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

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There's probably a good point or two buried in here, but who can tell?

FILM OF THE FASCIST LIBERAL
Michael Moore mistakes image for message, panders, gloats.

By Armond White

Before Quentin Tarantino and his fellow Cannes jurors passed judgment on President Bush by awarding Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 the Palme d'Or (thus inflating the film's importance), they should have queried themselves: Have they done anything in their own films to tame the arrogance of a man, a moviegoer, like Bush? Not much in the careers of American jurors 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.

To pretend that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a work of art is disingenuous. Moore himself is part of the punditocracy that, like unscrupulous politicians, solicits trite sentiment. His exploitative title doesn't measure temperature; it disgraces that sorrowful date just to inflame liberal guilt. For Moore, guilt covers everything that stemmed from Bush's election and is only eased by blame. Moore doesn't separate the election from the terrorists' attacks or from the war on Iraq. As in Bowling for Columbine, he lines up unrelated points for a domino effect of dissatisfaction. This is not historical context; it's a harangue.

But in the Tarantino era, film folk seldom look at movies intelligently—or politically. They become dupes for the sarcastic invective Moore offers in place of argument. His supposed "coup" of Bush visiting a Florida elementary school after being informed of the first World Trade tower hit turns out a dud. Moore times Bush's visit with a digital counter but clearly we're not watching Bush wallow in playtime or indecision. It's seven minutes of the most powerful man in the world suffering. He's miserably distracted. Moore's insensitivity—certain to the point of hostility that he alone is right—amounts to liberalism with a fascist face.

The orgy of self-congratulation at Cannes proved film culture has lost the imperative of humane understanding. The lunacy was repeated stateside with local acclaim for Jehane Noujaim's specious Control Room. Apparently, the double whammy of 9/11 and the Iraq War has so rattled modern moral conscience that American self-hatred is the new documentary mode. No one required Noujaim to trace the history of Al Jazeera or examine its standard content. Her celebration of Al Jazeera (as opposition to any media representing American interests) was carelessly praised as some kind of palliative: "The number one must-see film of the summer." "An essential movie [that] not only goes through the looking glass, but turns the mirror back on us."

As Kevin Costner worried in JFK, we are indeed through the looking glass now. Political paranoia has turned critics and festival jurors into small-minded esthetes who prize their own objection to the Iraq War over their obligation to truth. Through Noujaim's ineptitude (or is she just biased?) the propagandists of Al Jazeera are defended simply to please Bush's opponents, those willing to believe that Americans are always wrong, always to blame, never to be trusted. It's unbearable to sit in a Control Room audience full of masochistic Americans lapping up the calumny.

Of course, Noujaim heroizes journalists, the most duplicitous of modern professionals, on both sides of the war. She humors the U.S. military spokesman at Centcom in Baghdad as well as the very Westernized Al Jazeera employees. Her naive suggestion that journalists are apolitical matches Moore's disregard of journalistic accountability. (That's one way to guarantee good reviews.) She cannily keeps her distance from those Al Jazeera employees who wear robes and turbans. Noujaim wants to make Arab reporters seem just like ours—an elite class—so she refrains from asking about their politics. This ruse of journalistic fairness and impartiality links Control Room to Fahrenheit: They're sham docs for gullible viewers. Both films use non-inquiring "entertainment" devices (talking heads as celebrities) at precisely the moment we should be looking at the world more seriously, delving into personal motive.

The corruption of documentary with entertainment is at the heart of Michael Moore's style—it's also his failing. Cheap, easy laughs don't constitute an argument; like pity and self-righteous anger, it all stems from simplistic outrage. His best moment shows a phalanx of black congresspersons protesting the 2000 presidential election and being undermined by the Senate (Al Gore presiding). By targeting Bush, Moore absolves all those bad senators of their responsibilities.

But Moore neglects the real journalistic work of seeking out why this intramural betrayal happened. He's after an effect, not the facts. Difficult, gut-twisting and disillusioning as politics are, Moore never inquires into the human basis of political behavior. Such revelations once distinguished the documentary as an art form; now the genre is merde. There's no insight into the political process or why politicians routinely cheat their constituency—such as Democratic congressman John Conyers Jr. admitting, "We don't read most of the bills!" Thus Moore lets a soundbite explain why the Patriot Act passed.

