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

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

xpAlthough, your comment reminds me of David Brooks, who own hate read thread I've participated in. I suppose I don't hold commensurate views on columnists--art&entertainment critics can do whatever they want in my eyes, they're in the sandbox, op-ed columnists writing about the way people live, policy, and "values" is another story, they deserve nothing but scrutiny and scorn.

I said I like his writing, that's out in outer space? Christ

I've never thought of critics as being judged differently than any other kind of writer.

Regarding their politics, it would be more relevant in David Brooks' case than Armond or any other film critic's, for example

Beyond that, I like his writing, I think he writes good criticism. Shoot me into the sun!

I do, apparently, judge critics very differently than my favourite music. As per the sincerity thread on ILM, I don't care at all about that with music (or at least think it's such a subjective call, it's meaningless). With critics, my very subjective appraisal of the their honesty (I'll name it that rather than their sincerity) accounts for about 80% of how worthwhile I think they are.

xp since his criticism is generally just a series of jokes about latte-liberalism (from the right) I can only make inferences based on that. lots of other readers like him too, but these are mainly people who read the national review

columnists writing about the way people live, policy, and "values" is another story, they deserve nothing but scrutiny and scorn

LOL, find an Armond review from the last 10 years that doesnt have a 2:1 ratio of this stuff to film

Armond used to be an interesting critic and compelling writer, now he's a good troll* and applies his talent to that. The limit of his concerns makes the work much lesser, but it's not hard to understand someone who liked him needling and finding ways to provoke and annoy on points of art still valuing those skills in a different phase of his work.

*good at being a troll: trolls are better when they force you to reexamine your own thinking by annoying you, even if the result is to give you a better structure for the opinions you already had. Unfortunately modern Armond seems more concerned with the irritation than the provocation, but many of us gloss over the worse parts of older artists' output to still appreciate the things we liked about them before. flappy seems to have pulled this off well.

xp Lol ok true true, I just ignore what he says, and it's ostensibly not the purpose of his pieces... but, being in the NR, these lines become blurry. Someone like Brooks or Peggy Noonan just has absolutely nothing to offer to the world, unlike art critics, who I consider closer to artists than journalists, and as with Armond, I let whatever partisan insanity pass by.

I do agree his best writing is (mostly) behind him. But please, I wasn't being sarcastic upthread, I would like recommendations on other contemporary film critics that are good!

and sic is OTM

trolls are better when they force you to reexamine your own thinking by annoying you, even if the result is to give you a better structure for the opinions you already had.

dgaf about Armond. I've only read a few of his columns, but I like A. S. Hamrah's stuff: https://thebaffler.com/authors/a-s-hamrah

Honestly, the best "film writing" I ever read was all the blogs I read during the '00s, a much better format than magazine columns

He's been awful for years, unworthy of the concentration.

Yet a few years ago I remembered one of the few attentive, intelligent reviews of New Order's Republic, and Rolling Stone published it as its lead review.

Armond White wrote it.

I would like recommendations on other contemporary film critics that are good!

I don't think he's much referenced here, and I've said this many times, but generally I think David Edelstein is excellent. He was once thought to be a Paulette; maybe that was once true, but he's long since moved on.

I don't know if he's on leave (from New York) or what, though. He got into some trouble a year or two ago for a flippant Last Tango joke--his internal censor went down, and he momentarily thought it was 1977 instead of 2018--and he hasn't written anything for a while. (No connection between the two, I don't think--he continued to write for months after the incident.)

When he was concurrently writing for the National Review and The Advocate, it was striking that he still managed to write cogent, insightful reviews in the latter. Since getting the heave-ho, nothing I've seen him write is worthy of his talents.

Armond’s reviews of the last few years have a light sprinkling of commentary about the topic at hand over a lot of axe grinding about whatever social stance was bugging him that day

I like Edelstein too and he was the only print film critic who had no trouble translating to NPR's format.

he was very paulette-y in the 80s (to the extent that it was mildly irritating) but honestly it's not an awful route towards being a good critic once yr thinking abt films she wasn't writing abt

Edelstein can be good, yes

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/the-16th-annual-better-than-list/

"The due process denied President Trump"--and to put the very mediocre Creem documentary on the right side of the ledger suggests to me he doesn't really know a whole lot about Creem.

