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

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/

oh no, please don't me bring poor Nanook back into another thread. He's tired.

Yours truly, Mister Obvious

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

Putting this here as to not stink up the devoted thread: https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/04/the-cultural-heresy-of-sinners/

But Coogler shows no real understanding of Southern blues culture beyond Smoke and Stack’s facile cynicism: “Blues wasn’t forced on us like religion,” Smoke says. “It’s the magic that we do.” The film’s opening narration about “music so true, it can penetrate the veil between life and death” panders to Millennial segregation. That old “crossroads” mythology about Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil is replaced by references to West African griots and hostile white devils. It’s critical race theory stuff, a Black Studies curriculum by way of Hollywood. (More on that below.)

And there is!

I'm proud that my two-day-old review anticipated his response

He went there.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/09/nashvilles-assassination-theory-revisited/

The news of Kirk’s public death is as wounding as Barbara Jean’s. Kirk’s religious faith and his political performance principles were lived out in how he patiently and good-naturedly dismantled the lies spoon-fed to college-age youth. Even when his debating style was aggressive, it was so in the manner of a teacher who cares. That caring was similar to the expression of shared cultural identity in Barbara Jean’s singing, particularly her trenchant vocalization of “In the Garden” among patients visiting a hospital chapel. It was part of Altman’s extraordinary stained-glass “There Shall Be One Flock” montage showing Americans practicing their faith in different settings and denominations. This sequence predates the diabolism of Millennial Democrats that Altman, an old-school liberal, would find unthinkable; instead, he dramatizes a lone gunman to indicate the sociopathy we live with daily. The perception of blended faith and politics deserves to be called Kirkian.

James T Kirkian

Was just thinking the other day that I haven't heard much from or about Armond lately and well, I may not get what I want but I suppose I get what I deserve.

I love Nashville so much, I'm inclined to like anything written about it that starts from the same place. Not sure about his hypothesis, partly because I'm not sure what the hypothesis is. But Kenny Fraiser/David Hayward does strike me as a credible pre-internet version of the solitary modern-day assassin.

Better Than!

The movies that saved movies from themselves

Going to the movies last year became one ideological battle after another. It was clear throughout 2025 that movies and media offended our trust under the guise of entertainment content that was often dishonest or dispirited. This year’s Better-Than List opposes that trend and those partisan/seditious lists and critics’ groups that awarded propaganda while pretending to salute art. Film culture reached its nadir immediately after the assassination of Charlie Kirk when, almost by reflex, leftist Hollywood released a particular consensus flick that encouraged racism and political violence. Otherwise, some good, honest art about the human condition awaits your attention.

Twinless > One Battle After Another

James Sweeney’s bromance asserted gender and romantic differences (not diversity) as the basis of our emotional common ground, from grief to friendship and big-L love — the most profound rom-com since Lubitsch’s That Uncertain Feeling. Paul Thomas Anderson’s shallow political farce was the unpopular — but media-favored — flick that mocked unresolved racism and sexism as the justification for civil war.

An Officer and a Spy > It Was Just an Accident

Roman Polanski’s take on the Dreyfus affair finally opened in the U.S. in time to examine rising anti-Jewish bigotry. Jean Dujardin’s commanding performance reveals complex personal integrity without the leaden ironies of Jafar Panahi’s Iranian thriller geared to self-righteous political paranoia.

Song Sung Blue > Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Craig Brewer finds the spiritual center of Neil Diamond’s music in the true-life tale of working-class showbiz professionals played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson. It shames the narcissism and phony Americana of Scott Cooper’s biopic about the country’s phoniest rock star.

Nouvelle Vague > Jay Kelly

Richard Linklater redeems his indie banality through sheer inspiration and admiration. The making of Godard’s Breathless gets deeper inside the art of filmmaking than Noah Baumbach’s trite, never-convincing imitation of Fellini’s 8½.

The Phoenician Scheme > Sentimental Value and Sirât

Wes Anderson’s rococo psychological mirth is appropriate for his great-man theory of history — a Wellesian ploy about how the world works that outclasses both Joachim Trier’s art-movie fakery and the overwrought techno display of Oliver Laxe’s globalist nihilism-adventure film.

The Empire > Weapons

Bruno Dumont counters Star Wars juvenilia with an adult eschatological perspective, a heaven-and-earth contrast that is morally piercing and visually amazing, while Zach Cregger taunts social collapse — sex, drugs, schools, parenting — as an occult game.

A Minecraft Movie > Sinners

Jared Hess makes the best-yet video game adaptation, blooming with childhood’s delight. But Ryan Coogler’s childish approach to black American culture — this time as a vampire rampage — insults authentic blues heritage while delighting only Obama-addled libs.