As facile as the makers of The Blair Witch Project and Capturing the Friedmans, Moore's doc method avoids complexity. He makes trite points (Bush golfing, politicos putting on make-up) that vitiate his professed seriousness. Like Noujaim, Moore knows that his pseudo-serious audience doesn't want debate. Their mandate is for superficial provocation: Slam Bush and the war so we don't have to ponder our own capitalism or unwillingness to fight.

Neither Fahrenheit nor Control Room tell us what life is like now, in what the West knows as the Terrorist Millennium. Glossing the issues of "a staged war," emphasizing Bush's incompetence and the mendacity of his cabinet (even Noujaim offers distanced ridicule of Bush policies) is, essentially, an ad hominem attack, not ideological or moral reasoning. Merde. These filmmakers practice the lazy tactic of cutting from an inane Bush speech to screaming, injured Iraqi women or children. This obfuscates the war with sentimentality. (Not just morally offensive editing, it hides behind the notion that killing men is an acceptable consequence of war but only a monster would harm women and children.) Moore and Noujaim's "entertaining" sallies (gotcha shots of Bush père et fils shaking hands with Saudi business partners; grieving mothers of U.S. soldiers) might be enough to sway the inattentive, but both movies leave important questions unasked.

Moore would have audiences believe that the security alert codes are entirely a Pentagon hoax (although he doesn't investigate why the national media goes along with it). Noujaim suggests there's no bias in Al Jazeera's rhetoric of images and speeches. (She even accepts a reporter's disdain for the Kurds in Iraq). Each pompous filmmaker ignores the threat of fanaticism—and the reality of American panic—because Iraq is their only cause. They're incapable of substantive political discourse. Moore likes to put bigwigs on the spot (including Ricky Martin and a gum-smacking Britney Spears!) but he never interviews people who can articulate an opposing point of view. In his hypocrisy, he chides the corporate greed behind Halliburton and the Carlyle Group as if it were alien to American custom.

This obtuse journalism also occurs in Control Room. Most reviewers quoted an Al Jazeera exec saying he wanted his children to be educated in America, but none observed his snide, middle-class contempt. (Was it too much like their own?) A good example of the complication that these movies skirt is the same exec's anger over a U.S. missile strike that hit Al Jazeera headquarters killing a correspondent and cameraman. "This is a crime," he says. "It must be avenged!" Noujaim accepts his threat as understandable rage, rather than demand journalistic integrity. No American reviews noticed this.

These films play too loosely with the passions aroused by the war, pandering to liberal Americans' kick-me guilt. That partly explains the Cannes debacle—many liberals simply want their prejudices entertained. This reduces the Palm d'Or to the level of the MTV Movie Awards.

Good, because Cannes has been on an anti-American spree since lauding Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Such grandstanding political gestures don't address popular cinema's decline—proof that people no longer recognize quality or care that a documentary be sound and informative. Few connect the ideology of pop culture to real-world political activity.

Jean-Luc Godard once famously said, "Every edit is a political act." But Godard's denunciation of Fahrenheit 9/11 was ignored by a U.S. media fawning over its Cannes victory (the latest Harvey Weinstein promotional stunt, facilitated by stooge Quentin). No major American media outlets quoted Godard: "Moore doesn't distinguish between text and image. He doesn't know what he's doing."

This time, Jean-Luc is only half right. Moore very deliberately mixes tv drama and movie clips into his rhetorical hodge-podge (referencing Bonanza, Dragnet and song clips by REM). These tropes probably made Tarantino delirious. Fahrenheit seizes upon the mess of postmodern capitalist pop only to misread how pop trivia malnourishes the moral lives of audiences—those who are then sent off to war, as well as Beltway politicians and Wall Street bankers who have the privilege to dismiss pop as escapism.

