very strong docudrama with several actor-characters you get to know and like and care about, and edited with exactly the right amount of discipline (there’s no padding or deadweight) and clarity and feeling. It delivers real sadness but it doesn’t squeeze it out because it doesn’t need to. It just lets the facts wrap themselves around you.

Earth vs. aliens fed through a YA blender, or rather based on a series of Rick Yancey-authored YA novels. Chloe Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Alex Roe, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Maika Monroe and Tony Revolori. Directed by J (i.e., no period) Blakeson with a script by Susannah Grant, and produced by Graham King. The 5th Wave will open on 1.15.16…of course!

Eight months ago I was told that Josh Gad was “more or less on-board” (i.e., not contractually but emotionally and intentionally) to play Roger Ebert in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, a fact-based comedy about the making of Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. Today The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit reported that Gad’s people and the Russ & Roger guys have finally “closed the deal.” Terrific, guys — it only took two-thirds of a year!

I still maintain that Jonah Hill, who knows from erudite and whipsmart and intellectual confidence, would have been a much better choice to play the late critic.