Eat the Night > Marty Supreme

Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel capture the excitement and dread of role-playing by tech-addicted siblings, a perfect contrast to the criminal deception that Josh Safdie celebrates in an ugly biography of a ping-pong champion (Timothée Chalamet) who exploits everyone he encounters. Moral hunger versus moral bankruptcy.

Marcello Mio and The President’s Wife > Hamnet

Catherine Deneuve brings iconic grace to two portraits by, respectively, Christophe Honoré and Léa Domenach of real-life women (herself and Bernadette Chirac) as influential public figures. But Chloe Zhao’s silly, occult biopic of Mrs. Shakespeare fakes female agency merely to steal glory from the dead white male bard.

Auction > When Fall Is Coming > Misericordia

Pascal Bonitzer, François Ozon, and Alain Guiraudie prove it was such a good year for the French (unlike this bad year for Hollywood) that comparing and contrasting three movies about tradition, accountability, and eccentricity measures how a culture understands itself — the essence of filmmaking — on a sliding scale.

Eephus > Train Dreams

Carson Lund laments a season of sports tradition while Clint Bentley mourns a long, wasted life: an authentic melancholic vision versus a pseudo art-flick exercise. Both show the effect of filmmakers unable to shake the trend toward America’s fading identity.

Wild Diamond > If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Agathe Riedinger’s trenchant portrait of a FOMO-obsessed teen Liane (Malou Khebizi) is more recognizable and universal than Mary Bronstein’s self-pitying almost-comedy about a middle-class American Karen.

Demons at Dawn > The Secret Agent

Julián Hernández expands the rom-com genre to illustrate that Millennial movies lack romance as a consequence of politicized sexuality that twists and defies natural identity. Kleber Mendonça Filho confuses genre tropes to distort Brazil’s guilt-ridden political past.

When Fall Is Coming > Eddington

François Ozon revisits the family secrets of a matriarch (Hélène Vincent) to reveal bonds of love, remorse, and forgiveness. Ari Aster’s parallel horror-flick approach — this time spooking the Covidapocalypse — makes remorse impossible, turning recent political history and panic into a disingenuous mess.

Happy Gilmore 2 > One Battle After Another

Kyle Newacheck directed Adam Sandler’s vision of American harmony-among-many — a golf-farce tournament played against the violent conflict of political adversaries. Sandler’s good humor opposed P.T.A.’s unbearable partisan vengeance.

Dracula > Frankenstein

Radu Jude misses when he targets conservative American politics, but at least his over-amped cultural metaphor recognizes there’s something monstrous afoot in this millennium’s embrace of socialist trauma whereas Guillermo del Toro’s sentimental metaphor for the Munchausen-by-proxy trans movement offers a contradiction in terms. Clever versus Unacceptable.

lol well he’s right that Nouvelle Vague is better than Jay Kelly, but that’s a low bar.

Had to remember that he hates the partially Sandler-driven Jay Kelly because Baumbach's Mom was mean to him back in the day.

“The Munchausen-by-proxy trans movement,” huh?

how does a film "distort" Brazil's guilt-ridden past

I liked Jay Kelly, also Sinners, One Battle After Another, Train Dreams, Weapons, Misericordia, and Eddington, and am looking forward to Hamnet, Marty Supreme,The Secret Agent, If I Had Legs, It Was Just An Accident, and Sentimental Value. I'm not that interested in seeing Nouvelle Vague or most of the others, but these takes just seem bad

You liked Jay Kelly?!

partisan against whom, Armond?

xp

I watched Jay Kelly with a friend who is a George Clooney stan, and he loved it! I'm not a Clooney fan, but we had a great time. It's hard not to like it under those circumstances.

I think it was beautifully photographed, and there were aspects of it that reminded me of Fellini, especially La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. (I know Fellini films are crossed off the list for most ilxors)

I kind of liked its idea of a solipsistic actor who can't see himself for who he really is, and how other people came to see him more clearly

I find White's gadflyism so corny, that even when I agree with him--thought One Battle wildly overrated--it doesn't feel like any kind of validation (too strong a word; it's not like I need my opinions validated) the way it might with a critic I respected. I know that he'll turn his ire on a film I like next year.

I know Fellini films are crossed off the list for most ilxors

We don't like Fellini?

I do like the Bruno Dumont film, it’s wacky.

Dumont was the first person I thought of when I saw that Artists Dumbing Down and Better For It thread.

Was curious as to whether he'd reviewed The Drama and came across this:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/04/the-damage-done-by-all-the-presidents-men/

"Hollywood's worst newspaper movie"--haven't read it yet, but I know I'm going to learn a lot.