Beware of succumbing to the thought that director Ari Aster’s (“Hereditary”) “Midsommar” is in any way reminiscent of Shakespeare’s, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; a plot dredged from the macabre, desolate level of Aster’s imagination; four unsuspecting victims are lured to Sweden’s Midsummer Festival, (pre-Christian, pagan solstice celebrating life and love) by the insouciant “Pelle” (Vilhelm Blumgrer), a fellow graduate student; …

“Rose-Lynn” is a spitfire, the freest spirit you’ll meet on 2019’s screen; a Scottish lassie, with an exhilarating voice, bombastic personality, quixotic, a filter-less force, a convicted felon; she is depicted with inconceivable dexterity, by Jessie Buckley; she flies from jail to her boyfriend, than arrives at her mother’s home, “Marion” (poignantly beautiful, Julie Walters) who’s been caring for her …

Expected exuberance exsanguinated precipitously in director Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday”; a fascinating, imaginative premise: how would the composers of “yesterday” and their iconic compositions be perceived if heard, for the first time, in today’s popular milieu? Mozart, Wagner, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Jackson, Franklin; according to Boyle, their recognition would be cloned, replicated at the uniform intensity of “yesteryear”. Himesh Patel (“Jack Malik”) …

“Kabir Singh”, (Shahid Kapoor), if you are willing to sit through almost three hours of waterboarding torture, focusing on the most despicable character in 2019’s filmdom, the final fifteen minutes, partially placates the pain that preceded the finale; Kabir, a third-year medical student, dictates, threatens, with bodily harm, anyone who comes near “Preethi” (stoically dull, Kiara Advani) a first-year medical …

Director Luc Besson gifts technology and grandeur to the latest clone of his 1990 “Le Femme Nikita”; audiences have become immune to female assassins (my preferences, “Evelyn Salt” and “Lisbeth Salander”); “Anna”, (lithesome, lovely Sasha Luss,) goes through the expected walloping’s, reaching the depths of abasement, before being recruited by KGB operative “Alex Tchenkov”, (Luke Evans); she passes KGB supervisor …

Meeting “Deb” (stupendous Sienna Miller) we recognize her, barely thirty, peaked at fifteen, still flaunting all the traits that made her High School Prom Queen: vapidly blond, curvaceous, a football player’s fantasy; she has a seventeen-year-old daughter “Bridget” (Sky Ferreira), also an unwed mother, with an infant “Jesse”; Deb is a flighty, flimsy grocery cashier having an affair with a …

Emma Thompson is astronomic as “Late Night” host “Katherine Newberry”; twenty-seven years, almost as many awards, surviving in the bemouth, chauvinistic realm of male predominance; she is caustically brilliant, shreds with a sabre tongue and wit any unwanted, even if warranted, criticism; she is losing her edge, threatened with replacement, forced to hire a female writer. “Molly Patel” (Mindy Kaling, …

Roy Halston Frowich (1932-1990) dominated the Olympian fashion world in the 1970’s and early 80’s, until he didn’t; his belief in his artistry, lacked perspective, convinced of his infallibility, living and spending without impunity. Frederic Tcheng’s (“Valentino: The Last Emperor”, “Dior and I”) gauzy, glitzy documentary paints a portrait of a megalomaniac whose willowy, waif-like physique matched his models, “Halstonettes”; …

Salman Khan, long-reigning Bollywood Beauty Boy, at fifty-three, stars as “Bharat”  (referencing a legendary King), an eight-year-old boy, separated from his father and sister in 1947 during India and Pakistan’s partition; multitudes were traumatized, tortured, bifurcated by this unholy division; what could, should have been a compelling tale, is nothing more than a monumental, pneumatic, testament to Khan’s ego; covering …

Jewish legend proposes that every generation has thirty-six righteous individuals, unaware of each other and blind to their specialness, they live life beyond the norm; impossible to define their attributes, they are called Lamed Vovnicks; 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” splayed across the screen, Fred Rogers eligibility, membership in this category, now director Ron Howard, twelve years after his …