“Some of our greatest cinema challenges us to really confront our own hearts in the safety of that darkened theatre. That’s part of the purpose of filmmaking.” — quote from David Fincher and David Prior‘s Voir (Netflix, 12.6).

This trailer is an excellent exercise in movie impressionism. Congrats to Sasha Stone for managing to be a part of this thing, and for telling her Jaws story in a compelling way.

2021 Reality Check: Movies stopped challenging or even slipping into the hearts of filmgoers with any regularity a long time ago. The only current movies that even flirt with this aesthetic are King Richard, Cyrano, Pig, A Hero and one or two others. Voir is therefore a nostalgia flick to a certain extent. The dual purpose of 90% to 95% of movies is to (a) repeat and reenforce woke narratives and (b) enhance corporate revenue.

Voir is having its big AFI Fest on Saturday evening. I’m hoping to snag a Netflix press screener before long.

In Aaron Sorkin‘s Hollywood Reporter interview about Being The Ricardos, he says he told Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem that he was “not looking for a physical or vocal impersonation” of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Okay, fine — Sorkin’s creation, the director says what goes.

But try to imagine Sorkin directing a drama about the Kennedy White House, and he’s cast, say, Ben Affleck as JFK and Ben starts working on his JFK accent and Sorkin says “Naahh, that’s okay, Ben…you don’t have to do that…just use your own natural voice.”

Or if Sorkin was directing a movie about Abraham Lincoln‘s final days and he cast Ben Stiller as Lincoln, and as Ben was working on his down-home, high-pitched Illinois accent Sorkin said, “Naaahh, that’s okay, Ben…just use your own voice…just talk like you did as the night watchman in the Night at the Museum movies.”

I was very sorry to learn earlier today that former Herald Examiner film critic, screenwriter and all-around film devotee and popcorn genre fan David Chute, the ex-husband of IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson, passed on Monday, 11.8.

Here are Anne’s feelings, thoughts, recollections.

Anne and David married in ’83, divorced in ’97. They were/are the parents of Nora Thompson Chute, who was born in late ’89, her birthday being very close to Dylan’s.

Anne reports that Chute, 71, had moved back to Los Angeles four months ago after caring for his Maine-residing father for eight years, and that he succumbed only three weeks after being diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer.

Back in ’89 and ’90, when Jett was 18 months or so and Dylan had just come along, my ex-wife Maggie and I visited Anne and David’s home on Hobart Street for dinners and whatnot.

At the time David was transitioning out of film criticism (calling himself a “recovering” veteran of that trade) and giving screenwriting a go. He was a big fan of Asian cinema, John Woo, George Romero, John Waters, that line of country.

I can’t say that David and I kept in touch or anything. We were never more than friendly acquaintances but I’d always respected his writing enormously, and had been a follower of his reviews and essays going back to the mid to late ’70s, starting with his work for the Boston Phoenix and Film Comment. When he was on his game and in his element and manning the controls, David was a hip heavyweight scholar — his name and signature really meant something. Plus he was funny, and he had a great-sounding voice — mature, settled, a bit of a Maine twang.

I’m very, very sorry.

All along I’ve been fretting that even with the “work” she’s had done, Nicole Kidman (who turned 54 last June) will look too old to play Lucille Ball in her early 40s. But the Being The Ricardos trailer that popped earlier today alleviates all such concerns.

I don’t know how it was done (not through prosthetics, I’m told) but Kidman looks much younger here. Like she did in Eyes Wide Shut, I’d say. My first presumption is that the same kind of digital finessing that de-aged Robert De Niro in The Irishman was used here. That or Kidman has had some fresh work done, and of a very high order.

Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos happens over a dramatically compressed one-week period in the early ’50s that actually spanned four years — the launch of I Love Lucy in 51, the “Lucy once registered as a Commie” thing in ’53, the January ’55 Confidential cover story that asked “Does Desi Really Love Lucy?,” etc.

In 2011, after serving half of her 26-year sentence for conspiring to murder her husband Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) was given a chance to get out of prison if she would submit to a work-release program. According to La Stampa, Reggiani said “I’ve never worked in my life, [and] I’m certainly not going to start now.”

C’mon, that’s a great, self-defining line! Easily as good as “no wire hangers!” or “don’t fuck with me, fellas!” or “Christina, get the axe!” But unless I was snoozing and somehow missed it, Gaga never says this line in House of Gucci and the quote doesn’t appear in an epilogue crawl. What does that tell you about where Ridley Scott‘s film is coming from? I’ll tell you where it’s coming from. It’s trying to cut Patrizia a break.

Reggiani was paroled in 2016.

Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci (UA Releasing, 11.24) is a cool, muted, decently made docudrama about how the Gucci family business gradually went downhill in the ’80s and ’90s, and how the 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver) by killers hired by Maurizo’s ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), seemed to signify this decline.

The problem for me was one of expectation. Goaded by the trailers and that Patrizia Reggiani-slash-Lady Gaga money quote — “I don’t consider myself to be a particularly ethical person, but I am fair” — I was expecting Gaga to deliver a ruthless, high-camp, carniverous dragonlady — a new version of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.

Alas, despite what Team Variety and the fawning Twitter whores are saying, that’s not what this movie is. It’s not out to make Reggiani some kind of fang-toothed pit viper. It’s actually about trying to portray her in a half-sympathetic light. And so House of Gucci is basically about how an admittedly ambitious woman reacts when she’s scorned and bruised and cast aside.

@ladygaga makes her entrance in @gucci. Matriarchs are born, not made.👑 #HouseofGucci pic.twitter.com/hlJMpTiX6O

— House of Gucci (@HouseOfGucciMov) November 9, 2021

After 28 years with NBC and at 61 years of age, MSNBC’s Brian Williams could keep going for at least another 15 years, and yet the New Canaan, Connecticut resident has announced that he’s stepping down “to spend more time with [his] family.”

I don’t know what’s really going on here. The wealthy Williams is certainly entitled to do whatever the hell he wants. But since John Mitchell announced in July 1972 that he was resigning as Attorney General to spend more time with the family, that excuse has been universally derided as complete bullshit.

Williams knows that, of course. So using the words “spend more time with family” forces us to interpret it as a kind of code message. Williams is obviously telling us that the real reason is something else. I hope it’s not health-related.