Author: 2 Film Critics

William Graebner is Emeritus Professor of History, State University of New York, Fredonia, where he taught courses on film and American culture. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and more than 50 scholarly articles, including essays on “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “The Poseidon Adventure,” and zombie films as they relate to the Holocaust. Dianne Bennett, the first woman to head a large U.S. law firm, is a retired U.S. tax lawyer. Dianne and Bill were early and passionate attendees at the Toronto Film Festival, and today enjoy the film scenes of Los Angeles, Rome, London, and Buffalo, New York. They began reviewing films for the Rome-based website “TheAmerican/inItalia” in 2016, have maintained a blog on Rome for a decade, and published two alternative guidebooks to the Eternal City. They still can’t resist going to the movies, not to mention the ensuing discussions, sometimes heated, over a bottle of Arneis at the nearest wine bar. ​And that's just the beginning of our reviewing process. For one or two hours we discuss the film, as one of us takes notes. The notetaker transcribes the notes and prints two copies. Dianne or Bill (usually depending on who had the most compelling understanding of the film, or who was most taken with it) writes the first draft of the review--supposedly taking into account the views of the other--which is followed by 3, 4, or even 7 more drafts. At some point, sometimes days later, when we're both comfortable with the result (or accepting of it, anyway), it's done. https://www.2filmcritics.com

Perfect Days ★★★1/2 (out of 4 stars) Sounds of Silence Hirayama is quiet. He doesn’t speak for the first 45 minutes of auteur German director Wim Wenders’ latest film, nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature. The man we follow through his “perfect days” is as mesmerizing in his observational silence as the current crop of actors in “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Rustin,” or “Poor Things,” riveting as those performances may be. Hirayama exists in stark contrast to the whirlwind of our social media culture, with its extreme activity, its constant interaction, its attention-demanding TikTok circus of AI-enhanced games and manic…

Read More

Rustin ★★★ (out of 4 stars) He had a dream, too The 1963 March on Washington was an iconic moment in the Civil Rights Movement, as indelibly etched in the nation’s consciousness as Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Few remember the causes promoted by the 200,000 plus gathered on the mall beneath the Lincoln Memorial (“Jobs & Freedom”), but it’s a rare American who doesn’t know something of Martin Luther King Jr.’s moving speech or recall the emotion brought to the assemblage by the voice of Mahalia Jackson. Incredibly, it was Jackson,…

Read More

It’s Oscar season, and 2 Film Critics (Five Cent Cine) weighs in on the Best Picture nominees, all 10 of them. For us, 2023 was a rich year, with 4 films earning our maximum 4 stars, and one 3.5. For the other 5 the Academy warranted could be considered among the best, we gave them only 3. Of our top films, we defy most of the voters so far, and would give the Oscar to “Barbie”  – for its inventiveness, cleverness, humor, and serious themes, and besides all that, for being just plain fun. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach—you have…

Read More

American Fiction ★★★ (out of four stars) Woke Satire Meets RomCom A white student challenges the word her Black professor writes on the blackboard in his college class on literature of the American South. After a brief back-and-forth, she declares herself offended and walks out of class. This refreshing opening scene holds high promise for writer and first-time feature director Cord Jefferson’s satire on the current temptation—by white folks—to slobber over what they understand as “authentic” Black literature. Professor Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright)—the namesake of both a fiercely independent musician and the author of “Invisible Man”—reluctantly abandons his academic…

Read More

The Zone of Interest ★★★★ (out of 4 stars) Don’t read beyond the first paragraph. Unless you’ve seen the film. Filmed with restraint, the magnificent script for this multiple Oscar nominee (including for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture) withholds information, then doles it out discretely, requiring the viewer, from the first scene and at every turn, to question what one is seeing and what it means. For this reason, DON’T READ THIS REVIEW if you have not seen the film. Any review of it spoils the entire experience of viewing “The Zone of Interest.” If you’ve seen the film,…

Read More

Poor Things ★★★★ (out of 4 stars) The Education of Bella Baxter When we first encounter Bella (Emma Stone), she’s a young child in a woman’s body: naïve, ignorant, willful, stubborn, lacking in empathy, socially inept—spitting out food she doesn’t like, in public—her speech barely intelligible. As we’ll learn early on, Bella is the creation of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a not-quite-mad late-19th-century scientist and surgeon. Bella’s body is that of Victoria Blessington, who attempted suicide from a London bridge; her brain is that of the fetus Victoria was carrying. Given this setup, and the physician’s first name, one…

Read More

The Holdovers ★★★ (out of 4 stars) Alone Together In the trailer, a grumpy old teacher is seen learning how to joyfully play with a heretofore sullen teen, a weary but serviceable trope for a movie intended for Holiday audiences (it opened in theaters November 10). Based on that trope and the emotional catharsis it promises, “The Holdovers” would seem destined to take its place in the winter holiday queue of family favorites, joining “Home Alone” (1990), “Love Actually,” (2003), the 1947 version of “Miracle on 34th Street,” and other tear-inducing melodramas. “The Holdovers” may be in that queue, even…

Read More

Maestro ★★★ (out of 4 stars) Scenes from a Marriage Felicia (Carey Mulligan) finds relief from her husband’s dominant ego only at the bottom of a pool, echoing Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate” (1967). In a script that’s often subtle and beguiling, a scene in the film’s final 45 minutes, set at the family’s Fairfield, Connecticut summer home, is neither of these. To a crowded room, Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper)—for more than 25 years a household name, a legend—announces triumphantly that he has finished “Mass,” dramatically unfurling the lengthy score for all to see and celebrate. Felicia (Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan),…

Read More

Fallen Leaves (“Kuolleet lehdet”)★★★1/2 (out if 4 stars) When Harry Met Sally in Helsinki A combination of reserve and clichés makes veteran Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s films both entertaining and strange. “Fallen Leaves,” which won this year’s Jury Prize at Cannes, has been called the fourth in his 1986-1990 “Proletariat Trilogy.” The two working-class protagonists toil in mind-numbing jobs under ludicrously bullying bosses. Ansa (Alma Pöysti), first seen tagging out-of-date grocery products, is summarily dismissed for having put a sandwich in her purse rather than in the dumpster. We watch her at her job, where she says not one word,…

Read More

Eileen ★★★ (Out of 4 stars) Not Exactly Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm British director William Oldroyd’s “Eileen” is two stories, two films one might say, and you should attend to both—if only to decide whether, as a viewer, you’ve been entertained and informed in some reasonable Hollywood way, or whether, like some of the characters you’ve been following, you’ve been exploited. It’s not an easy call. Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), the new prison psychologist, might be the femme fatale for Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie). Based on the 2015 prize-winning novel by American author Ottessa Moshfegh (who with her husband wrote the screenplay),…

Read More