MoviesMillers

Wonka - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Kids Score - 7 of 10 The original Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory movie from 1971 was a bit of an anomaly. Sometimes when all the elements of a film come together in just the right time and place, it is something akin to lightning striking. This process just cannot be predicted, duplicated or repeated, at least not with much ease. The original Willy Wonka music, lyrics, tone, production design, Gene Wilder as well as the rest of the cast and other elements came together at the perfect point to create a classic piece of cinema. A new prequel to the original film called Wonka from WB Studios tell us the tale of how Willy got his start in the world of the cutthroat chocolatier business. While this modernized approach to the Wonka “universe” was interesting enough to watch, it was ultimately far less creative than I would’ve hoped and took no chances to break out of the mold of mainstream big studio story...

The Taste Of Things - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 For myself, I love me a great cooking show, like Masterchef or The Great British Baking Show, but it has to be about the cooking and culinary creations. When those shows go to the dramatic and focus on the people and not the food, like Hell’s Kitchen for example, I lose interest. Although watching Gordon Ramsey going off and chew some ass is plenty amusing on occasion! But a new foreign language film that’s being distributed by IFC here in the U.S. and is the submission by France for the Oscars is called The Taste Of Things. Almost the entirety of this first act would be what some people consider as “food porn”. We watch a couple that’s in love with each other and passionate about food working in a kitchen in the early 1900’s, from my best estimate. Juliette Binoche stars in the film and is truly magnificent. I’ve seen some great lead actress performances this year from Emma Stone, Natalie Portm...

The Iron Claw - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 When it comes to curses, you can usually define them as bad luck or evil that surrounds a person as a result of something that happened to them or that somebody is intentionally trying to send negative things their way. When someone feels they’ve been cursed, it’s usually a feeling of dread and that there are superstitious and supernatural forces at work against them. Back in the 1980’s, there was a team of wrestlers, the Von Erich family, comprised of a father and his sons, but upon whom a string of tragedies befell making many wonder if they were indeed cursed. A new movie from A24 called The Iron Claw, which was the name of the father’s signature wresting move, covers the family’s rise to wrestling fame but then the subsequent heartbreak and suffering that plagued them. This is undoubtedly the saddest movie I’ve seen in the entirety of 2023, and I’ve seen well over a hundred films for this calendar...

Society Of The Snow - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Rugby isn’t a sport we get much of here in America, but in other countries, it’s one of the primary sports people enjoy watching. Back in the early 1970’s, a group of players from Uruguay boarded a plane headed from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile for a rugby match. In the middle of Oct., which was the start of their springtime, the plane carrying the team crashed in the Andes mountains and this true story is covered in the new Netflix film, Society Of The Snow. What transpired is the incredible account of how the survivors of the crash struggled to survive in one of the harshest environments imaginable for almost two and a half months before being rescued. This foreign film is in spoken Spanish and it comes from J.A. Bayona, the director that made The Impossible, a story about the tsunami that resulted from the 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Like Impossible, his new film is brutall...

The Return Of The King - Movie Review Critics Score - 10 of 10 General Audience Score - 10 of 10 When it comes to film trilogies, for there even to be a third means the massive success and profitability of either the first or both prior films and the series has demanded the third installment. People love the stories and characters and want to know what happens next. But if history has taught us anything, from franchises like The Matrix, The Godfather and Star Wars, sticking the landing on a trilogy is an almost impossible task. Well, twenty years ago Peter Jackson accepted the task and fortunately for him, he had filmed almost the entirety of the Lord Of The Rings trilogy all at once, then just had a few reshoots to fill in any gaps he deemed necessary for the final product. The final entry into the franchise, The Return Of The King, is arguably not only the greatest conclusion to a trilogy ever, but also one of the greatest films ever made. In my estimation, The Fellowship barely edge...

All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 4 of 10 When it comes to art and cinema, tastes will vary as widely and diversely as there are people on the planet. It can very much be a situation of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Some people will have a connection to certain pieces where others find next to nothing, and vice versa, which is one of the most fascinating things about us as humans. A new piece of cinema from writer/director Raven Jackson and distributed by A24 studios is called All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, and it’s very much a cinematic work of art. This slow moving film is very soft and gentle, quiet, in fact there are long periods of the film with no spoken dialogue at all. When it comes to visual aesthetics, however, it is very pretty to look at. That being said it was a film I never really connected with and although there are certain individuals who will absolutely love this piece of art, I just never quite tu...

May December - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 When it comes to tabloid scandals, at least the ones where people claim that aliens kidnapped them and flew them to Pluto to meet Abraham Lincoln, most of them can be easily dismissed as nonsense. But some of the more grounded scandals found in such articles are usually like something you’d see out of a Jerry Springer special, a wife cheats on her husband with all five of his brothers type of story. The latest film from Netflix, May December, from director Todd Haynes, doesn’t explore the immediate fallout from one such scandal, but what life might be like for those involved a couple decades into the future. While I won’t divulge the exact event the film is centralized around here in this review, even though the film reveals it within the first fifteen to twenty minutes, I’ll do my best to skirt around it for the sake of spoilers. With that being said, this is a very odd, yet highly engaging piece of c...