another maniacal Armond White review, this time "Fahrenheit 9/11"

Pretty standard right-wing fare overall, basically what I would expect Washington Times reviews to resemble. Maybe White's looking for a Golden Moonie Parachute?

wtf?!?!?

Yeah let's just not make any films about it, right? Fucking twat.

Ha ha christ

whoa whoa, what??!?!? Armond White thinks The Blair Witch Project was a DOCUMENTARY?!?!@?!@??!! SOOMEBODY PLEASE REVOKE HIS FILM CRITIC'S LICENSE ASAP!!!

(tho I think he's right about Tarentino)

He really should have replaced "guilt" with "anger".

Tarantino, Kathleen Turner and Jerry Schatzberg encourages audiences to think or behave politically. American cinema in the Tarantino years has pandered to violence, racism, greed and self-satisfaction. It's not impossible that the torturers at Abu Ghraib—including even Saddam Hussein's own precedent-setting torturers—were inspired by the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. QT made sadism hip and sent it 'round the world. Now we're stuck in the middle of a global crisis for which neither he, nor Michael Moore, have an answer.

Tarantino's production company is named after a Godard film but I'll be damned if I can find any Godard in what he does.

It's infotainment!

He's more of a Melville fan by way of Woo. But really, it's all in the snazzy suits.

Bungled that of course, should read: his weakness is his lack of objectivity, which if he is a documentarist, should be his focus.

This is all brought up on that other Moore thread.

What do you lefties think about Godard's quote, "Moore doesn't distinguish between text and image. He doesn't know what he's doing." Agree/Somewhat Agree/Disagree?

I think that's probably a fair point. Moore is working in a very different tradition than Godard. Considering he's such a corpulent man, it's interesting that his films don't tend to have a 'body' in the way Godard's do. I hear the editing in 'F9/11' is 'good', but I suspect the people saying that (I think it was some BBC critic covering Cannes) are not people who think Godard's Brechtian editing style is 'good'. It's like criticizing a newspaper op-ed column for not being James Joyce.

Why shouldn't subjectivity and point-of-view be the focus of a documentarist?

Because people are lazy and want to accept the 'truths' that other present for them :)

You may have to ask someone who thinks that it is his fault.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

Armond has been gone since this thread started.

His She Said review is, well, maniacal, topped off by this: "She Said follows that specious line of media self-celebration that began with All the President’s Men, the most overrated film in American movie history." Didn't he stop to consider that AtPM is the kind of film that's being pushed to the margins of the Sight & Sound poll? I think he's going to short-circuit and explode soon as he tries to balance all these crusades.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/11/she-saids-celebrity-grudge-match/

AtPM was already well on the margins of the S&S poll before this year

"the kind of film"--i.e., I'm speaking more generally there.

Ah right, New Hollywood and all. Carry on

As per usual, his better-than list remains one of the comparatively reasonably/useful things he does any longer:

Throughout 2022, it felt as if Hollywood was daring us to go to the movies. Commercial films either offended one’s intelligence or failed to entertain. When the prestige movie glut began during awards season, it was obvious that most filmmakers were interested only in their own political bias, wrongly assuming that the public would buy it.

Examining the invasion of arrogance, incompetence, and obnoxiousness (and Sight & Sound’s feminist putsch) is both the work and pleasure of criticism — especially needed as the culture tilts toward collapse.

Making a status-quo Ten Best list would be delusional, but this year’s Better-Than List sets antidote against poison, hope against despair. It challenges media hype with good cinema alternatives.

Benediction > Tár

Terence Davies’s opulent Siegfried Sassoon biopic is also a powerful personal reflection on the director’s spiritual, sexual struggle. That same concept becomes so histrionic in Todd Field’s snob-culture take-down, it ridicules itself. Bravo to Jack Lowdon’s silent monologue — the performance of the year.

Father Stu > Everything Everywhere All at Once

Rosalind Ross directs Mark Wahlberg as Father Stuart Long, whose funny and moving religious conversion found real-life, real-cinema faith (Mel Gibson and Jacki Weaver complete the road-to-Damascus jubilation). But the Daniels team in Everything preferred cut-rate Buddhism over Christianity, wasting Michelle Yeoh in a chaotic, faithless, exhaustingly unfunny superheroine jamboree.

Ambulance > Top Gun: Maverick

Michael Bay rescues the American ideal with cinematic brio and working-class brotherhood while Tom Cruise repurposed ’80s junk as America First desperation. Bay’s dazzling vision is superlative. Anyone who doesn’t realize that Maverick is silly is just being silly.

