MoviesMillers

Hatching - Quick Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 A new thriller/horror film from the countries of Finland and Sweden called Hatching just debuted at Sundance and gets a wider release in April. This film has quite a few practical effects, a nice creepy atmosphere and lots of blood and gore. While the film doesn’t stick the landing, the first act and the setup are quite enthralling and this Hatching winds up being a perfectly decent little creature feature. Our tale of the largest order of eggs Benedict ever starts with a family of four, a mom and dad, their daughter Tinja and her brother Matias. The mother is recording videos of her perfect family for her blog but things start to go awry when a black crow flies into the living room and starts breaking vases and knocking glass fixtures down. They subdue the crow but then the mother breaks it’s neck and Tinja takes it outside to the trash. But during the night, she wakes up and goes out to find the cr...

Alice - Quick Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Alice is a new film that is inspired by actual events and I promise you, you’ve never seen anything like this movie on a screen before. It’s crazy, harrowing, fantastic fun. The movie is a tight hour an a half run with one of the most unbelievable plot curve balls I’ve seen, probably in a couple years. Alice begins with two slaves, Joseph and Alice (Keke Palmer), as they get married on a plantation in Georgia. Soon we get a glimpse of what life is like when the land owner, Paul, starts beating Joseph for catching a rabbit when he’s supposed to be cutting sugar cane. A bit later Joseph is told that he’ll be heading to another plantation to inseminate the other slave owner’s “domestics”, as the slaves are referred to. Meanwhile Alice cooks, feeds and cleans at Paul’s big colonial home and, let’s just say, she’s forced to take care of his sexual needs. Without getting into spoilers, the story takes some wi...

Flee - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 We’ve all been in situations we wanted to escape from like destructive relationships, financial hardships, exploitive jobs and algebra tests. Now imagine that situation is the oppressive country you live in. The new film Flee is coming to video on demand in most areas this month and it is the story of a refugee, a man that is forced to flee his home country of Afghanistan. While Flee is an international feature film, it’s in spoken Danish, viewers should prepare for some reading, but given you’re reading this, it seems like you’re up for the challenge. It’s understandable that being in a foreign language as well as being a documentary are two strikes against this film for many general audiences before it even gets into the cue. Despite some drawbacks, there’s no need to run away from Flee, it’s an excellent and important piece of cinema, the only fleeing likely to happen is when you run to grab your handkerchi...

The Tragedy Of Macbeth - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 4 of 10 If you ever took a classic literature course in college, the name of William Shakespeare may have come up a time or two. He was born in England, lived from 1564 to 1616 and is widely considered one of, if not the greatest writer of all time. The new black and white film from one half of the Coen Brothers, Joel Coen, tackles one of the more popular plays from Shakespeare, The Tragedy Of Macbeth. This film is really something, in many ways this film is easy to be entertained by, in one massive way this film is terribly difficult to enjoy. This massive way I reference is in the screenplay and dialogue, it sticks closely to the old English the play was originally written in. That makes The Tragedy Of Macbeth almost like a foreign language film, only instead of subtitles you can understand, the subtitles only reinforce what you’re already confused by. While the performances are on point and the ci...

The Lost Daughter - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 5 of 10 Brother and sister Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal have been appearing in movies since the early 1990’s and have each went on to have successful careers in Hollywood. Jake has  become one of the biggest actors on the big screen and Maggie has played in her share of films, but recently she’s decided to try her hand at directing. The new film The Lost Daughter has debuted on Netflix and Maggie shows some competence behind the camera instead of in front of it. Although Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley do some fine work, ultimately the screenplay Maggie herself adapted from the book of the same name fails to build momentum or tie plot lines together in any satisfying way. Like another 2021 debut director, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film Tick Tick Boom, it’s easy to spot that this is a first time effort from Gyllenhaal. It’s very passable work to be sure, you can sense her vision must’ve been clear, but with...

Mass - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 There’s a city out in Utah that resides exactly seven thousand feet above sea level, it’s called Park City. This town is one you might have heard of if you’re big into skiing or alternatively movies, as it is the home of The Sundance Film Festival. At the end of each January, filmmakers the world over will display hundreds of films to the hungry eyes of cinephiles that stream into the small town. Last January one of the biggest hits to roll into Sundance was actually a little film that only now mainstream audiences are getting to feast their eyes on, Mass. Without getting into too much of this film, I will say it is not just engaging, it’s riveting, it’s enthralling. Once the film kicks into top gear as it moves into the second act, there’s no turning away from the screen. The subject material is dense and heavy, the atmosphere is suffocating, the tone of the film is foreboding. There’s four key players and th...

Encanto - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 2021 was a nice year for seeing Hispanic representation up on the big screen, not saying mission accomplished or that more can’t be done. But West Side Story and In The Heights both had wonderful casts, Oscar Issac had some great roles including a nice role in Dune and there was some other big roles in premiere films that took an interest to include this underrepresented community. Encanto is the latest animated film from Disney Animation to bring us a slice of some Hispanic culture and heritage into our living rooms as it’s currently available on Disney+. This is certainly one of the better animated films of the year, although the musical numbers feel a bit forced and none of the songs are quite as catchy as other offerings from Disney lately. But the beautiful animation and diverse colorful palette used helps to overcome a lot. The film was amusing although it could’ve used a bit more humor, and the heart...

Don’t Look Up - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 We've all seen the asteroid headed towards earth movies, from The Day The Sky Exploded from back in the 1950's, through the Armageddon and Deep Impact films from the 90's to Greenland that came out a year ago. The more humorous Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is the a film that took the meteor hitting apocalypse premise with a lighter tone. But the new film from writer and director Adam McKay not only takes on the end of the world themes with humor, the satire present in the film is pervasive. Don't Look Up is very self-aware, it knows what it is and lays it on thick, like a steamroller that's lost it's brakes cruising down a street full of kittens, it's got the satire pedal pushed to the floor and not concerned with who or what's in the way. What McKay thinks about the economy, what his political allegiances are, his thoughts on the news, media, technology or...

Licorice Pizza - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 If you lived in Southern California in the late 1960’s and wanted to go get yourself the latest Motown record or the new Rolling Stone album, Let It Bleed, you’d probably go to a local record shop. One of your options if you’d lived in that place and time would’ve been Licorice Pizza, a record shop that’s long since went out of business. A new film of the same name from writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is an impressive time capsule of a movie that takes us back into the early 1970’s in Los Angeles. P.T. Anderson has created many great films but this is among some of his best work. This film is an easy watch, the actors extremely well cast, the characters are delightful and the humor flows through the duration of the over two hour and ten minute runtime. The situational humor is top notch although not all the scenes add a ton to the story and many are used simply for laughs, but this was easily th...

Being The Ricardos - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 The 1950’s were a fascinating period in the history of the United States. With World War Two and the Great Depression in the books, America was moving forward and falling in love with a new medium for entertainment, the Television set. One of the biggest shows of the decade was a little program featuring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz called I Love Lucy. The new movie Being The Ricardos from Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin, the man who brought us The Trial Of The Chicago 7, just debuted on Amazon Prime Video this week. Mr. Sorkin throws us headfirst into a pivotal point in the shows history and through his excellent storytelling, he’s able to effectively weave the plot points together and build momentum up with the best of them. Even with a two plus hour run, the film doesn’t slog much but despite the excellent pacing there’s some problems that really keep this film from being great. Anytime an actor i...