That's what Godard meant about distinguishing text and image. In Moore's doc style, images have only superficial, convenient meaning and no historical resonance—unlike Peter Davis' 1974 Vietnam doc Hearts and Minds, which used Hollywood clips (Bataan) to show the ideological indoctrination of pop culture. Davis suggested that a generation was fooled into romanticizing war and xenophobia. That was part of how Vietnam protestors understood their experience. Moore, being culturally ignorant, stands on shaky ground when he ridicules GIs who listen to pop on bombing missions, never respecting their cultural conditioning or examining their sense of patriotism. He's as clueless as those critics who lambasted David O. Russell's Desert Storm satire Three Kings. (A neglect that helped condition the country to continue Bush Sr.'s war.)

Moore doesn't understand the link between the Entertainment Industrial Complex and the Military Industrial Complex, and his dumbed-down method of turning political tragedy into comedy is part of the problem. It's a class vice in which the media elite can exercise disdain while pitying the underclass who must pay the price. Fahrenheit 9/11 becomes infuriating every time Moore uses a poor or black person to symbolize Bush's homeland victims (the same arrogance the Coen brothers pointed out with the Mother Jones gag in The Ladykillers). He returns to Flint, MI (the setting for Roger & Me) for sociological cheap shots but misses the real story of the post-9/11 experience—such as life among Muslim immigrants in Detroit where suspicion and opportunism mix. Or even the middle-American discomfort explained in Neil Young's Greendale, a vastly more revealing film.

Propaganda like Fahrenheit 9/11 won't help today's moviegoers gain political insight. Moore's condescension settles on young GIs wounded in Iraq, now in a veterans' hospital (where they face lost funding and benefits). One vet gives Moore what he wants: "I'm going to be very active this year and make sure that the Democrats take power." We're not supposed to remember the opening sequence that showed Democrats complicit with Bush's ascension and the invasion of Iraq. Moore, as desultory as Jerry Bruckheimer, simply wants to get a rise out of us. Like Tarantino, he's uninterested in making movies that show how the world really works.

Fahrenheit 9/11 and Control Room leave viewers susceptible to the deceptions of politicians and media charlatans. Exploiting the Iraq invasion and American political distress is a form of war profiteering. Documentaries this poor are no better than pulp fiction.

(so not only are these films bad but they are partly responsible for murder and torture worldwide, etc....what a scumbag)

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 17:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Armond White mistakes ass for hole in ground, shits, giggles.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, my. "The propagandists of al-Jazeera," etc.

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?

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Was that elementary school actually in Florida?

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:04 (twenty-one years ago)

"Punditocracy"??!! I love it.

― andy, Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know what he's on about here, his POV is non-existent and completely arbitrary based on whatever the hell he had for breakfast.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Does he actually refute any of the facts in Moore's film? I didn't see any examples. That says something, doesn't it?

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:13 (twenty-one years ago)

The headline is the worst thing: calling Moore a fascist is just loopy. The review is based on the premise that Moore oughtn't to make propaganda or op-ed, but rather mull for 90 minutes over 'complexities'. Well, why on earth should he? The weird thing is that White thinks Moore should really be pondering 'our own capitalism or our unwillingness to fight'. Well, what unwillingness to fight? Surely the anti-capitalistic, pro-militaristic film White seems to be advocating would fit much better with fascism that Moore's liberalism does? Perhaps the headline is referring to White rather than Moore.

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:18 (twenty-one years ago)

No one required Noujaim to trace the history of Al Jazeera or examine its standard content. Her celebration of Al Jazeera (as opposition to any media representing American interests) was carelessly praised as some kind of palliative: "The number one must-see film of the summer." "An essential movie [that] not only goes through the looking glass, but turns the mirror back on us."

wtf?!?!?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh no! Fahrenheit 9/11 incorporates morally bankrupt "pop culture"! Oh NO!

― Sean Thomas (sgthomas), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Exploiting the Iraq invasion and American political distress is a form of war profiteering.

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

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Summary of this review: 'I am very annoyed by this film.'
Summary of our response: 'Good.'

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

She cannily keeps her distance from those Al Jazeera employees who wear robes and turbans.

Ha ha christ

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:22 (twenty-one years ago)

As facile as the makers of The Blair Witch Project...

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)

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:22 (twenty-one years ago)

he's also obviously never watched three kings all the way through

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

It seems as though the film has been pretty effective at pissing off the people that it is meant to piss off. In that sense, it certainly is a success.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Tarentino is being consistent. He's not advocating peace but administering a dose of the old ultraviolence to Bush.

