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

Gladiator (2000): Another comic-book movie for those who never read Gibbon, Virgil, Horace, Socrates, Plato, Ovid, or Steve Reeves.

"those who never read...steve reeves."

“A Steve Well-Reeved: A Memoir”

staggering number of bad takes in one place i think.

New board description?

Movies were never his first love.

Comments are surprisingly good. This guy gets it.

Brian Silenus
6 days ago
(Edited)
Antifa syllabus?! LOL. This reads like every incel, 8chan, right wing edgelord’s favorite movie list.

hilarious list and commentary

Javier Bardem as the “hero” in No Country For Old Men is a pretty out there take

Picked up the New York Press anthology and it's a really good reminder, for those who only know of National Review-era Arm0nd, why he was worth following in the first place. But ... has his bio always included books that, so far as I can tell, don't exist? He's credited with Make Spielberg Great Again, which sign me up, but doesn't look to be on sale or even connected to a publisher at all. A previous bio promised a full retrospective anthology of his own writings too, at one time.

an essential book to buy right now. MZS and Godfrey's work is equally indispensable.

the Steve Reeves line has me reeling, that comes really close to Norbit "transcending racial categorization"

Aaaaaand a reminder of what's become of him now: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/marvin-gaye-whats-going-on-political-decoy/

From the album’s opening party vibe, Gaye offers a masterful blend of harmoniousness, the thing that the angry Left forbids. The album’s lack of harshness, its soft rhetoric and tenderly voiced petitions, do not match today’s tantrums — they contradict the violence and stubborn unwillingness to compromise or express empathy and compassion. What’s Going On is non-militant whereas the Black Lives Antifa movement has proven destructive. It is necessary to call out this BLA alliance in order to clarify the usurpation of black American social and spiritual aspiration by the plainly political, even satanic aims of social domination. This is key to understanding how Gaye’s entreaty opposes today’s inflammatory, anarchic rhetoric.

uh

what's going on

I love this guy:

Nominate Van Morrison not Dr. Fauci for Entertainer of the Year. https://t.co/oUjjulrvlg

— armond white (@3xchair) December 3, 2020

Needs a pointless out-of-nowhere comparison to really "pop" as an Armond tweet imo. Something like "Van Morrison shows us bravery, and how the left's blind worship of Fleetwood Mac is anything but"

damn wait i just looked at the original tweet not the retweet, looks like armonds got me covered LOL

I will say this for Armond, he’s one of the few film critics my kids can name becz his reviews get trolled so much on social media.

My kids have actually asked me, “What’s the deal with Armond White,” which is one of those parenting questions you’re never really ready for.

you haven't had the talk yet?

the goat. still one of the greatest living film critics

All I read are the links that get posted in this thread, meaning I only read him at his worst. With that in mind, he barely strikes me as a critic right now--he's got an axe to grind, and with many films his response is a thousand percent predictable, never good.

Fincher makes a god out of a Hollywood super-hack in the same way that the media praise Steve McQueen, Jordan Peele, J. J. Abrams, Alfonso Cuarón, Megan Rapinoe, Kylie Jenner, Colin Kaepernick, Taylor Swift, John Legend, and Shaun King. Millennials can’t tell the difference between artists, athletes, intellects, and influencers. So Mank inflates a story about the obscure co-screenwriter of a film that has no impact on the culture, turning it into a Netflix pseudo-event.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/review-mank-david-fincher-facile-fascism/

(Poll?)

Saying that Citizen Kane had no impact on the culture is the most insane thing he's said yet.

It's allegedly Trump's favorite movie (but we know it's really Bloodsport)!

i feel lightheaded after reading that... like im floating

not sure i can handle the increasing intensity as Armond approaches the singularity of Pure Challop

Citizen Kane not having impact on the culture is...I know, roll your eyes and move on. The logical construct, I suppose, is that it had a tremendous impact on the course of film history, therefore film has had no impact on the culture.

the full review goes hard on the idea of Mank being a film made by and for millenials

Quoting witticisms already well known to every film buff is the same as name-dropping, a sign of Millennial triteness where nothing is sacred except one’s own ego.

lol, God forbid you use an actual quote in a biopic.

those people who quote people - is nothing sacred for them?

