The Beast (La Bête) ★★★1/2 (out of 4 stars) The 130-Year Date The chemistry between the two main characters—Gabrielle and Louis—is tangible early on when we see them in a 1910 Paris salon, circling each other, literally and figuratively, each exuding the dyad of desire and restraint that characterizes many early-stage love affairs. These scenes, and others of their time-machine “courtship,” are long, slow, and teasing, evoking nostalgia for a period of deeply felt yet constrained passion. French director Bertrand Bonello places this intense love affair at the heart of his dystopian vision of a 2044 world dominated by artificial…
Author: 2 Film Critics
All of Us Strangers ★★★★ (out of 4 stars) If Only…. “Fallen Leaves,” “Perfect Days”—and director Andrew Haigh’s “All of Us Strangers.” Three of the nominees for 2023’s Best International Feature Oscar evoke Henry David Thoreau’s line from Walden: “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” But Adam (Andrew Scott, the hot priest in television’s “Fleabag”), the protagonist in Haigh’s powerful drama, does not suffer from any of the maladies that for Thoreau lay beneath those desperate lives. A writer, Adam is not subject to a grinding routine; he cares little about money or possessions or status, values…
Io Capitano ★★★1/2 (out of 4 stars) Out of Africa The 3,000 mile Odyssey (and it is that) of two Senegalese teenagers, who make their way from Dakar by bus and car and foot across several African countries to Tripoli and then onto the Mediterranean, is one of the more harrowing viewing experiences you’ll have in a theater. The excruciating travails of these boys—who face robbers, prison, rapacious middle men, torture, sadism, a death-defying march across the Sahara, and for one of them, the forced captaincy of an ancient wooden boat—will make it hard at times to keep your eyes…
The Teachers’ Lounge (Das Lehrerzimmer) ★★★ (out of 4 stars) Truth and Consequences Like “Up the Down Staircase,” this year’s Oscar nominee from Germany for Best International Feature is a teachers’ movie, and like that 1967 classic, which starred Sandy Dennis as Sylvia Barrett, it centers on one teacher, Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), an intense, wide-eyed young woman who is at once neurotic, engaging, self-confident, and befuddled. Nowak would seem to have all the skills and values to be a successful—even influential—middle-school science teacher. Whether offering lessons in astronomy (on eclipses), mathematics (on what constitutes scientific “proof”) or, more generally,…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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,…
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…