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

I don't get the cult status of Event Horizon.

It starts well.

I just remember some friends in high school who loved it insisting I watch it with them and me being like "so...when does it get good?"

Were you also in high school?

I saw it in high school and thought it was a mess.

yup. (xpost)

It might just be me, but I rarely agree with anything I thought in high school anymore.

Yah, he actually trusts public opinion critical consensus being wrong more than he trusts his own taste. Not that I blame him.

that would be an interesting thread - aesthetic/artistic choices from high school you still agree with xp

Critical consensus is often drivel, but, like the modern GOP, White has built his career on aggrievement: somebody's always wrong, somebody always deserves a scalping.

I don't agree with a lot of what I thought in high school (American Beauty, it seems, isn't that good after all), but I didn't like PWSA's Soldier at the time and I'm not really chomping at the bit to reassess that.

Revisiting high school faves is always dangerous. I'm genuinely scared to take a fresh look at Chasing Amy.

You should be.

Don't do it, you'll be horrified.

"When I die and go to hell, it's just gonna be [Chasing Amy] on a perpetual loop"

- a friend of mine, a few years back.

It still kind of haunts me that I was at one point in my life a person who thought that was a good movie.

I owned Live's Throwing Copper. We've all been there.

sl4nt (2 diff critics) also recommends PWSA over PTA

I didn't, but hearing that album mentioned kinda gets at the heart of why I'm not the type to get all nostalgic over high school. (xpost)

Event Horizon is a really great idea and early on Sam Neill really carries it, but it goes off the rails pretty fast and PWSA's direction is not one of the best things about it.

The idea that serious non-Armond film critics/fans are repping for this man (whatever they think about PTA) is utterly depressing to me

1994 Shopping
1995 Mortal Kombat
1997 Event Horizon
1998 Soldier
2002 Resident Evil
2004 Alien vs. Predator
2008 Death Race
2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife
2011 The Three Musketeers
2012 Resident Evil: Retribution

lol Glenn Kenny:

anyone who isn't twelve will be no more than momentarily amused by the fact that two directors with similar names and polarized generic characteristics premiered films on the same day, but White's gotta make a thesis out of it

nice

does he mean "genetic characteristics"? "genreic characteristics"?

love this guy: "Upcoming work by Kanye West, Iris DeMent, Paul W.S. Anderson and the Taviani brothers, whose Caesar Must Die premieres at the New York Film Festival, could show work that goes beyond seasonal hype."

there's nothing wrong with finding worth in trashy films but AW never really explains what kind of cinematic merit he finds in things like 'resident evil.' he sort of starts to do that in the first paragraph here but then he just goes back to his old bean-counting routine: this movie is 'unforgettable,' this other movie is 'unbearable.' no reasons, no arguments, just a bunch of contentions. it's like arguing with a 5-year-old.

A half dozen mentions of "lazy critics" thrown in whenever it wasn't clear who he's trying to flip off.

wanna make clear that my love of event horizon doesn't in any way hinge on a sense of overall quality or even respect for its director. it's kind of a mess and often quite silly, but despite that, i enjoy it enormously. spooky atmosphere, good gore, quick pacing and some wonderful production design. i don't ask for much...

there's nothing wrong with finding worth in trashy films but AW never really explains what kind of cinematic merit he finds in things like 'resident evil.' he sort of starts to do that in the first paragraph here but then he just goes back to his old bean-counting routine: this movie is 'unforgettable,' this other movie is 'unbearable.' no reasons, no arguments, just a bunch of contentions. it's like arguing with a 5-year-old.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Wednesday, September 19, 2012 3:59 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. i would really love armond if he actually explained his interpretations. but that's par the course for contrarians: say something loud and surprising and just leave it there for the reader to get exasperated at.

also i'd like him if he actually paid attention to the majority of the movies he covers. his pans are like 70% misinformation on the most basic level.

When I die and go to hell, it's just gonna be [Rachel getting married] on a perpetual loop

with Peggy Noonan singing "Unknown Legend."

https://twitter.com/thighmaster/statuses/248576493662371840
https://twitter.com/3xchair/statuses/248612135901462528

interesting! when i very briefly ran a movie critic commentary blogspot i eventually concluded that "falling asleep" must be part of his method.

it was very funny

adult, professional, courteous

http://cityarts.info/2012/10/08/cityarts-exclusive-arts-analysis-beasts-of-the-northern-wild/

“I’m trying to make sense of the acclaim for Precious and the concurrent advent of Barack Obama.”

Weird, since I'm trying to make sense of how much self-loathing there might be in his final paragraph on The Paperboy: "A final key to the unarticulated bitterness of Daniels’ hysteria: The trio of black women singing in the dive bar where McConaughey picks up trade. Note how their angry-faced gestures betray modern drag queen hostility rather than Civil Rights era generosity and musical pleasure. That anachronistic sexual/racial rage exposes Daniels. The Paperboy ultimately is a drag-act response to the legacy of Southern bigotry Americans have forgotten and Northern ignorance they now embrace."

I've never seen a film by Lee Daniels, but everything I've read about him suggests that White is pretty otm with this one (although it's low-hanging fruit, and his writing is incomprehensible). As long as he talks about Daniels, that is, when he begins accusing the liberal (white) elite of loving him, I'm scratching my head. Wasn't it Oprah who produced Precious? Hasn't 30 Rock been mercilessly satirizing that film? And did Paperboy really cause a 'ruckus' at this years Cannes-festival? Everything I've read about it suggested that most critics were just shaking their heads and getting on with it...

Shadowboxer is another Lee Daniels film I watched, and whoa was it weird.

it's low-hanging fruit, and his writing is incomprehensible

Yeah, he bends over backwards to make it seem as though everyone loves The Paperboy or something, which, wtf.

well even some critics who think The Paperboy is insane dreck say it's worth seeing for the facepalms (or maybe just McC's ass).

If McC indeed showers next to a Tom of Finland, I can probably stomach a small amount of Nic pee.

@TeganMH
Tegan Higginbotham

Nicole Kidman has denied using fake urine in new film, Paperboy. But critics are skeptical, saying the pee looked unnatural & expressionless

That's how you know it's hers!

ebert reviewed the paperboy as if it were wild things, so i've been interested

FACT CHECK:

The mess of Southern-depravity cliches says as much about 53-year-old Daniels’ fuzzy recall of the Civil Rights era...

A few paragraphs later:

The way Daniels integrates an anachronistic playlist of 60s-70s r&b tunes into The Paperboy’s story (set in 1969, the year of Daniels’ birth)

Also, how are '60s songs anachronistic if the film is set in 1969?

These characters would still be listening to Spike Jones.

Yeah, he bends over backwards to make it seem as though everyone loves The Paperboy or something, which, wtf.

― Ham Lushbaugh (Eric H.), Tuesday, October 9, 2012 2:03 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because if he didn't, he'd only have a sucky movie to trash, not the big bad critical establishment that's so overrun with hipsters and nihilists.

armond white is just following in the great bosley crowther tradition of writing reviews of movies you've slept through.

also the only reasonable responses to AW are to ignore him or to make fun of him (or like glenn kenny, say you'll do the first but keep doing the second). there is absolutely no point in trying to parse any of his reviews. he has nothing of interest to say, and his writing is only symptomatic of his own complexes.

"Won’t Back Down is a condescending version of what the excellent action movie Never Back Down..."

In case you think I made that up: http://cityarts.info/2012/09/28/the-miseducation-of-viola-davis/