Doesn't mention Mindhunter when summarizing Fincher's career (House of Cards, yes).

I think what I hate most is what seems to be his starting point so often: a film can't just be okay--if it's not good or great, it has to be The Worst Thing Ever (fascistic, bogus, confused, ignorant, etc.) Even Kael, who has come to define hyperbole for many people, wrote middling reviews of films she neither embraced or dismissed--half her reviews were like that, picking out a few good things in otherwise marginal films.

(He does say "Citizen Kane was a game-changer — it’s what birthed film noir among other innovations" a little farther down from the "no impact" line, so--putting aside the crime of using "game-changer"--I guess that was meant as a sarcastic jab at Fincher.)

I won't click on Armond's reviews anymore out of fear that hits might equal even a fraction of a cent making its way into his pocket, but that passage quoted by jaymc is some kind of masterpiece of whatever it is that Armond does.

("trolling" is probably the word I was looking for, but like "reviewing," Armond seems to be only doing this on his own crazed, inscrutable level)

I won't click on Armond's reviews anymore out of fear that hits might equal even a fraction of a cent making its way into his pocket,

Talk about hyperbolic and crazed!

Sure. I mean, I was half kidding--more like I no longer feel like slogging through his writing just to uncover the occasional LOL (I'll let ILX do that for me).

I'm actually curious about your reasons for, upthread, calling Armond "one of the greatest living film critics." What is it about him that you respect or respond to? I'm not saying a case can't be made for him (he's idiosyncratic, I'll give him that much); I'm just wondering what kind of defence can be mounted in favour of his criticism these days.

Was wondering the same. It feels like he's just a knee-jerk cheerleader for a right-wing publication.

Even the much-despised John Simon (not by me), when he wrote for the National Review, I don't think you could detect right-wing political currents in his reviews. (His pomposity might have been a right-wing caricature 50 years before he arrived, but by the time he's there, that was more like a left-wing caricature.)

Even politics aside, the basic coherence of his writing has deteriorated so much and his thoughts are so disordered that its next to impossible to parse any meaning at all from a lot of what he puts up, he obfuscates and contradicts himself almost on a word by word level. The leaps are so extreme and bizarre - its not just that hes expressing an extreme or bad viewpoint, but its hard to even put my hand on a thought to agree or disagree with most of the time.

Because his work demands discussion, he makes people want to talk about film, he's not wallpaper like almost everyone else, I agree with him less than half of the time, and he irritates (ex)critics who are envious of his minor fame/infamy but will never admit it.

I mean I'm really struggling to think of a single other film critic that makes me feel anything--Nick Pinkerton is one, MZS and Godfrey as well, and in the NYT, Mahola Dargis and Janet Maslin. Brody is hit or miss and as equally insane as Armond.

I'd love for that situation to change, btw...

Few of those statements speak to the quality of his work. Most focus on what he isn't or how he rankles people. Not what I consider "GOAT" quality.

And what kind of discussion does he inspire? Most of it is "lol, this fucking guy" level discourse.

Just not feeling "professional contrarian" as a virtue.

That's without getting into his toxic politics which have played a larger role in his writing in recent years which put him more firmly in edgelord territory

There's a reason you can find many a 4chan thread lauding him

I've had plenty of discussions in real life with people about Armond's reviews, good and bad. More lately since the release of the NY Press book. I like his writing a lot. I couldn't care less about his politics. Of course it's incorporated into his work, so was Pauline Kael's homophobia. I'm a fan of his writing, his Get Out review in particular is an exemplary piece of criticism for a couple reasons: I completely disagreed with his assessment of the movie but I can't say it was wrong, AND I've never forgotten what he said about Eddie Murphy's recent comedies--let's just say I don't think he's wrong. Why anyone who hates Armond's writing would ever look in this thread, let alone post in it, is beyond me.

"Another maniacal Armond White review..."

Doesn't the thread title suggest it's specifically for people who don't think much of him?

Yes. But it's the only thread for Armond. Beyond me!

the entire purpose of this thread is to dunk on him. you can galaxy brain this all you want but I don't think a defense of him as a critic is really tenable