Marx Can Wait > The Fabelmans

Marco Bellocchio’s personal family-tragedy doc reveals the depths of his artistic impulses, yet Spielberg’s indulgence of his own oft-repeated Freudian-Marxist legend (via Tony Kushner) rings totally false.

Dead for a Dollar > The Woman King

Walter Hill’s esoteric Western dramatizes modern America’s conflicting race, sex, and history myths anchored by Rachel Brosnahan’s defiant agency, the opposite of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s misandrist Afro-eccentricity.

Petit Maman > Aftersun

Celine Sciamma’s storybook fantasy intuits a child’s uncanny adult empathy, besting Charlotte Well’s unfocussed, amateurish pretend home movie. A mother-and-child reunion vs. father–daughter estrangement.

Big Bug > Nope

Jean-Pierre Jeunet makes the first great satire of the Covid-era lockdown and Big Tech enslavement. Jordan Peele looks for and curses Hollywood racism while fumbling sci-fi genre tropes.

Nitram > The Banshees of Inisherin

Justin Kurzel probes the psychic roots of an unnerving 1996 New Zealand mass murder through amazing characterizations. Martin McDonagh exploits Irish misanthropy, concocting tribal fakelore.

Raymond & Ray > Babylon

Rodrigo García’s poignant sibling drama unites a broken family and heals a broken land with compassion (not “community”) — a Borzage film for the Millennium. Damien Chazelle’s phony, overwrought history of Hollywood celebrates a broken film industry but degrades its legacy.

My Donkey, My Lover & I > EO

Caroline Vignal’s road movie follows a single woman’s love hunt through the profundity of movie romanticism (from Robert Bresson to Howard Hawks). Jerzy Skolimowski’s updated remake of a Bresson classic is strictly for nihilists.

Crimes of the Future > Decision to Leave

David Cronenberg’s analogy to decadent cinema laments society’s lost morality while Park Chan-wook’s slick, grotesque policier is decadence itself.

Lost Illusions > She Said

Xavier Giannoli’s 19th-century Balzac adaptation exposes corrupt media then and now while Maria Schrader clumsily turns New York Times reporters into petulant feminist Wooodward-Bernsteins.

Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, Personality Crisis: One Night Only > All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Salutes to two pop music artists (X-Ray Spex and David Johansen) are preferable to Laura Poitras’s nauseating politicization of cultural pseud-activist Nan Goldin. Enjoy the rock ’n’ roll and beware the derangement syndrome.

My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time

Robert Davi’s compassionate critique of an unignorable political scandal shames James Gray’s made-up TDS scandal. Doofus Gray’s America-hating autobiography is Fabelmans for dullards.

Great Freedom > The Eternal Daughter

Sebastian Meise recalls the lifelong radicalism of one man (Franz Rogowski), but Joanna Hogg’s metaphysical slog is just sub–Sofia Coppola navel-gazing.

Peaceful > The Whale

Emmanuelle Bercot concentrates on the wide impact of the mortality of an artist/father/son (Benoit Magimel). Darren Aronofsky’s embarrassing romp through all social-victim categories pretends spiritual uplift.

Peter von Kant > Tár

Just when we’ve lost sight of art’s purpose, actor Denis Ménochet’s vivid emotionalism breaks through Brecht’s vaunted V-Effekt and director François Ozon transforms Fassbinder’s own alienation devices. Cate Blanchett and Todd Field get tangled in their own false sophistication, a sign of bad times.

Bones and All > The Menu

Luca Guadagnino’s teen-cannibals-in-love movie says more about Gen Z apathy than Adam McKay’s latest failed greedy-bourgeois satire.

Tár is this year's winner of the "multiple better-than list slams" derby.

Prejudices and bigotry not in full bloom throughout but for him only merely hinted at this time (relatively speaking)

Basically yeah. Also, "Tom Cruise repurposed ’80s junk as America First desperation ... Anyone who doesn’t realize that Maverick is silly is just being silly" is his "one for me" given his forum/audience.

I’m glad his personality defects have given him a safe space free from pushback and a paycheck.

Also:

But the Daniels team in Everything preferred cut-rate Buddhism over Christianity

Man what decent human wouldn’t these days

On the other hand, there is also the first tangible evidence that he will, ultimately, re-evaluate the works of Dinesh D'Souza someday soon ...

My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time

lol would be surprised if he hasn’t gone there already

I guess my thing is AW now uses criticism as a mere delivery system for rallying bigoted forces to a fascist cause, he rode the pipeline in such a predictable and mediocre fashion and his career has a tragic arc. Reading flappy’s defenses upthread also reminds me there are plenty of people who love to see a good rant and don’t care about the collateral damage.

I guess my thing is AW now uses criticism as a mere delivery system for rallying bigoted forces to a fascist cause, he rode the pipeline in such a predictable and mediocre fashion and his career has a tragic arc.

