“Nicole Kidman has enchanted audiences for decades with the daring of her artistry and the glamour of a screen icon,” said Kathleen Kennedy, chair of the AFI Board of Trustees, in a statement. “She is a force both brave in her choices and bold in each performance. AFI is honored to present her with the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award.” Kidman is a five-time Oscar nominee and winner for Best Actress for 2002’s “The Hours,” in which she gave a powerhouse performance as Virginia Woolf....

MGM and United Artists’ installment of the franchise has been among the most notable victims of the pandemic’s tentpole-calendar shuffle. It was originally slated to open worldwide in April 2020, then pushed to two different November 2020 dates, and most recently was set to hit theaters on April 2, 2021. Though there’s still less than three months to go before that previously scheduled Easter Weekend release, it remains uncertain when theatrical exhibition will return in full force, though industry sources hope normal stateside releases might return by May....

Crazy fan theories and wild trailer breakdowns aside, filmmaker Jordan Peele has been remarkably open about what his third film, “Nope,” is really about — from the actual UFO-centric plot to its underpinnings as a movie that’s also about moviemaking — even if that doesn’t seem to have so far satiated clue-obsessed moviegoers. “People are always trying to get me to spill secrets on the thing, and I’m like, ‘I can’t really tell you anything’ and also, ‘I don’t even know how to tell you what this movie is,’” star Keke Palmer told IndieWire....

“People exploded. We were now in this powder-keg moment,” King recalled during an online panel at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday. “The producers on the film, we all talked, and we were like ‘We’ve got to figure out a way to get this out now.’” Based on a play of the same name by Kemp Powers — who also wrote the screenplay — the dialogue-driven film unfolds largely over a fictionalized night in which real-life friends Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X( Kingsley Ben-Adir), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) celebrate Clay’s surprise title win over Sonny Liston, before Clay took the name Muhammad Ali....

The bifurcated structure and disregard for biopic conventions are welcome approaches, especially for a provocative stylist like Ferrara, but “Padre Pio” can’t generate interest in either narrative, both of which are marred by uneven performances and vague, slapdash writing. Ferrara can still create compelling images and pull together an impressive sequence, like the lengthy introduction of soldiers returning home to the town of San Giovanni Rotondo from World War I, which has a woozy, tragic immediacy....

Last year, Jenkins herself discussed almost quitting the franchise over not being paid what she was worth. “I totally did [come close to walking away],” Jenkins said. “I started to walk away. I was going to walk away. I even said, ‘I would be happy to go to another studio and make a quarter as much because it’s not a sequel on principle. No problem.” Jenkins called it “uncomfortable” when news originally leaked about behind-the-scenes tensions with Warner Bros....

The story begins when Anderson told the band they should all get together and film a music video for “Summer Girl,” but the problem was the song was not finished yet. As band member Este Haim said, “We were like to Paul, ‘Wait, pump the breaks. We haven’t even finished the song.’ But he was like, ‘Who gives a shit. Let’s do a video for it.’ When Paul Thomas Anderson says, ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high?...