UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

leoperu Having read the opinions of my favourite reviewers I was surprised that only one of them, Mr. Hoberman of Village Voice, didn't like the film. His precise remarks in "James Gray Gets Goofy in TWO LOVERS" (".... this tragic asshole who, devastated by a broken engagement and forever poised on the brink of hurling himself into Sheepsheard Bay, is persecuted by a clinically paranoid mother /Isabella Rossellini, playing "Jewish" with all the shrillness she can muster/. .... Sandra is also clueless, albeit in a nice way. .... Before you can say, "Doe, a deer," he manages to engage this goody-goody in sex made all the more incestuous by the presence of their parents kibitzing around the dinner table a few yards away....") may be too caustic, but I must admit they made me laugh aloud . After all, isn't ridicule a legitimate answer to a movie unconvincingly serious and "European" ? To my mind, in creating his Frankenstein, Gray - consciously or not - utilizes the vascular system of standard romantic comedies made in Hollywood, spraying it with his trademark existential Grayness. Although I found it better than "We Own the Night", "Two Lovers" did not impress me much.

peter_WMC The primary male character, Leonard, played by Joaquin Phoenix is uninteresting and portrayed as a complete loser. That two intelligent, attractive women would show the slightest interest in such a hopeless loser is just unbelievable. Are we really meant to believe that these two women would fall head over heels for a grown man who is an idle assistant in his family's dry cleaning business and lives at home? Both at work and at his parent's home he behaves like a spoilt child. When I got to the scene here he is a car with three women on their way for a night out and I watched and listened to interminable singing and juvenile behaviour, I decided enough. If this film had more depth later on, then I wasn't prepared to watch the tedium to get there. What were these fine actors doing in something this bad? This film is tedious, unconvincing garbage.

itamarscomix Two Lovers is a decisive improvement over Joaquin Phoenix's previous collaborations with director James Gray, and it may well be Phoenix's finest performance yet. It's a much smaller, simpler story than that of We Own The Night, and as a result it's more focused and leaves a stronger impression.The themes of family and duty are still very central in Two Lover, but this time the conflict is almost entirely within the protagonist's head, and Phoenix does a good enough job to pull it off - he's vulnerable, pitiable, charming and charismatic all at once, and he's very relatable. The basic premise of his conflict - a man being torn between his family's expectations and his wild, passionate love - has been done many times before, but rarely this sincerely and brutally honest. Two Lovers serves almost as a deconstruction of that ages-old tale, it's one of the most honest romance films I've ever seen and it leads down to a crushing but inevitable conclusion.Phoenix is aided by a fine cast of supporting actors, all of them doing a terrific job but never stealing the show - Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw as the love interests, Isabella Rossellini as Phoenix's mother and a special mention for Moni Moshonov - one of the biggest stars of stage and screen in his native Israel - in a wonderful turn as the father. Elias Koteas and Bob Ari complete the compact ensemble, but of course it's Phoenix's show and he's always captivating, proving just how good he can be. My only complaints about the film would be an uneven and sometimes clumsy script, and cinematography that fails to leave any real impression (in stark contrast to We Own The Night, of which the cinematography was the most impressive aspect). None of that hurts the overall impression much, though - Two Lovers is still one of the most refreshing, captivating and depressing romance films around.

bandw (Spoilers) The movie starts with an aborted suicide attempt by Leonard Kraditor. Leonard is in his early 30s, lives with his Jewish parents, and works for his dad's dry cleaning store. Before we know it Leonard is romantically involved with his neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Sandra, the attractive daughter of a business associate of his dad.There are many things wrong with the script; I will cover only a few of them. The thing that sinks the story from the beginning is that neither of the women that Leonard is involved with would ever give him the time of day in real life. Living with his parents, being inarticulate, and not being able to succeed in his simple job of delivering cleaning to his dad's customers would set off enough alarms for any woman to give this man wide berth. And Sandra would have known of his suicidal impulses--such things are never secret among close families. Why would Sandra, an attractive healthy woman, pursue such a loser? Leonard's room is a mess, a physical manifestation of his mind; his mother would never allow for this kind of mess in her house.At the end Leonard and Michelle, in a spur of the moment decision, are to take off to California together. You know that this is never going to happen and are just waiting for the excuse which comes in the form of Michelle's announcing that her high-dollar married lover has decided to divorce and be with her. Leonard is crushed and in despair, but instead of another suicide attempt he returns to a party and offers Sandra the diamond ring that he was going to give to Michelle. Any normal person is not going to switch emotional gears so easily, so I doubt that an emotional train wreck like Leonard would be able to do so.Isabella Rossellini is good as Leonard's mother; Joaquin Phoenix is convincing as a mumbling nerd, but not so much as a romantic partner; sadly, Gwyneth Paltrow is wasted.This is an unbelievable concoction dreamed up by screenwriters who seemingly have little understanding how real people interact.