2 Cents Critic

Tune in as Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) jumps back into their guest seat so that she and Arthur can lay out their rankings of the top ten TV shows of 2025. Hollywood’s campaign to blacklist Melissa Barrera, the relatability of Carol Sturka, defending Trinity Santos, and rejecting the incorrect opinion that Heated Rivalry is merely “yaoi slop” land as some of the discussion matter for this...

Tune in as Kate Hergott ( Bookwild ) jumps onboard the program for a breakdown of Ace of Spades, the 2021 YA mystery-thriller book by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé that follows two Black students at a private school as they endure dogged harassment from an anonymous threat who’s looking to expose their secrets and sabotage all the hard work they’ve put into creating a good life for themselves. Chiamaka be...

Tune in as Rolo Tony ( @PoorOldRoloTony ) hops back into his guest seat so that he and Arthur can dish out their rankings of the top ten movies of 2025. The hosts’ honorable mentions, encouraging audiences to listen to Black people and Black women’s perspectives on One Battle After Another, the punk rock nature of kindness and hope, and comparing If I Had Legs I’d Kick You to The Babadook and Nigh...

Happy New Year! Tune in as Guy Bradford ( Jesters of Ravenloft: A D&D Podcast ) hops back onto the podcast for this first episode of 2026 in order to break down The Truman Show, the 1998 psychological comedy-drama film about an insurance salesman who comes to realize he’s been the unwitting star of a reality TV program that uses instruments like hidden cameras and paid actors to manufacture an...

Tune in as the Christmas season comes to a close on 2CC! For this fifth and final episode of December (as well as the final episode of 2025), Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) is hopping back onto the program for a breakdown of Eyes Wide Shut, the 1999 psychosexual drama film about a Manhattan doctor who, after learning his wife had fantasized about sleeping with another man, embarks on a drea...

Tune in as the Christmas fun stays strong on 2CC! For this fourth episode of December, Karyn Raynor ( Chick-Lit ) is jumping back into their guest chair to unpack Black Christmas, the 2006 remake of the 1974 Christmas slasher horror movie in which a house full of sorority sisters face off against a stalker who terrorizes them with unnerving prank phone calls and a thirst for murder. The difference...

Tune in as this program plunges deeper into the holiday season! For this third episode of December, Clayton Jones II and Shawn Murphy ( Men Who Like Men Who Like Movies! ) are circling back around to review Love Hard, the 2021 Netflix Christmas rom-com about the fake-dating and matchmaking antics that ensue after a dating column writer travels across the country for a seemingly charming guy and th...

Tune in as the Christmas season keeps rolling forward on the podcast! For this second episode of December, Hannah, Rebecca, and Sarah ( Can I Spoil Something? ) are rejoining 2CC for a dive into Krampus: The Yule Lord, the 2012 holiday horror novel by Brom that takes you on a grisly and festive journey alongside a struggling singer who gets dragged into a mission that the horned folkloric figure K...

Tune in as the Christmas season launches on 2CC! For this first episode of December, Rolo Tony ( @PoorOldRoloTony ) is jumping back onto the podcast to cover Black Christmas, the 1974 Christmas slasher horror film about a group of sorority sisters who are dealing with menacing prank phone calls and the dogged pursuit of a homicidal and sexually perverse stalker. The surprisingly feminist politics...

Tune in as Kristen and Mariah ( Literary Liberation ) collaborate with the podcast to focus on They Both Die at the End, the 2017 YA speculative fiction novel by Adam Silvera that covers two teenage boys taking an existential journey through a world where a company called Death-Cast can call you up and alert you to the daunting fact that you’ll die in less than twenty-four hours—a fact that those...

Tune in as Rolo Tony ( @PoorOldRoloTony ) regains his seat at the 2CC table for a dive into Comet, the 2014 romance movie about a relationship that starts with a chance meeting at a meteor shower and then stretches on through a parallel universe or two over a six-year timespan. Drawing connections between this film and (500) Days of Summer, Dell putting on such a Sherlock Holmesian air, the sci-fi...

Tune in as Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) hops back onto the podcast for a discussion on Rope, the 1948 thriller film about a pair of men who dare to see if they can carry out the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party at their apartment—the place where they have their victim’s corpse all tucked away. The lost art of homoeroticism, avoiding the spoilery trailer for Project Hail Mary, nitp...

