Hollywood

A documentary, that even if her novels escaped your literary library, must be seen and applauded. Poignantly, and with refined grace, director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, gifts viewers a portrait of eminence, defying conventions, stereotypes, “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” is saturated with a presence so dazzling, compelling, that if she hadn’t written a word, her personality alone would captivate your …

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”) …

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”; …

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 …

Taron Egerton gives an orbital performance as “Rocketman”, Elton John/Reginald Kenneth Dwight; throughout the film, bloated with schtick, gaudy displays of wealth, “sex, drugs, rock and roll” Egerton brilliantly, presciently maintains the aura of a wounded, pristinely fragile, insecure, unloved, little boy. Commencing  when John voluntarily enters a rehabilitation facility, and through a series of insightful flashbacks we visit and …