“Mank” marks a passion project for Fincher, who has been working on the project since before he made his feature directing debut with “Alien 3” in 1992. Fincher’s father, journalist Jack Fincher, is the credited screenwriter of “Mank,” although Fincher and Eric Roth spent time reworking Jack’s original script over the years. The film stars Oldman as Oscar winner Herman J. Mankiewicz and follows the Hollywood screenwriter as he attempts to get the “Citizen Kane” script finished....

“Lockdown happened,” said Cousins on Zoom from his home office in Edinburgh just before the festival. “A lot of us had more thinking time and creative time. So I made three films.” His portrait of radical British producer, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas,” will play in Cannes Classics. The third is a personal documentary based on his 2018 history of the visual world, “The Story of Looking,” and the impact of his own cataract operation....

This clip, excerpted from early in the film, shows the kind of somnambulant atmosphere Hou conjures. Moments of wordless visual poetry — from this scene to how Hou shoots neon-glimmering club scenes or under-cranks in slow motion a shot of a woman leaning out a sunroof of a car barreling through a tunnel — are punctured by the bitter exchanges between Vicky (Shu Qi) and her boyfriends. There’s the DJ Hao-hao (Tuan Chun-hao) and the gangster Jack (Kao Jack), both of whom cause Vicky trouble....

Denzel Washington stars as dedicated trumpeter Bleek Gilliam, whose emotional immaturity eventually gets him into career-ending trouble. Gilliam headlines a jazz quintet at a popular New York City club. The band is thriving, and Gilliam has his choice of lovers. Problems arise when he is forced to make decisions concerning his best friend and manager Giant (Spike Lee), and his affairs with two women, schoolteacher Indigo (Joie Lee) and aspiring singer Clarke (Cynda Williams)....

“The Neon Demon” set up Laws as a horror director, but she didn’t want to thermatically repeat herself. “I wasn’t really interested in anything that was like the slasher, blood and guts kind of horror,” she told IndieWire. Laws wanted to investigate character, and that’s when she discovered Nathan Ballingrud’s book “North American Lake Monsters: Stories.” Found within Ballingrud’s book were elements that spoke not just to Laws but nearly everyone associated with the production, especially where it concerns women and minorities....

While “Grease” remained her most notable role, Newton-John continued to parlay her strong musical stage presence into a variety of other film parts. She notably starred in the Electric Light Orchestra musical “Xanadu,” which gave her two more radio hits with “Magic” and the title track. She also re-teamed with Travolta on John Herzfeld’s 1983 film “Two of a Kind,” which also led to her recording the hit song “Heart Attack....

Seeking their first Oscar acting mentions: Critics Choice and BAFTA nominees Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons both landed nominations for their roles in Jane Campion’s festival hit “The Power of the Dog” (Netflix). Smit-McPhee plays Peter, an enigmatic medical student who joins his mother Rose (nominee Kirsten Dunst) and her new husband George (Plemons) on a remote Montana cattle ranch. Out of his element on the range, Peter is happy for the couple’s newfound happiness, until George’s surly brother Phil (nominee Benedict Cumberbatch), a loudmouth bully, seeks to undermine his new family at every turn....