MoviesMillers

Elemental - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 9 of 10 Kids Score - 8 of 10 Gone are the days when Pixar Animation Studios could do no wrong. Over the past decade, even the bright spots of Soul, Toy Story 4, Turning Red and Coco have been mixed in with the mediocrity of Finding Dory, Onward and Luca and and even downright poor offerings like Cars 3, The Good Dinosaur and Lightyear. From the same director as The Good Dinosaur, this summer this studio releases Elemental, which from the trailers looks straight up like an Inside Out meets Zootopia wannabe. In some ways that brief assessment is accurate, this film borrows some elements, no pun intended, from both those films, the city design, the hot headed fire character Ember resembling Anger from Inside Out and the water Wade resembles Sadness in respective ways. That may be leading some to hold off on taking the family to the theatre and simply waiting for this one to roll to Disney+ next month. But make no mi...

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 9 of 10 Kids Score - 7 of 10 When the first Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse first dropped into theatres back in 2018, it was quite the marvel, no pun intended. I don’t think anybody had much expectation for an animated Spider-Man movie, it’s opening weekend box office take procured a lowly $35 million here in the U.S.. Lo and behold that movie went on, not to just be a revolutionary animated feat garnering unanimous critical acclaim, but an easy Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination, subsequent win and it’s generally considered to be among the best movies of the 2010-2019 decade. Naturally expectations are through the roof for the sequel, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, which swung into theaters last weekend. The first film was such a revelation of filmmaking that the sequel had to try and push the same limits, both visually and in it’s storytelling. While Across The Spider-Verse...

BlackBerry - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 For anyone older than the age of say, twenty-five, the word blackberry is synonymous with a handheld smartphone style device, popular at the start of this century. While most models contained a full keyboard, it was the first device that allowed for cellular calls but also the additional feature of emailing from a handheld device, a novel idea for the early 2000’s. The new film from IFC of the same name, BlackBerry, is a Canadian film based on the Canadian company and tells the story of the device’s rise to incredible fame and success and eventually it’s equally fascinating catastrophic demise. While many films have followed, or attempted to follow in the footsteps of The Social Network, a perfect piece of cinema that portrays the early stages of a successful business idea or enterprise, very few films can hold a candle to it. BlackBerry might not quite reach the same grandeur, no snappy Sorkin dialogue ...

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. - Movie Review Critics Score - 9 of 10 General Audience Score - 8 of 10 Judy Blume is a beloved author who specializes in writing for children and young adults. She’s written several best sellers but what she’s perhaps best known for are some of the books she wrote in the early 1970’s that deal with the issues and challenges faced by young women, especially around the years of puberty. Arguably her most famous and beloved writing was a book entitled Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., to which women everywhere praised for the way it assisted in teaching adolescent girls about their bodies and the changes they experience in reaching womanhood. The new film from Lionsgate of the same name as the book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is an incredible adaptation of page to screen, it’s able to capture the soft and gentle tone of the book impeccably well. And sure, the film may be a bit “girly” while it covers the nuances of dealing with the com...

How To Blow Up A Pipeline - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Anybody remember the Russell Crowe film from over a decade ago, The Next Three Days? That movie was fascinating in a particular way, it took a common plot device of countless TV shows and movies, a prison break, stripped it down and portrayed it in the most realistic way I’ve ever seen. Well a new movie from Neon does the same thing with a less common theme, creating an explosive device to blow up an oil company pipeline. I can’t imagine many oil company executives are excited to check out the simply titled How To Blow Up A Pipeline, but maybe they’ve got a morbid curiosity about how someone would go about it. This film lays that out, along with any and all motivations that someone would have to carry out such an attack, although it’s just for entertainment purposes, it does feel incredibly anti-gas and oil company and very pro-climate movement. Despite the film’s seemingly biased assessme...

Still - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 6 of 10 As much as I have a tremendous love for movies, especially for many of the films I grew up with in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I’m rarely driven to research a movie to find out the stories behind how the movie was made, what the filming was like, problems they encountered, etc., like I would, say, for a popular song. Easily one of my favorite films from the 1980’s would be the original Back To The Future, the Robert Zemeckis directed and Steven Spielberg produced movie starring Michael J. Fox. But little did I know that BTTF had already been shooting when Zemeckis decided that Eric Stoltz wasn’t right for the part of Marty and recast Michael J. Fox for the role and had to reshoot all the scenes they’re already done with Stoltz. This was just one of the fantastic revelations brought to light in the new documentary Still, available to stream on Apple+ next Friday, May 12th. While the film centers around Fox, his dis...

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...