Brian Miller
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Million Dollar Baby (2004) |
A one-man shop who even composed the muted score for his movie, Eastwood reminds us how films are best created, like Maggie's destiny in the ring, with one's own hands. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Feb 19, 2019
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Head-On (2004) |
The storytelling rhythms can be a little jarring, almost like early Spike Lee, but this seems true to the disconnect of Cahit's and Sibel's lives. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Feb 19, 2019
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Twin Sisters (2002) |
Stamp collectors, this is the movie for you. For the rest of us, Lotte and Anna are nice but not very interesting characters, - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Feb 19, 2019
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Gladiator (2000) |
Gladiator certainly feels like it was written by committee and template. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Feb 19, 2019
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A Beautiful Mind (2001) |
As competent, affecting biopics go, Mind won't win any prizes, but you've earned yourself the right for more awards consideration, mate. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Feb 19, 2019
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Gone Girl (2014) |
Gone Girl is all about manipulation -- Fincher's stock in trade, really, which helps make the film such cynical, mean-spirited fun. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 09, 2016
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Wild (2014) |
Wild is both tremendously appealing and inescapably sappy. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Apr 26, 2016
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Mustang (2015) |
In many regions of the globe, Ergven reminds us, this is how young women are still being treated as chattel. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 23, 2015
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The Big Short (2015) |
Unusually and admirably for a professional funnyman, McKay ends his film not with a punchline, but with a punch to the gut. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 23, 2015
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Joy (2015) |
I prefer the mess of Joy's first half, and that's where Russell and his fine cast -- including Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Diane Ladd, Édgar Ramírez, Isabella Rossellini, and Virginia Madsen -- do their best work. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 23, 2015
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Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) |
A worthy successor. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 17, 2015
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Youth (2015) |
The trite, disappointing Youth, like its two heroes, never steps outside the spa's nostalgic comforts. Even its final concert scene, presented as a triumph, feels like a retreat into familiar flattery and self-regard. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 17, 2015
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In the Heart of the Sea (2015) |
Unusually for Howard, one of our finest old-school Hollywood craftsmen, Heart is a very meta account, constantly reassuring and validating itself. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 09, 2015
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Chi-Raq (2015) |
Chi-Raq is rude and raunchy, consistently less amusing than it thinks it is, and thickly sliced with a very dull knife. Yet if not the breakthrough that Do the Right Thing was in '89 (though there are echoes), it's still fundamentally on-point. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Dec 02, 2015
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Legend (2015) |
Once you realize how routine Legend is, especially compared to 1990's The Krays, the main pleasure lies in watching Hardy. And, boy, is he watchable. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 25, 2015
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Brooklyn (2015) |
In the end, of course, Ronan completely owns this movie. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2015
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Trumbo (2015) |
Though there's much to admire in the dull, dutiful Trumbo, there's little to entertain. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2015
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The Night Before (2015) |
It's not a good movie, but what do we really expect from a Seth Rogen vehicle at this time of year? - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 18, 2015
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Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) |
Part III is much better than I and II. We should be grateful for that. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 16, 2015
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Viva la libertà (2013) |
Viva la Libert offers a tame political fantasia where more lacerating laughs are needed. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Inherent Vice (2014) |
Anderson's loosest, most purely enjoyable film to date. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Before I Disappear (2014) |
Christensen can't settle on a satisfactory tone-mawkish one moment, menacing the next... His movie is so vehement about Richie's redemption that even its bumpy detours are dully predictable. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014) |
The film becomes a tedious procession of laudable figures recalling a noble cause; then it gets mired in the dull factionalism of race, sexual orientation, and class within the movement. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Mr. Turner (2014) |
Thanks to Spall's marvelous, gruntingly animalistic performance, Pope's eye, and Leigh's deep methodology, Mr. Turner gives us an immersion if not an understanding of the gnomic artist. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Match (2014) |
Match swiftly dwindles into the most middlebrow kind of theater. Accusations are hurled, apologies are tendered, grudges are nursed and dismissed, and everyone learns valuable lessons. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Maps to the Stars (2014) |
