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This will be a short and rambly review of Millennium Actress. I will not touch on many of the movie’s aspects, instead just focusing on writing down my very broad observations.

Millennium Actress manages to spread its structure and narrative into many directions while not compromising on its cohesion as a movie. It has a grand scale, spanning multiple millennia (heh) of japanese history, always moving forward at a brisk pace. At the same time it's an intimate story about a woman’s life. It's all there in the title.
The movie has three interwoven layers of narrative: the present, where Chiyoko tells her story to a ... duo of documentarians; the level of the story itself which also contains the third layer; the movies Chiyoko worked on as a star actress. These movies make up the lion’s share of the runtime, continuing Chiyoko's real life obsession of finding the man who once invited her to a distant planet. Doing that, the movie smartly comments on the eclectic cross-pollination of influences the life experiences of an artist and their work have on one another.
Staying with that theme, these layers almost seamlessly interact with each other, culminating in an overwhelming montage-esque climactic scene of Chiyoko running, stumbling and chasing that man through multiple, previously explored, time periods and accentuating parallels between them even more in the process. Another aspect to this style of storytelling is old Chiyoko's dementia which gets hinted at in a few scenes in the movie. Her memories are jumbled and heavily altered by time.

Shortly after we find out that she had been chasing a ghost all this time. Genya, the man interviewing her for the documentary, knew the truth and didn’t want her to find out, in fear of breaking her heart. However, the movie’s last scene implies that Chiyoko was aware of the futility of her longing, proclaiming that the real love she felt was always for the chase itself.

Genya's character is another interesting aspect of the movie. In a darker tale he could come off as a deranged stalker, obsessing over Chiyoko to the point of lethality. Yes, this is a sharp juxtaposition to Kon’s earlier work Perfect Blue. But here this character is portrayed in a much healthier way, being an incredibly kind and selfless fan of Chiyoko, helping her continue her story throughout its layers many times. This portrayal is also aided by him being the comic relief character of the movie, which is very tastefully executed, his assistant standing in for the straight man position of the comedy duo.

Lastly, the haunting figure of an old lady appearing in Chiyoko’s movies turns out to be a reflection of Chiyoko’s tumultuous relationship with herself, simultaneously cursing and embracing her life and the time spent chasing after a stranger.

Part of what makes Kon’s movies such a unique experience is the fact that he was not solely influenced by other works in the anime industry, rather he took elements from all kinds of media, especially surrealist live action film, e.g. works by director Terry Gilliam or the movie Slaughterhouse-Five, which was a direct influence on Millennium Actress. Satoshi Kon's movies had an honest heart and a subtle intelligence while not compromising on cinematic quality. He will be missed for centuries to come.

Arguably the most important element of a show like this is the characterisation. I'm usually not a big fan of otaku types, especially the zany weirdo ones. Steins;gate has some compelling character moments but looked at as a whole the cast is constructed from a heap of annoying clichés, a collection of muppets, if you will.

The whole story structure feels like it was directly taken from the VN, which was questionable decision since it didn't fit cohesively with the tv show format. What's with all the side quest episodes for secondary characters just popping up right in the middle of a dramatic and tension ... filled arc? What's with the instances in the story were it is apparent that the gamer of the VN would've had to make a decision?
Those scenes were just badly implemented and thats coming from someone who doesn't even have played that many VNs (but enough games that I know my fair share about structure and narrative).

My favorite part was the first cour, which a lot of folks seem to dismiss as necessary buildup to get to the hype stuff. The mystery and atmosphere was really compelling, so it disappointed even more when that was followed up by an overwrought and tediously confusing time travel plot.

In conclusion: This is not the worst show I've ever seen by any means, but it's also not the masterpiece that most people seem to see it as.
Maybe it just aged badly, quite like me in that regard I suppose.