This is exactly right. It's not even "blind pig finds acorn"/"broken clock is right twice a day" — there's absolutely no value in his opinions anymore. Even if you agree with him politically, his table-pounding is so fucking tedious. That said, I've been meaning to see Dead For A Dollar anyway, and now I want to know more about Nitram.

exhaustingly unfunny superheroine jamboree.

well, this is the exact correct summation of everything everywhere

AW now uses criticism as a mere delivery system for rallying bigoted forces to a fascist cause

Wow, well put.

These pairings make less sense than ever, in large part because he's collapsed so badly as a writer; a good writer can connect disparate things.

Yeah and he’s collapsed partially because he’s way too concerned about making sure he leaves space for anti-trans/anti-female/anti-sexual assault victims/etc in his non-reviews

To be honest I never thought much of him as a writer, he was never very good at specifics of cinema and his opinions were dishonest and based upon the reactions of others. For example hence his championing of the unknown, not distributed Hurt Locker curdling into distaste as soon as it started getting positive notices from everyone else.

Big Tech enslavement

God is there somebody particularly stupid about America reactionary thinking more than the usual

Yeah and he’s collapsed partially because he’s way too concerned about making sure he leaves space for anti-trans/anti-female/anti-sexual assault victims/etc in his non-reviews

There’s an interesting parallel(or direct linkage) with how collapsed American movement conservatism is, too.

he's collapsed so badly as a writer

This ... or else he doesn't have editors who are willing to help him out anymore. There's always that possibility too.

It’s my own fault for clicking on this thread but, much like Kanye, I just wish an air conditioner would fall on his head so I didn’t have to hear about him anymore

It’s not even like the niche relevance he at one time had is there anymore. He just exists so dicks can say “look, we got one on our side who’s Black AND gay!” He’s the platonic ideal of a token and we’d all be better off if we stopped paying attention to him.

otm

I posted an excerpt from his EO review in the Polish film thread. A+ mania, in which a Polish donkey is uncovered as a co-conspirator in the "the Biden age."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/eo-a-fable-of-the-great-reset/

"Enjoy the rock ’n’ roll and beware the derangement syndrome." I love this line. I don't know what it means, but I intend to use it, maybe on anyone I see listening to music.

would spoonerize

Armond gets in some more "Better Thans..." under the guise of reviewing Truffaut deep cut Blus

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/the-truffaut-touch-and-touchstones/

I really don't want to give him clicks.

Why did Spielberg abandon Indiana Jones? Not directing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — Spielberg was busy ruining West Side Story and fabricating The Fabelmans, instead — makes for the sorriest news of parental neglect since millionaire influence-peddler Hunter Biden got his child support reduced.

https://i.imgur.com/3M7wYy1.gif

he goes after Spielberg like a scorned psychotic ex-lover. talk about a guy whose criticism says everything about him and nil about his subjects...

A fine new entry

Perfect, Robert Davi. A portrait of strength. https://t.co/G5vAwRKGXE

— Armond White (@3xchair) August 25, 2023

So many miniature American tragedies playing out in real time as they fall for that dude, and Armond would be another one if he wasn't already kind of a dickhead.

Tagging catturd2 and, instead, settling for Arm0nd is just one of those moments that make life worth living

Maybe he can compile a special Better-Than list for famous mug shots.

Unfollowed him on Twitter, finally

The teens in TikTok clips who pitifully bounce and sing along with the film’s pre-recorded concert are the flip side of those nerds and sociopaths who lined up for The Dark Knight Rises ...

OK, sure.

... in Aurora, Colo.

oh.

dude is deeply unwell, just an actually mentally ill man ineptly weaponized by the right wing

Sharing his "better than" list ONLY because it's now become the most sane thing he does any given year, frankly. (Or closest to sane, anyway.)

John Wick 4 > Oppenheimer

Chad Stahelski climaxed the Keanu Reeves cult franchise with the year’s most visually, kinetically thrilling filmcraft. Movement is the perfect antidote to Christopher Nolan’s no-fun talkathon. Stahelski’s execution of dazzling choreographed combat extended silent-era and movie-musical slapstick — confronting mankind’s capacity for self-defense killing as a sublime moral act. He made antipathetic video-game artifice feel cathartic, unlike a nihilistic pseudo-history. Nolan, as ever, twists national defense into wearying social complexity. Hail the action genre gone nuclear, not pompous.

Rebel Moon > Killers of the Flower Moon

Zack Snyder, Stahelski’s only rival, knows what Godard knew: Myth is how we learn who we are. So Snyder remakes the childish Star Wars series into rousing adult moral lessons, whereas Martin Scorsese succumbs to America’s current self-loathing in his first political film (and first Western)— a bland epic superficially preoccupied with white supremacy. It shows Scorsese learned nothing from John Ford.