Joining the podcast today is Chris Peckover, the director of the 2016 Christmas horror-comedy movie Better Watch Out. This program had actually devoted  a whole episode  to that suspenseful and grimly funny ride last holiday season, so it’s only fitting for Chris himself to finally hop into the guest seat. An alternate career path that Chris could have taken, the racist and xenophobic violence of...

Tune in as Marie Nicola ( Alt. Pop. Repeat  and  Past//Forward ) circles back around to the podcast for a plunge into Son of the White Mare, the 1981 animated fantasy adventure movie about a horse’s human son who embarks on a quest to save the world with the help of his superpowers and his two brothers. The phallic depiction of a sword and other sexualized symbolism, encouraging more respect for a...

Tune in as Dustin Holden ( The Rewatch Recap ) jumps back onto the program for a discussion on The Worst Witch, the 1986 fantasy TV movie about the magical shenanigans that a good-hearted and accident-prone student undergoes at an esteemed witch academy. The blatant inspiration that the Harry Potter series must have drawn from this flick, the moments where this is somewhat a musical, and the absol...

Tune in as Rolo Tony ( @PoorOldRoloTony ) circles back around to the podcast in order to unpack Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, the 2022 horror anthology Netflix miniseries whose stories range from a grave robber who runs up against swarms of vicious rats and the squirm-inducing results of a mysterious lotion to the psychologically shattering impact of some macabre paintings and a con...

Tune in as Mama D ( Petals of Support ) returns to the program for a breakdown of The Babadook, the 2014 horror movie about the supernatural terror that a widowed single mother and her six-year-old son contend with after reading a children’s pop-up book about a top hat-wearing monster. Reading Samuel as autistic, the burdens of motherhood, children preventing their parents from getting a restful s...

Tune in as Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) returns to the podcast to talk all about Taxi Driver, the 1976 psychological drama film about a Vietnam War veteran who heads down a bitter and lonely path while working as a nighttime taxi driver and wrestling with what he views to be urban decay in New York City. Travis Bickle’s Madonna-whore complex, the multiple parallels and contrasts that can...

Tune in as Hannah, Rebecca, and Sarah ( Can I Spoil Something? ) join 2CC to unpack The House Across the Lake, the 2022 thriller novel by Riley Sager that follows a grieving and alcoholic actress as she spies on her neighbors while taking shelter at her family’s lake house in Vermont, where she ends up fixating on the mystery of one such neighbor who goes missing. How this book carries out its non...

Tune in as Robyn Zabukovec ( @TheFinalGirly ) circles back around to the podcast to cover Blue Ruin, the 2013 revenge thriller about the brutal and messy fallout from a quest for vengeance on which a drifter embarks against the man who killed his parents twenty years ago. Movies that have “sound” in the title and other easy ways to snag an Oscar, the underrated con artist flick I Care a Lot and ot...

Tune in as Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) returns to their guest seat for a breakdown of Memento, the 2000 neo-noir thriller film about a former insurance claims investigator who uses notes, Polaroids, and tattoos to navigate his way through anterograde amnesia and hunt down whoever is responsible for killing his wife and giving him this memory disorder in the first place. The unusual path...

Tune in as Brett Salter ( Irish Salt ) rejoins the podcast for a review and recap of Looper, the 2012 sci-fi thriller about a hitman who has to contend with messy timey-wimey mechanics, crime syndicate enemies, and a mission in which he needs to kill a future version of himself that’s been sent back to his present-day world. The ways in which the messiness of time travel does and doesn’t work for...

Tune in as Shawn Murphy ( Men Who Like Men Who Like Movies! ) hops back into his guest seat for a discussion on Nightcrawler, the 2014 neo-noir crime thriller about a stringer who roams Los Angeles after nightfall with a camcorder in hand and twists the city into his own morbid landscape of news fodder. The ridiculousness of the Oscars snubbing Jake Gyllenhaal for this career-defining performance,...

Tune in as Marie Nicola ( Alt. Pop. Repeat  and  Past//Forward ) jumps back onto 2CC for a plunge into Trance, the 2013 neo-noir thriller about the twisty-turny journey of hypnotherapy that an art auctioneer undergoes in order to figure out where a lost painting went in the midst of a heist. The roots that this mindbender has in a British TV movie from 2001, casting doubt on the supposed efficacy...

Tune in as Anna ( @banananna024 / @formergleek ) jumps back onto the podcast for a review and recap of Sweetpea, the 2024 darkly comedic thriller TV show about a newspaper assistant who is enduring too many trials, including the return of a bully from school, and gets pushed to the point of unleashing those bloodthirsty desires that have been lurking underneath her meek appearance. Anna’s recent M...