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

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 admire Moore's intention of bringing some of these connections, such as that between Bush and the Saudi royal family, to light. I just think he has a very heavy-handed style and his weakness is his completely overt subjectivity; which if he is a documentarist, it should be; otherwise, he is an entertainer, and the movie should not be passed off as fact. My biggest problem with it is that question - what is the intent of the movie, is it entertainment (Ricky Martin anyone?), or news?

― The Devil's Triad (calstars), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

"it disgraces that sorrowful date just to inflame liberal guilt."

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

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I meant he was right about Tarantino in this:

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.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

what is the intent of the
movie, is it entertainment (Ricky Martin anyone?), or news?

It's infotainment!

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:27 (twenty-one years ago)

first frag should read: "Tarantino, Kathleen Turner and Jerry Schatzberg [don't encourage] audiences to think or behave politically" since I truncated it.

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't follow his writing closely, but my general impression of Armond White is that he's been slowly losing his mind since the mid-eighties -- every column or essay I've ever seen of his has him seriously blowing his gasket over something or other. CONFIRM OR DENY!

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

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.

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

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

White is not wrong in that instance, but it's definitely unfair to lay all of the blame on Tarantino. In fact, by doing this, he's making himself as guilty as Moore by blowing things out of proportion.

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

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

― The Devil's Triad (calstars), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus, did you ever get around to seeing Kill Bill? I would actually love to read a Kill Bill review by you.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

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.

― scott seward (scott seward), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't care of AW doesn't like Tarantino, but to let that dislike turn into saying "he could be responsible for prison torture from the U.S. and the Iraqis" is simplistic, pretentious bullshit from someone who doesn't understand that this sort of crap was going on in the world long before Quentin Tarantino.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

No, Scott, I didn't. I probably will see it one day, though, and if ILX still exists I'll tell you my thoughts.

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.

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

"As Kevin Costner worried in JFK..." !!!!!!
Priceless. Armond White is a buffoon.

― Neb Reyob (Ben Boyer), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Wait wait wait isn't Armond White the guy who creamed his pants about 3000 Miles to Graceland?!?!

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

his weakness is his lack of objectivity, which if he is a documentarist, should be his focus.

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

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

I dunno, Gear, although Reservoir Dogs does kinda fit in with the Peckinpah legacy, I'd say its depiction of torture doesn't fit any specific trope other than "huh huh this looks cool, esp. with old 1970s tunes." Big difference between that and the opening credits of Wild Bunch (okay I know its insects but THEY'RE STANDING IN FOR PEOPLE).

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

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 :)

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

And that's Michael Moore's fault, how?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Right I understand that, but I think he's overstating the film's influence on the regime of Saddam Hussein.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

And that's Michael Moore's fault, how?

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

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Al-Jazeera bashing = automatic idiotic review.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus I think when a documentarist is reporting on a subject he should leave his bias or his favor at home. I guess we could debate whether the 'documentary' as a medium is inherently supposed to be objective or subjective, but the best ones I've seen ('One Day in September' comes to mind) leave polarizing issues like politics out of the story.

― The Devil's Triad (calstars), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

how could this movie leave politics out of the story?!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

"if only 'spellbound' stayed away from polarizing issues like spelling"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

You are delusional. No movie can possibly be objective (and One Day in September certainly wasn't.) I'd rather have someone be upfront with his biases than pretend they don't exist.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

"why did marcel ophuls have to keep bringing up the nazis in 'the sorrow and the pity'?"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

for another, perhaps more informed point of view:

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

― lovebug starski, Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

"Why didn't we see more of the witch's POV in The Blair Witch Project?"

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

The Fog of War had to talk about war, that was what killed it for me

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

MAYBE WE SHOULD LET THE GOVERNMENT MAKE ALL OF THE DOCUMENTARIES

― deanomgwtf!!!p%3Fmsgid%3D4581997 (deangulberry), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

hahahaha alex

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:46 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't consider Hitchen's particularly sane or well-informed.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Skipping 2611 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

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

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, 6 January 2023 22:03 (three years ago)

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.