All of Us Strangers > Saltburn

Andrew Haigh’s pop-melodrama finds family-based emotion in the erotic awakening of lonely Brit Andrew Scott. Emerald Fennell’s phony analysis of England’s class system attacks the family unit through feminist/sexual transgression. A triumph commemorating Pet Shop Boys sophistication vs. a disaster that perverts a great Pet Shop Boys song.

The Taste of Things > Maestro

Tran Anh Hung’s exquisite re-creation of French culinary dedication practiced by Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel. It embarrasses the disingenuous dishonesty of Bradley Cooper’s autograph-hound pseudo-biography that toasts Leonard Bernstein’s political, sexual dissembling as modern virtue.

Winter Boy > May December

Christophe Honoré dares candid semi-autobiography in a coming-of-age story about Paul Kircher’s coming-of–personal responsibility. It bests another dishonest Todd Haynes academic thesis, this time indulging pedophilia as social defiance and artistic audacity.

Asteroid City > Past Lives

Wes Anderson’s sunny, stylized nostalgic adolescent outing recalls America’s natural diversity in the ’50s, back when we believed in social, scientific, and artistic potential. Celine Song’s sad-sack narcissism prefers a tribal, Buddhist excuse for immaturity and social disconnection.

Will-o’-the-Wisp > Barbie

João Pedro Rodrigues interrogates Western art, sex, and politics when Portuguese heir Mauro Costa protests his heritage by becoming a dancing firefighter. This is genuine cultural radicalism, surreal and funny. Unlike Greta Gerwig’s toy-feminism, a marketing coup that sold misandry and ineptitude alongside vapid white privilege — all the more biased in its supporting cast of diversity tokens.

Everything Went Fine > Passages

François Ozon’s broken-family drama in which Sophie Marceau accepts the weirdness of her father André Dussollier as like her own. But Ira Sachs equates queerness with generational selfishness. Healing vs. rupture.

Nobody’s Hero > American Fiction

Alain Guiraudie teases French liberalism when middle-class Jean-Charles Clichet harbors a Muslim terrorist and then falls in love with middle-aged hooker Noémie Lvovksy. Hypocrisy becomes farce whereas Cord Jefferson practices the same racial hypocrisy as the black pathology trend of American lit that he pretends to satirize. Deep vs. shallow.

Full River Red > Origin and Rustin

Zhang Yimou’s visually stunning ode to China’s warrior history is a movie to marvel at and heed. Ava DuVernay extolling Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s intellectual research into the global “root causes” of American racism is off-the-charts ludicrous. So is George Wolfe’s inadvertent civil-rights-era comedy Rustin. Strong, artful patriotism vs. Hollywood weakness.

Full Time > The Holdovers

Eric Gravel’s empathy with Laure Calamy’s stressed young mother seeking pride and self-sufficiency teaches something real and non-cliché about working-class identity to indie-movie smarty-pants Alexander Payne.

The Crime Is Mine > Poor Things

François Ozon’s delirious feminist farce captures the inanity of the #MeToo movement. His cinematic and theatrical artifice goes back through the history of sexual duplicity, while art fraud Yorgos Lanthimos defends feminist hypocrisy in his odious sexual horror comedy.

Thanksgiving > Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Barbie

Eli Roth has made the first movie to evoke J6, not shying away from how national chaos was distorted and misunderstood by mainstream corporate media. Brash, hilarious Roth satirizes American self-destruction, leaving Nolan, Scorsese, and Gerwig with moral and ideological blood on their hands.

I agree more than I disagree!

All of Us Strangers > Saltburn

I'd say this is not a contrarian take but my Twitter and Letterboxd feeds disagree.

Certainly Nobody's Hero, Everything Went Fine, and Will-o’-the-Wisp deserve more mentions.

Wonder how the NRO crowd will dig the oral sex sequence in Will-o’-the-Wisp.

Almost fitting that they'll chase it down with the decapitations of Thanksgiving, really

Eli Roth has made the first movie to evoke J6, not shying away from how national chaos was distorted and misunderstood by mainstream corporate media.

if I hold up this sentence in front of a mirror will it make more sense or

the closer you were to get to understanding that, the more I'd worry about you

Pairing Asteroid City with Past Lives is so ridiculous, it's intriguing. It's also ridiculous.

(I won't even get into his valuation of their relative worth.)

A little disappointed he didn't have Sound of Freedom > Zone of Interest or Chicken Run II or something...

Super Mario Bros. > Occupied City

Lady Ballers > Orlando, My Political Biography