We watch to see the worst in Maps, it's revealed, and absolutely nothing about it is surprising. (Even the ghosts are predictable.) Also, unforgivable in the inside-Hollywood canon, Wagner can't craft dialogue or be funny to save his life. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Wild Canaries (2014) |
Married filmmakers Takal and Levine have an easy rapport, and they elicit likable performances from all their cast. (Even the villains are hard to hate.) - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Big in Japan (2014) |
Certainly Big in Japan has its promotional aspect, but few films (or bands) manage the trick of both wanting to be liked and actually being likable. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Queen and Country (2014) |
It's a pleasant, nostalgic movie that didn't need to be made (a memoir written, maybe), chiefly because he has nothing new to say about the postwar era. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Metalhead (2013) |
By turns scathing, wounded, and contrite, the actress conveys an atonal, akimbo soulfulness that, yes, marks her as a true daughter of the Land of Bjrk. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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'71 (2014) |
'71 doesn't pretend that better times are near (Bloody Sunday is just a year ahead), though it does finally proffer a few shreds of humanity against a future we know will be terribly bleak. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Merchants of Doubt (2014) |
Based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, the film lays out a convincing, follow-the-money trail from the tobacco industry's postwar efforts to prevent (or forestall) government regulation to a profitable lobbying specialty today. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014) |
It's a very composed and controlled picture, with a heroine who believes she's on the cusp of something transformative, even cosmic. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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The Gunman (2015) |
As ever, Penn is the grim, humorless professional, squinting out each line like a kidney stone. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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The Salt of the Earth (2014) |
Salt of the Earth is a self-serving and very family-sanctioned project, though not quite a chore to watch. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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October Gale (2014) |
October Gale is a pleasant place to visit, though a dull, predictable movie to watch. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Like Sunday, Like Rain (2014) |
The same listless scenes play over and over (park, restaurant, cello, etc.), with odd editing lurches between them. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015) |
Morgen has made a fittingly unruly patchwork distillation of a messy, self-destructive life. Romanticism and myth have been cast aside. A tidy documentary would only be possible about a less talented, less tormented artist. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Adult Beginners (2014) |
Kroll's basic task here is fairly lazy and certainly unoriginal. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) |
Though Clouds has a few welcome laughs (digs at vampire and comic-book movies, Binoche even doing a spit-take!), it's a film about time and a woman's passages through time. Each age forces a different role-Sigrid or Helena-despite her wishes. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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5 Flights Up (2014) |
Completely reliant on the warmth and goodwill generated by its stars (rather than, say, its writing), this AARP-oriented dramedy strikes all the familiar chords. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Beyond the Reach (2014) |
Gordon Gekko in the desert Southwest. There's really no other way to describe this sparse but ultimately rather silly B-movie thriller. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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The Hunting Ground (2015) |
It's not the numbers here you'll remember, of course, but the stories. A montage of students relating how they called their parents, post-rape, is the saddest thing you'll see on screen this year. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Black Souls (2014) |
In a certain kind of Italian mob picture, you expect blood feuds, family feasts, and generational conflict. Certainly Francesco Munzi's adaptation of a popular crime novel has all that, but it's more family drama than shoot-'em-up. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Set Fire to the Stars (2014) |
Set Fire belongs to a genre that might be called Close Encounters With Greatness. They're not biopics, but glancing views by nobodies in a position to observe the backstage workings of genius. It's a formula, and Set Fire never gets beyond that formula. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Jafar Panahi's Taxi (2015) |
Taxi is perhaps the most ingeniously optimistic movie I've seen this year. It also reminds me of the current Room, another instance of extreme captivity where the only response is imagination. Both films make our world a bigger place. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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East Side Sushi (2014) |
So while it's entirely predictable, full of follow-your-dreams sentiment, Anthony Lucero's sincere little indie does provide an exemplary heroine. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 12, 2015
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Suffragette (2015) |
This dull, uplifting classroom movie makes [Mulligan's character] more the victim than inspiring example. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 04, 2015
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Spectre (2015) |
For depth, these films only require inherited tradition, and that is what keeps the world's most successful movie franchise moving toward its sixth decade. But next time, please: less typing, less remembering, and more running toward the future. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Nov 04, 2015
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Room (2015) |
Hollywood insists on healing and closure, but Room is more interested in the wonder of childhood, regardless of circumstances. - Seattle Weekly
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| Posted Oct 29, 2015
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