MoviesMillers

The Whale - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 The topics of diet, weight loss, weight gain and body image are among some of the most interesting yet delicate topics that are prevalent in society today. While there are those that say that physical beauty can be found in anyone, persons of all shapes and sizes, society and especially the food industry is hell bent on assisting anyone with an appetite, (raises hand), to consume massive amounts of unnecessary, unhealthy and even addictive foods and drinks of all kinds. The latest film from Darren Aronofsky is The Whale, a curiously double entendre title about an extremely obese man who is grappling with several different issues while his diet and health problems have him staring death in the face. Brendan Fraser is fantastic and does some truly impressive and career defining work as Charlie, the film’s central character and the man we can’t seem to take our eyes off of whenever he’s on screen. I found al...

Holy Spider - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Every year we get a host of crime/thriller films, the basic premise we’ve seen a thousand times. There’s a murder to kick things off. A protagonist detective or police officer walks a crime scene to begin the film and the standard formula of a cat and mouse game begins to play out, usually culminating in some kind of epic showdown. Sometimes films like Se7en, Silence Of The Lambs and even The Batman from earlier in 2022, find ways of reimagining and elevating this age old material into something exciting and different. A new film from Iranian director Ali Abbasi called Holy Spider is a wildly different approach to an age old genre film. Midway through the second act the movie hits the point where a normal crime thriller would culminate, I began to wonder what they could possibly do with the remaining forty-five minutes of runtime. But the film twists, turns. and only became more fascinating and challeng...

The Lord Of The Rings/The Two Towers - Movie Review Critics Score - 10 of 10 General Audience Score - 10 of 10 After the release of The Lord Of The Rings The Fellowship Of The Ring, while the film went on to immediate financial success and critical acclaim, New Line cinema knew they had two more gold mines left of their hands. Dropping into theatres one year later, Dec. 18, 2022, LOTR The Two Towers rolled in and scored almost a billion dollars at the worldwide box office and was nominated for six academy awards of which it won two. Although the film suffers slightly from Peter Jackson’s screenplay being adjusted in several ways from the original book, there can be no mistaking that The Two Towers was an undeniable accomplishment in the history of cinema. Personally, I would rank the trilogy in the order of Fellowship #1, King #2 and then Towers #3, but these are all masterpieces of film, each one in their own right. Whether you loved the books or not, whether your an average moviegoer...

Emily - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Charlotte Brontë is a writer who lived in the 1800’s and wrote some pieces of classic English literature, including Jane Eyre. But her younger sister Emily, who lived a much shorter life and tragically passed at the tender age of 30, burned bright like a shooting star. Emily Brontë was a reclusive yet fascinating character that wrote the literary classic Wuthering Heights, but who’s life remains shrouded in mystery. The new movie Emily is a fictionalized account of what her life could have been and seeks to fill in some blanks of the events surrounding her creation of her masterpiece of writing. While it is very much a period piece and so we get to enjoy many of the dresses, stereotypes and emotional beats of a Pride And Prejudice or Sense And Sensibility, it works to subvert many of the classic storytelling tropes of the genre. Without spoiling the movie, I will say that not all great stories have the sail o...

Tár - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 4 of 10 If you were to try and name the greatest actresses currently working in Hollywood, you’d undoubtedly go through names like Meryl Streep, Olivia Coleman, Viola Davis and Frances McDormand. Actresses that no matter what they’re in really, they elevate even the simplest and most mundane roles into something really special. Among those names would certainly be Cate Blanchett. This year she brings us a film called Tár, a story of a woman orchestra conductor/composer who’s work begins to suffer at she hits some road bumps in her life. Tár as a film boils down to being one massive construct for Blanchett to showcase her talents, which are exceptional, and showcase them she does, she’s unbelievable. As a film critic, someone who judges other people’s art, I have to use the word pretentious through gritted teeth. But this is one of the most pretentious films I’ve encountered this year, she looks down upon the general au...

The Banshees Of Inisherin - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Although I’ve never been to Ireland, I hear it’s a beautiful country, it certainly looks gorgeous from what I’ve seen and I’d love to visit someday. The country has a colorful history of turmoil and war scarring some parts of the nation when it claimed independence from Great Britain back in the 1920’s. A new film from Martin McDonagh called The Banshees Of Inisherin takes place in Ireland during that decade. McDonagh teams back up with Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson for his latest story of two men that were friends and drinking buddies but their relationship takes a turn for the worse. Despite the film’s regular use of humor, it straddles the line of light and darkness, with some quite gruesome events and a somber tone, especially leading up to the finale. Although I had high expectations for Banshees, the film didn’t quite coalesce into one of the year’s best films as I’d hoped and ex...

Triangle Of Sadness - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Most average moviegoers aren’t familiar with the name Ruben Östlund. He’s a writer and director from Sweden that’s made a few foreign films because technically they’re produced and filmed in Europe, even though his latest film, Triangle Of Sadness, is almost completely in spoken English. This film premiered earlier this year at Cannes, one of the more prestigious film festivals from France that took place in May, where Ruben took home the top prize, the Palme d’Or. With just that pedigree, Triangle Of Sadness has been on many film pundit’s radars for quite some time, but now it’s finally been released here in the U.S. It’s currently able to be seen in theatres, which is the best place to watch it, in a movie theatre with a group of friends. I won’t get deep into the plot, but the film is about a group of extremely wealthy individuals who go on a pleasure cruise aboard a luxury yacht when things ...

Women Talking - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Women Talking is a book about a group of Mennonite women living in Bolivia who have a discussion about some unspeakable acts committed by the men in their colony. Despite their unspeakable nature, these women speak about them, I won’t mention them explicitly for the sake of spoilers. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Mennonite religion is a group, similar to the Amish, for the purposes of the general reader, they are people who typically live off the land, very simply and peacefully, in a tight knit group. But anytime a group of men, priests, leaders, elders, call them what you will, flesh and blood human men, put themselves in the place of God and the things say and direct others to do have to be followed as if they’re coming from an almighty source, well, that’s the recipe for a cult. In the film adaptation of Women Talking, a small group of women find a hayloft and discuss what to do about the men ...

The Inspection - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Everyone loves an inspirational war story, the beaten down soldier or battalion left for dead that manages to pull off a victory against seemingly insurmountable odds. It’s a bit of a generic premise and has many common tropes that movies and shows can fall into, but who doesn’t love a good underdog story? Especially when the story is based on real people or events. Coming into theatres just before thanksgiving this year is the new film The Inspection, starring Jeremy Pope who plays a young, gay man who decides to join the Marine Corps. The film is based on the true story of the writer/director Elegance Bratton and his journey of change, self-discovery, defying the odds and taking charge of one’s lot in life. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t bring us any unconventional storytelling and it may have an ending you can see coming a mile away. But at just over an hour and a half, it does a good job at keep...

She Said - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 I feel like before I begin this review I must make a few things clear. Harvey Weinstein is a scumbag who deserves to be locked up and the key thrown into the ocean, along with any other men that use their power to prey on others. But my feelings on that type of men is completely separate from my efforts as a film critic to dissect a movie and critique it on how it works as a piece of art and entertainment. With that disclaimer aside, in just a couple weeks the new film She Said will drop into theatres, a movie about the journalists that helped to break open the case and reported the accusations against Harvey Weinstein that eventually and thankfully got him thrown in jail. While the lead performances from Kazan and Mulligan that play the journalists are perfectly serviceable, the movie just isn’t quite as good, especially when compared to other recent movies like Spotlight or Collective. Of course not only...