Sprightly YouTube film reviewers Marcia Nasatir and Lorenzo Semple bill themselves as the Reel Geezers

Patrick Goldstein writes:

WHEN was the last time you heard anyone get excited about a new film critic? That was my reaction when "Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy began raving to me about the review he’d seen on YouTube. "It was terrific," he said. "I sent it to George [Clooney] right away." On Ain’t It Cool News, Wes Anderson made a point of singling out a review of his film "Darjeeling Limited" from the same YouTube site.

Although it would surely be good for the profession if this new voice was a fresh-faced 23-year-old, things are rarely what we expect. The coolest new critics on the block turn out to be a pair of oldsters who were born before the arrival of talkies. Billed as the Reel Geezers, they post smart, delightfully acerbic reviews on YouTube (just type in "Reel Geezers" to find their latest efforts), where they’ve built a small but loyal following of both rank-and-file fans and Hollywood insiders.

They simply introduce themselves as Marcia & Lorenzo, showing pictures of themselves as little kids. But as Gilroy discovered when he went searching for them on IMDB, the Geezers are hardly amateurs.

Lorenzo is actually Lorenzo Semple, 84. One of Hollywood’s top screenwriters in the 1970s, he helped write movies for virtually every star of the day, notably Warren Beatty ("The Parallax View"), Robert Redford ("Three Days of the Condor"), Steve McQueen ("Papillon") and Paul Newman ("The Drowning Pool"). His foil is Marcia Nasatir, 81, a longtime agent, pioneering woman production executive and producer of such films as "The Big Chill" and "Hamburger Hill."