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Can you feel the love tonight? I mostly felt a fondness for vividly rendered African landscapes mixed with a teaspoon of nostalgia. Simba the lion is back in this live-action remake of the 1994 smash animated Disney film about growing up, death, destiny, and avenging your family.

First of all, let me just say I saw the latest Marvel superhero movie Spiderman: Far From Home. It was fun, but the formula is getting painfully familiar and predictable. Thankfully, I watched another film this week: The Guilty which offers a story that is absorbing, inventive, and unpredictable.

Up and coming director Ari Aster did a somewhat satisfactory job with his first full-length film, Hereditary, from 2018. So his second film Midsommar had promise to be a more succinct and less jumbled horror film about grief, family skeletons, and desperate measures. But instead of getting a delicious compact slice of cake, Midsommar turned out to be a 3-day-old, half-eaten Twinkie plucked out of the garbage and served on a scrap of cardboard.

After an unexplained blackout sweeps the entire planet for 12 seconds, a belabored singer/songwriter in England (an awkward but relaxed Himesh Patel, Eastenders, 2007-2016) slowly discovers he's the only person alive who remembers The Beatles.

You know that feeling you get when you take your first bite of a delicious slice of pizza or your first gulp of an invigorating cocktail and you think, "I'm going to remember this"? That's how I felt after watching this film.

Dark Phoenix is a prequel in the series of X-Men superhero films that started in 2000 with the first movie titled X-Men. With this being the 10th film in the series, it's a strong reminder that not all chapters are good ones and not all entries in a saga are winners (much like my sex life).

I'm happy to say this film is more than a concert from the past or a frivolous musical review. British director Dexter Fletcher (Eddie the Eagle, 2015) nicely blends reality and fantasy in this story of Elton John's formative years.

I have seen the funniest film of 2019 so far. Actress Olivia Wilde (TRON: Legacy, 2010) makes her full-length feature directorial debut with a teen comedy that is a loud, irreverent, zippy whirlwind of friendship, alcohol, condom water balloons, and the elusive goal of having fun.

Diane Keaton (Morning Glory, 2010) plays a single retiree who begrudgingly moves out of her New York City apartment and into a retirement community in Georgia for active seniors. To capture some of her lost youth, and to annoy some of the established leaders of the well-groomed retirement community, she starts a cheerleading squad with some of her fellow female retirees. After enduring awkward rehearsals, riding in fancy golf carts, and bonding with unlikely sensitive teenagers, the cheerleaders learn to love themselves, their bodies, and their lives.

Journey's End is set almost entirely in a muddy, candle-lit trench in chilly northern France during World War I, and it explores the relationships and responsibilities of the British soldiers living in it. Based on a 1928 play by English playwright R.C. Sherriff, Journey's End was first adapted into a film in 1930 and has been adapted a few other times into films with different titles.