World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is projecting a few titles for the 2022 Venice Film Festival — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Bardo, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin and Paul Schrader’s The Master Gardener.

HE’s heart goes out to poor Bruce Willis, 67, who’s been forced to retire from acting due to aphasia, a degenerative brain ailment that results in a growing inability to remember lines.

We all understand that getting older and coping with the failure of this or that vital organ can be a heartless process, but this is sadistic. In a perfect world Willis would be able to keep making “Bruce Willis movies” at least another dozen years, and then he could shift into odd character parts in his late 70s and 80s.

Now we understand why Willis made so many shitty direct-to-video movies (between 20 and 25) over the last five years. I’m very, very sorry for this extraordinary stroke of bad luck.

“Unacceptable and harmful behavior” that we need to mull over and reflect upon for…uhm, three or four weeks. Or maybe five. Or six. We will not be rushed.

Joseph Kosinski, Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer‘s Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount, 5.27) opens two months hence, and will have its first big screening in Cannes on Wednesday, 5.18. I have nothing more to say.

So that’s a firm ixnay on Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths) debuting in Cannes a few weeks hence. Look for the premiere, instead, at Venice and Telluride. The Spanish-language comedy stars Daniel Giménez Cacho as a Mexican journalist; Griselda Siciliani costars.

I’m aware that Zero Fucks Given was the title of a Kevin Hart/Netflix concert film, but it’s still a great title for a French narrative drama about an airline stewardess (Adele Exarchopoulos) living an arid, moment-to-moment, divorced-from-deep-feeling life. The French title is Rien à foutre. I’ll be watching it this evening. Co-directed and partially co-written by Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre; Mariette Desert shares the co-wriing credit.

Here’s a 7.13.21 Hollywood Reporter review by Jordan Mintzer.

Bill Maher’s TMZ interview about the Will Smith-Chris Rock thing is worth it for the Jackie Kennedy analogy. 48 hours after her husband’s head exploded during a Dallas motorcade, the former First Lady showed class and grace during the funeral observances. 1.5 seconds after he was slapped upside the head by Will Smith, Chris Rock showed class and grace by keeping his cool and basically saying “okay, that happened, amazing television, let’s move on.”

Russia’s deputy defense minister says Moscow has decided to “fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernigiv” in order to “increase mutual trust for future negotiations to agree and sign a peace deal with Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/2qDYOzAzDp

— max seddon (@maxseddon) March 29, 2022