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, 6 January 2023 22:05 (three years ago)

otm

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 January 2023 22:13 (three years ago)

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/

― clemenza, Saturday, 7 January 2023 22:31 (three years ago)

"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.

― gjoon1, Sunday, 8 January 2023 12:46 (three years ago)

would spoonerize

― “Cheeky cheeky!” she trills, nearly demolishing a roadside post (forksclovetofu), Sunday, 8 January 2023 21:15 (three years ago)

one month passes...

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/

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 26 February 2023 01:09 (three years ago)

I really don't want to give him clicks.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 February 2023 06:34 (three years ago)

four months pass...

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.

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Friday, 7 July 2023 17:40 (two years ago)

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

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 July 2023 17:55 (two years ago)

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...

― omar little, Friday, 7 July 2023 18:03 (two years ago)

one month passes...

A fine new entry

Perfect, Robert Davi. A portrait of strength. https://t.co/G5vAwRKGXE
— Armond White (@3xchair) August 25, 2023

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Friday, 25 August 2023 02:24 (two years ago)

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.

― omar little, Friday, 25 August 2023 02:33 (two years ago)

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

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Friday, 25 August 2023 02:37 (two years ago)

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

― clemenza, Friday, 25 August 2023 02:48 (two years ago)

one month passes...

Unfollowed him on Twitter, finally

― 50 Best Fellas (Eric H.), Thursday, 28 September 2023 02:47 (two years ago)

two weeks pass...

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.

― Dwigt Rortugal (Eric H.), Wednesday, 18 October 2023 14:53 (two years ago)

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

― omar little, Wednesday, 18 October 2023 19:03 (two years ago)

two months pass...

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.

― stephen miller is not your friend (Eric H.), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:28 (two years ago)

I agree more than I disagree!

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:29 (two years ago)

All of Us Strangers > Saltburn

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

― stephen miller is not your friend (Eric H.), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:33 (two years ago)

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.

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:38 (two years ago)

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

― Wack Snyder (Eric H.), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:39 (two years ago)

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

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:41 (two years ago)

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

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 5 January 2024 22:16 (two years ago)

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

― clemenza, Friday, 5 January 2024 22:46 (two years ago)

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

― clemenza, Friday, 5 January 2024 22:58 (two years ago)

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

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 6 January 2024 00:15 (two years ago)

Super Mario Bros. > Occupied City

― underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Saturday, 6 January 2024 08:20 (two years ago)

Lady Ballers > Orlando, My Political Biography

― Wack Snyder (Eric H.), Saturday, 6 January 2024 15:15 (two years ago)

one year passes...

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!

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 23 April 2025 16:07 (one year ago)

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

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 April 2025 16:29 (one year ago)

four months pass...

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.

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Sunday, 21 September 2025 00:32 (eight months ago)

James T Kirkian

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 21 September 2025 00:46 (eight months ago)

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.

― cryptosicko, Sunday, 21 September 2025 00:49 (eight months ago)

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.

― clemenza, Sunday, 21 September 2025 01:30 (eight months ago)

three months pass...

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.

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 17 January 2026 00:30 (four months ago)

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

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 17 January 2026 00:34 (four months ago)

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

― Lithium Just Madison (C. Grisso/McCain), Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:00 (four months ago)

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

― cryptosicko, Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:06 (four months ago)

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

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:11 (four months ago)

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

― Dan S, Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:34 (four months ago)

You liked Jay Kelly?!

― The Luda of Suburbia (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:39 (four months ago)

partisan against whom, Armond?

― uploading this content requires perseveration (sic), Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:40 (four months ago)

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

― Dan S, Saturday, 17 January 2026 01:54 (four months ago)

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.

― clemenza, Saturday, 17 January 2026 02:00 (four months ago)

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

We don't like Fellini?

― cryptosicko, Saturday, 17 January 2026 03:48 (four months ago)

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

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 17 January 2026 04:13 (four months ago)

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

― gjoon1, Saturday, 17 January 2026 10:21 (four months ago)

three months pass...

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.

― clemenza, Tuesday, 5 May 2026 23:26 (one month ago)

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