The Mill (Movie)

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    ‘Godzilla Minus One’ and Other Science Fiction Movies to Stream

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    This month’s sci-fi picks include alienoids, bionic athletes and a little creature named Godzilla.‘Godzilla Minus One’Stream it on Netflix.Despite a surprisingly successful box-office run at the end of 2023, this evocative, often poignant take on one of the most famous screen creatures of all time was abruptly pulled from theaters. Then the film remained AWOL from streaming for months, until it popped up last week with no advance fanfare — a bit like Godzilla himself emerging from out of nowhere, actually. Takashi Yamazaki’s movie is set a couple of years after World War II, as a traumatized Japan slowly rebuilds and tries to overcome the physical and mental devastation caused by the atomic bombings. The lead character, Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), is a former kamikaze pilot who managed to survive and is guilt-ridden — though, of course, it’s easy to argue that the actual lead is the title monster. Koichi joins the ad hoc forces gathered to prevent Godzilla from finishing off the reeling Japan, and the final battle, which takes place at sea, is masterfully directed by Yamazaki (who also supervised the Academy Award-winning visual effects).Note that the movie’s incredible black-and-white version, “Godzilla Minus One Minus Color,” is available on Amazon and other platforms, and is expected on Netflix sometime this summer.‘The Mill’Stream it on Hulu.“Average person must survive a hostile environment by any means necessary” is a pretty familiar trope, and it is heightened when said environment is a single location — a boat, an elevator, a car trunk, a phone booth or, in the case of Sean King O’Grady’s “The Mill,” a grim courtyard enclosed by grim walls. That is where Joe (Lil Rel Howery) wakes up one day. His only company is an unseen neighbor (voiced by Patrick Fischler), whom Joe hears through a duct. Food and water get pushed through a slot in the door. Soon enough, Joe is told that his performance at work has declined so he’s been sent to “advanced career training.” His task is to complete a minimum of 50 revolutions a day on a large mill: He has become a beast of burden tethered to his yoke and reduced to mindless effort. Worse, he competes against other prisoners kept in similar yards. Howery is effective as a regular, ahem, Joe who must both make it to the end of each day and figure out what’s going on. While it ends on a note that feels rushed (but suggests a potential sequel that could be intriguing), “The Mill” is a fairly tight sci-fi thriller that argues for collective action over individualism in the face of faceless corporate power. It’s not Ken Loach, but it might reach more people.‘Alienoid: Return to the Future’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Mill’ Review: A Cog in the Machine

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      This spare dystopian thriller offers a serviceable but mostly unimaginative satire of a capitalist nightmare.If we as a nation are reaching an increasingly critical juncture over the fate of labor, “The Mill” is a film that appears startlingly well-suited for the moment. The dystopian thriller, directed by Sean King O’Grady, almost literally translates the idea of cog in a machine, following Joe (Lil Rel Howery), a middle manager within a major corporation called Mallard, as he mysteriously wakes up in an open-air prison and is forced to push a grist mill hundreds of times, 18 hours a day. He doesn’t know how he got there, only that, as a neighboring prisoner who talks to him through a vent explains, you better keep working or get “terminated.”It’s an intentionally spare work — most of the film is confined to this one small outdoor space — but its stripped-down nature exposes the film’s often graceless execution. While it aims for sharp-edged commentary, the movie at times reads, ironically, like an A.I. generator took a handful of anticapitalist talking points — the ruthlessness of the corporate apparatus, the unwieldy danger of Big Tech’s algorithms, the power of labor organizing — and spit out a serviceable but unimaginative dystopian satire.The film lacks any well-executed surprises to help it push past one-dimensional satire, and Howery is not strong enough of a dramatic actor to keep a single-setting, single-character film like this consistently engaging. As Mallard’s computer overlord increases Joe’s work demands and punishments, the film has the feel of an overextended, limp episode of “Black Mirror”: moderately entertaining, but lacking any teeth to its political bite.The MillNot rated. Watch on Hulu. More