MoviesMillers

My Top 10 Films of 2023 #1 - Perfect Days Critics Score - 9.4 of 10 Wim Wenders’ new film Perfect Days was about as close to a perfect film as I saw for the entirely of the 2023 year in cinema. This slower film won’t be as captivating for general audiences, but it’s thematic riches are there for the taking. At least for those willing to take the time to sift for them. Wenders is speaking to a society of have it all and give it to me now about a minimalist man who has very little and aspires to gain nothing. He’s not in a hurry to get anywhere in life, no corporate ladder to climb and is instead focused on soaking in the beauty of each moment of this life that he can. The lead performance from Koji Yakusho helps to set this film on a pedestal of incredible filmmaking that no other movie has topped for myself. This Japanese foreign film is fully deserving of it’s nomination for Best International Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards. #2 - Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Critics Score...

Night Swim - Movie Review Critics Score - 4 of 10 General Audience Score - 6 of 10 When a movie begins and the production company logos begin to pop up on the screen, there are a few that immediately jump out at you. Not only in terms of the stylization of the sequence they put together for it, but the expectations that come with their typical productions. Blumhouse or BH for short, has a creepy and pretty extended introduction and can usually be counted on for producing some upper tier thriller and horror films each year. Granted, there are a few stinkers mixed in there with the great ones. To start the year, Blumhouse drops the new film Night Swim into theatres during the cold and bleak moviegoing month of January, and it’s not a huge mystery why. Unlike some other recent horror films like Thanksgiving and even Talk To Me from last year, which fully embrace the fun side of the horror genre as they go about delivering their scares and still skew towards the serious, Night Swim is all ...

Anyone But You - Movie Review Critics Score - 7 of 10 General Audience Score - 7 of 10 Before I begin this review, I must include the full disclosure that I am a self proclaimed hopeless romantic by nature. There’s always a soft spot in my heart for romantic comedies. Not that I'm over the moon for all of them, but I have the propensity to probably enjoy them a little more than the average person. I just want to fall in love over and over again, every day. Movies like Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Runaway Bride currently reside in my top 10 films of all time, films like Priscilla and Sanctuary (mainly because of the finale) consistently appear in my favorite films of the year. With that being said, I finally got around to watch the new rom-com from Sony Pictures, Anyone But You. This film is super cheesy, it's corny, it's silly, it's a bit ludicrous at times, yet I throughly enjoyed my viewing experience. The only thing that really made this film so much fun was that...

The Zone Of Interest - Movie Review Critics Score - 8 General Audience Score - 7 When it comes to movies, there are the big studio blockbuster films, movies designed to appeal to the masses, and there are many smaller, usually independent films, sometimes referred to as “arthouse” cinema. These artistic films are more niche, they’re not designed to appeal to the crowds as much and usually find an audience within only a certain demographic of the population. The filming style, pacing, production, cinematography and any number of other variables in these movies might lose a good chunk of mainstream audiences along the way. This term “arthouse”, can certainly be used in relation to the new foreign film from A24 studios coming from the UK and it’s called The Zone Of Interest. This film from director Jonathan Glazer is in spoken German and it is unsettling, disquieting, stomach turning and any other adjectives that you can think of that make you uneasy or uncomfortable. For those unaware, t...

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...