MoviesMillers

Evil Dead Rise - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 I cannot pretend to be some kind of horror expert or scary movie aficionado. Only recently did I watch The Shining for the first time and I’ve never yet seen many of the classics like Carrie, The Exorcist or Poltergeist. But as I try to get myself a better baseline of films to reference, I was able to catch the new film in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise. As somewhat of a horror newbie, I’ll also say that any criticism I bestow on the film should be taken with a grain of salt, I’ll simply offer some perspective on what you can expect from this latest offering in the Evil Dead universe. While you can expect lots of blood and gore from this new installment, as per the usual, the film was light on scares and generally just existed in the realm that puts you a little on edge and just slightly creeped out. As far as entertainment value, the film starts out slow but then picks things up into the se...

The Super Mario Bros. Movie - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Kids Score - 9 of 10 It’s finally here. The movie we’ve all been waiting for since May 28th, 1993 when the live action Super Mario Bros. dropped into theatres and sent audiences everywhere running for the hills. Here we are, almost thirty years have past and we finally get a modernized, digitally animated adaptation of these classic video game characters and a host of their friends. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun, colorful and fast paced adventure that kids will go bananas over. This film is an easy watch, it flies by at just over a hour and a half, but the closer you scrutinize the film, story and aspects of the filmmaking, the more the cracks beneath the surface begin to show. Most general audiences, parents and general audiences, however, will be able to overlook these flaws and have a blast with Mario and company on their quest to defeat Bowser. But the film skews heavily towar...

Air - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Every year there are usually one or two films that people will take their dads to see, which means they’re mainstream movies that appeal to everyone, but especially to a certain demographic. Last year we had Top Gun Maverick, a few years ago it was Ford V Ferrari, and virtually anything that has Tom Hanks is in, we lovingly call these films Dad Movies. Right out of the gate for 2023 we get one of the best dad movies of the year with the new movie from Amazon Studios, Air. Air recounts the time in history when the basketball shoe market was coming into it’s prime and companies were jockeying for position to add the hot new sports stars to their list of celebrity endorsers. When Michael Jordan was about to enter the NBA draft, a hidden war was taking place between rival shoe companies as they tried to get him and other players to sign deals with their companies. From director Ben Affleck, who also appears in the ...

A Thousand And One - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Who doesn’t love a good drama? At the Sundance Film Festival every January, a film wins the top Grand Jury Prize for dramatic feature film, one of the highest awards the festival gives out. In recent years, high rolling films like Minari, Coda and the delightfully suspenseful Nanny from last year are joined by the winner for 2023, A Thousand And One. This indie film comes to us from female filmmaker A.V. Rockwell, it might have a small budget but this film has a big heart. It tells the tale of a mother whose personal life is a bit chaotic to say the least, after getting out of prison, she seeks to get her life on the right track and re-establish some sense of family with her son. At almost two hours, the film may move a little slower through the first half than some general audiences would prefer, but the emotional knockout ending more than makes up for any drag that some viewers might feel. Most...

Rye Lane - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Romantic comedies were a dime a dozen once upon a time, but if you’ve ever taken the time to watch a few, you know that not all rom-coms are created equal. Many of them hit the same emotional beats, they’re all predictable, the couple you want to see together ALWAYS ends up together and there’s always some dividing force that almost separates them, keeping us in suspense until the final moments. But on occasion, you come across a rom-com that tries some new things, like the new film Rye Lane now on Hulu, even if it falls back on some of the old rom-com habits, but it breathes some new life into the genre. The director Raine Allen-Miller pours some really curious production design, set pieces and a varied color palette into the film, which combined with the romantic comedy genre made for a genuinely unique and quirky effort. While the film won’t leave you rolling on the floor, there were a few moments of co...

Tetris - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 After the massive hits Pong and then Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the game Tetris took the video game world by storm in the late 1980’s. The game was as simple as it was addictive, it could be picked up and played within a few moments, and it sparked a sensation across the entire globe. Who knew that at the beginning of this video game there was a Soviet Union controlled company and a Cold War era controversy while companies and game developers tried to get their hands on the licenses to the hit bestseller before it was introduced to the public. The new film Tetris debuts on Apple+ on March 31st, it stars Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, a businessman who saw the potential and went hardcore after the game, jeopardizing everything as he traveled into Russia during a time when foreigners weren’t exactly welcomed. While no doubt some of the events were sensationalized, a car ch...

Boston Strangler - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 In the early 1960’s, in Boston, Massachusetts, a series of murders took place over the period of about a year and a half. Thirteen women were killed, their ages ranged from nineteen to eighty-five. One of the main things the murders had in common was the fact that the women were strangled to death, most of the time with their nylon stockings. A new film from 20th Century Fox, Boston Strangler, just dropped onto Hulu and it delves into the murders but focuses on the journalists covering the story and in some ways doing police work on the case behind the scenes. These two real women, Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, worked tirelessly and against the grain in a male dominated workplace and broke open aspects of the story that deserve recognition. While this movie plays out like a journalism story, we follow the duo as they chase down clues and suspects, like Spotlight or the newer She Said, it also i...

Cocaine Bear - Movie Review Critics Score - 6 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 I’ve seen a lot of quote unquote “dumb” movies in my time and I use the term dumb very loosely. But needless to say, there are some dumb movies that are really truly ingenious, from Airplane to Dumb And Dumber to Borat, some of the perceived ignorance on display is actually highly thought out and intelligent. There’s plenty of moments of subjectively “pure stupidity” in cinema that are also some of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes the dumbest things can be pure comedic genius. A new movie just released a couple weeks ago that’s title alone shouts “dumb fun”, and you can’t help but snicker at the goofy aesthetics of the poster and the tag line that tells you exactly what you’re in for, “Get In Line”. We get Cocaine Bear from director Elizabeth Banks, whose humorous directing sensibilities make for a decently enjoyable time with this latest effort. Fortunately there’s more fun here tha...

Athena - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 In the world of Ancient Greece, as a daughter of Zeus, Athena was known as being the goddess of wisdom and war, among her many qualities. While she is most commonly associated with the capital city of Greece, Athens, the name Athena is also an area in the city of Paris where the fictional events from a new film take place. Athena is a primarily French language film that debuted on Netflix last September without much fanfare that many audiences are just now catching up with after France went with Saint Omer for its submission to this years Oscars. Athena is a roller coaster ride of a movie, and if you can tell anything from the incredible poster, being named after the goddess of war is no small coincidence. This films is like Avatar The Way Of Water in that it is a complete spectacle of filmmaking, but the story, while engaging in the moment, is somewhat shallow and because it doesn’t spend enough time with t...

No Bears - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 3 of 10 There are certain countries that year after year manage to produce fantastic films, the artists and voices that arise from them continually impress film pundits around the globe. Those countries include many that would normally be associated with art, such as Italy, France and England, but there are also films coming from so many other places, such as South Korea, Mexico, Israel and Iran. Iran in particular has many fantastic filmmakers working today, but the government there sometimes conflicts with the free voices that artists typically have and the ruling powers can cause problems for the filmmakers. The writer/director Jafar Panahi is one such voice who’s latest film No Bears is a fascinating look at this dynamic as in December 2010 he was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making movies, writing screenplays and the like for twenty years. No Bears is an intriguing piece of cinema as he tr...