This isn’t a review. You’re not supposed to review anything until right before it opens. (That’s what they’re doing with “House of Gucci” because it’s a mess.)

Anyway, last night Aaron Sorkin unveiled his “Being the Ricardos” in New York with Nicole Kidman, Nina Arianda, and JK Simmons. Co-star Javier Bardem was not in town. “Being the Ricardos” is an Amazon Studios movie, their only real entry in this year’s Oscar race. They should have no trouble getting everyone their nominations.

“BTR” is all about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, how they met, became TV titans. It’s no secret that this is not an episode of “I Love Lucy.” Instead, the clever screenplay addresses the making of one episode of the famed, immortal sitcom, in its second season, and everything around it. I’m not allowed to get into details yet. But suffice to say it’s a hit depending on what Amazon does with it.

The screening, which was sort of the New York premiere, was at a strange venue, Village Cinemas on Second Avenue. This is an old, drafty theater where the sound is boomy the further away you were seated. The oleaginous Cinema Society PR firm (not a society, just two people) decided it was best to put the critics in the very last row of the balcony, maybe as a challenge. The people sitting up front were kind of hasbeen models, people not in the motion picture Academy, and a miscellaneous hangers on. A number of people came and went past me in the balcony until 20 minutes into the film.

There was a Q&A after the film, which was hard to see because of the way the theater was pitched. (The last time I went there was to see “The Hateful Eight.”) But the cast is revved up. Nicole Kidman said the strangest thing was being in costume and character as Lucille Ball and talking to Lucie Arnaz, Lucy’s daughter, on set. Kidman so absorbs Lucille Ball, it will blow everyone’s minds.

The after party was at hotel that I’ve never heard of, called the Moxy, on East 11th St. There were no celebs. The stars of the movie came and went quickly. They figured it out fast. I had a nice chat with Nicole Kidman, who was masked and worried about being in a crowd. She’s had a banner year, what with “The Undoing” and “Nine Perfect Strangers” on TV. She will have an Oscar nod for “BTR.” Wait til we can talk about it more.

Stay tuned…

We thought Netflix was just not nice to the press. Turns out fans who signed for up tickets are treated just as badly at their events.

Many fans who acquired tickets through the company 1iota to the premiere of Netflix’s “Tick Tick Boom” are pretty angry and disappointed.

Writing on Twitter, they say well over 100 fans who had tickets to the premiere at the Schoenfeld Theater were turned away after being held on line for over two hours.

One fan, writing under the Twiiter account @rachrach, recalled:

Mel Gibson says he’s directing “Lethal Weapon 5.” Oh yeah?

Gibson says as reported in the Hollywood Reporter that he will direct, and that Richard Wenk, who wrote “The Equalizer,” came up with the script.

Danny Glover has represented himself as a principled person his whole career. I’ll be curious to see if he’ll be part of a movie made by a avowed Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite, and racist. Now we’ll see if Hollywood really is all about the money.

Lauren Shuler Donner is producing because her late, beloved husband, Richard Donner, has the rights to the series. Even though Donner was Jewish, he continued to stand behind Gibson despite heavy criticism. Gibson says before Donner died he told him he was working on a screenplay. Great. Hire some other actors, please. No self-respecting person is going to see Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon 5.”

There’s no word in the THR story if Warner Bros. is attached to this very bad idea. They released the other ones and must have the rights also. I can’t see Toby Emmerich or anyone else there supporting this plan. It will, as my friend DA Pennebaker used to say, end in tears.

Paul Thomas Anderson is our Robert Altmanesque auteur, beloved for “Boogie Nights” and movies I’ve really enjoyed like “Magnolia,” “The Master” and “Phantom Thread.” For me, his creme de la creme is “There Will Be Blood,” which gets better on every viewing.

For “Licorice Pizza,” PTA, as he is known, gets sentimental for an era he didn’t live through, the early 70s. He was only born in 1970, but certainly has an affection for it that is palpable. He’s modeled “Licorice Pizza” on a good combo: “American Graffiti,” “Almost Famous,” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” You can’t do better.

His stars are an unlikely couple. Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a PTA regular, is outstanding as 16 year old precocious hustler and sometime child actor Gary. Alana Haim (pronounced Hay-yim) is the 25 year old girl (they were girls then) Gary has a crush on also named Alana. They each give the breakthrough performances of the year. Despite the age difference, Gary (who is modeled on real life Tom Hanks producer Gary Goetzman) and Alanna (from her sisters’ rock group), have an undeniable sweetness that cements quickly and carries the film through some rough waters later.

There is no actual reason the movie is called Licorice Pizza. The title comes from a record store chain in Southern California that existed in the 70s and early 80s. No one in the move refers to it or mentions it, there isn’t even a background shot of the storefront. PTA just liked the words.

But there are other stores, one for waterbeds, and a pinball arcade. They are 16 year old Gary’s businesses that he implausibly creates instead of going to school. How does he do it? Like a 45 year old used car salesman on the make, which is to Cooper Hoffman’s credit that he pulls it off. He’s like the kind of kid who sells elevator passes to high school freshman in a one level building. He’s a sweet talker, and all he really wants is Alana.

Haim is a marvel. It’s her first acting job, and she’s a pro. She’s everything PTA wanted out of Katherine Waterston in “Inherent Vice” but didn’t get. Haim reveals herself slowly as the star of this movie, proudly and without fuss. She reminded me of a number of Robert Altman’s “natural” finds, who just meld into the film. Think Shelley Duval, or Geraldine Chaplin. Every critics group will be lining up to do something for her.

PTA, like Quentin Tarantino before him, is nostalgic for this period in L.A. history as it revolved around Hollywood. So Gary and Alana get involved with some real or real-like people. Bradley Cooper plays hairstylist Jon Peters, boyfriend of Barbra Streisand and not yet a film producer. Cooper is over the top and fun. The whole episode is imagined by PTA but a not so ridiculous scenario as “Peters” awaits installation of a waterbed from Gary, Alana, and their Little Rascals game of helpers.

Alana is courted by an older actor named Jack Holden, inspired by William Holden, with a spoonful of Even Knievel, and played with some nice subtlety by Sean Penn. It’s another digression, but it gives Alana a chance to wander into the adult world away from Gary’s fantasy of adulthood. Are the two that different, PTA is saying? Holden brings with him into this fantasy a self-possessed action director of note called Rex Blau, who might be a stand in for Sams Peckinpah or Fuller. Whatever he is, he’s played by gravel voiced singer Tom Waits, who almost steals the movie during his sequence.

“Licorice Pizza” is long, of course, and often repetitive. There are lots of characters– a la Altman — who you need a scorecard for. There are some leaps to make, but if you’re invested in Gary and Alana you’ll make them just to see how this will all turn out. The film is not as coherently focused as “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” It’s more like lying down on a the waterbeds Gary sells: it leaks sometimes but it has unexpected thrills. One of those, PS, is a running gag of Harriet Sansom Harris as Gary’s agent. You could almost imagine her ordering a real licorice pizza.