Miller's Girl

I do enjoy when a movie's dialog provides its own review. This film was " overreaching without ambition." The pacing of the movie was horribly painful. It is never a good sign when I leave the action of the movie and find myself looking around thinking " I am sitting in a movie theater. " Martin Freeman is a terrific actor but the script absolutely failed him. His talents were so totally wasted. I found this to be hopelessly sad as I expected so much from the film.

The movie harps on the mediocrity of the protagonist and then tries to paint him as a villain. It just did not ring true. The script just kept missing; and, it was hard to keep pressing forward. With 45 minutes, or so, to go; I just wanted it to be over.

18 year old Cairo Sweet (Jenna Ortega) lives alone in a mansion while her parents are away somewhere. Her new married creative writing teacher Jonathan Miller (Martin Freeman) takes an interest in her and she returns the interest with obsession. When he rejects her pornographic writing, all hell breaks loose.

This movie oscillates between aggressively written and aggressively overwritten. It is trying so hard to be edgy. Jenna Ortega is oozing her lines out. I almost appreciate how hard it is running with scissors. At the end of the day, I am more annoyed with it than appreciate it. It doesn't help that the movie stops short. There is another fifteen minutes or more to go.

A creative writing assignment yields complex results between a teacher and his talented student.

I note many poor reviews and I'm unsure why that is. The acting is great from every single member of the cast.

The dialogue is meaningful and well thought out.

The plot echoes what is happening around the world right now with thousands of teachers and students: some will get caught and some won't. But it's real and so it's great to see the inner workings of the process, by such great acting and story telling.

There's even a bit in there about how women in fact have all the power in the world, they just don't realise it.

There's an insightful comment too about how "We know where the line is and don't cross it." Except some do, and when they have it's too late to walk it back.

I was surprised at Ortega's depth of character acting, but in hindsight perhaps not a great distance from her Wednesday character.

But there's an interplay between her and Winnie, as power and courage shift between one and the other as the story goes on.

Great film, I liked it a lot.

It tries to have this sexual tension between the main characters all the time. They had no chemistry, they did supposedly have reasons for pursuing each other but it wasn't depicted in a convincing manner. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes I didn't. It had the potential to be something better. The only scene I enjoyed is when Cairo lit up a cigarette in the dark, that looked like something that could've been in a horror movie. The voice narration seemed over the top and unnatural. Felt like the movie was trying too hard. The narration also reminded me of Delores from Westworld.

Jenna Ortega and Martin Freeman were okay but the movie wasn't the most captivating. It's a story that's been done before so it really needed to offer something different. But in the end feels pretty unremarkable and you'll probably forget about it as you leave the theatre. I didn't really care much about what happens with the characters and some of the conversations made me sigh and roll my eyes. I did think it was interesting where the movie took the story and shift in power dynamic between the two, but it could've been written better. Especially if you go and watch gone girl or thoroughbreds. It could've been a more captivating revenge story.

First off hands off to the entire cast. They are quite good in this film and the script especially when the main characters quotes dialogue is really well written. I was expecting something rather poor from the 5.2 review on imdb but I honestly think most people who watched this didn't get the point the director was making.

Jenna Ortega plays a fairly unbelievable character let's get that out there not only is she a siren but she has a plan and is incredibly clever, well if you know anything about 18 year olds this is quite far fetched. Martin Freeman is the naive muse in an Luke warm marriage flattered by the attraction and attention of a young good looking fan and it spirals in a rather prectible way but what makes this better than most fatal attraction movies is his conduct I don't want to mention spoilers in my reviews but he got burned for a thought.