George Wolfe’s adaptation of the August Wilson play reduces black American blues art to an agnostic monstrosity.

what the hell does this even mean

The weird thing is, even when I agree with him--and I agree with him quite often in this piece; I also thought First Cow, The Assistant, Mank, and The Trial of the Chicago 7 were overrated--I hate the way he seems to go out of his way to frame those films in a way that would appeal to National Review readers.

reading the glorious insanity of this list is exactly the soothing balm i need after the last 2 days. god bless this american lunatic

Soul is a BLM film because...it's about a black life that matters?

hard to get worked up at the list this year considering i've seen like 4 of the movies on it

anyway, this is great, as is most of the things Adam Nayman writes: https://cinema-scope.com/features/minority-report-armond-white-wants-to-make-spielberg-great-again/

A quick roundup of the worse-than films' transgressions: PC distractions, Kelly Reichardt condemns American capitalism as racist and homophobic, the brainwashing of black Americans, speciously equates contemporary politics with bygone grievance, privileged feminism and cultural thuggery, a Planned Parenthood commercial, anti-Trump hectoring, feeble Harvey Weinstein rumor for the #MeToo movement, political and cultural posturing, Spike Lee’s trendy BLM racism.

It's laughable. And not really film criticism.

What a laff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqQixDj3-KE

Thanks for linking the Nayman piece; will read it when I get back home. I do love that White put out a Spielberg book that also includes some of his very early work in the '70s. Going thru it is like seeing a critic's entire rise and fall like no other single volume document I can think of.

(The entire last section of the book is simply titled "Obama," which of course.)

As per usual, a lot of the movies he holds up as "better than" are indeed interesting and/or great choices regardless of what's on the other side of the comparison.

2020: The Movie and The Plot Against the President > Time

But not all of them.

yeah its funny - aside from exceptions like that example, its not that he's always or even often wrong about the 'better thans', but instead its that the pairings just seem completely random, which makes the gobbledygook blurbs even more amusingly WTF

When I saw Eighth Grade and Mid90s pretty close together a few years ago, and markedly preferred Mid90s (I did come around on Eighth Grade after a second viewing), I remember thinking "Hey, that's a perfect better-than pairing"--and then White ended up grouping both films together on the wrong side of some other film I can't remember. That made me smile.

I think the concept is fine, and I think Kael, without ever explicitly saying so, did some of that herself: she'd hold up one film as a superior to a related, more acclaimed film. You could even say that better-than was one of the driving forces of Sarris's auterism (Nicholas Ray's and Phil Karlson's socially-minded films were less celebrated and better than Stanley Kramer's and Elia Kazan's.) And of sabermetrics. And Chuck Eddy. And lots else.

It's just that with White, having followed at least this corner of his career for a few years, I can make up the list of his worse-than films beforehand. Anybody could--just make a list of the most acclaimed films of the year. Which isn't that interesting, even before he tacks on the I-see-through-this rationalizations.

equate contemporary politics with bygone grievance

dude in Mangrove had been hassled and his businesses disrupted by cops for ten years before the court case, and continued to be for ten years after winning the case. Armond fails to see that the "courtroom drama" marks one moment in a long continuity for this member of the Mangrove Nine, even aside from his contention that black business owners and activists... no longer suffer violations of justice from provably lying law officers.

the Better Than rankings are indeed interesting and often otm. his argumgrievances are mostly garbage.

Disappointed to find that Armond White, whose maniacality has over the course of his long career always been interesting, has started to degenerate into extremely dull "the cleansing moral clarity of Sebastian Gorka" pablum

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/review-the-plot-against-the-president-bridges-conservative-generation-gap/

The "better thans" are still enjoyable to read, though.

Armond Takes On...TCM

https://news.yahoo.com/turner-classic-movies-enemy-film-103039309.html

While the series focused on Hollywood production practices, making it easier to apply the same generalities as today’s “systemic racism” canard, TCM’s jurists had difficulty equating the primarily liberal bent of Hollywood employees with the imagined offenses pointed to in their films. That’s why the series dealt only with movies made before 1968, the implication being that contemporary Hollywood is totally enlightened and sin-free.

The second sentence here represents the one halfway reasonable point in this piece, though one I've already seen made by folks far less odious than White.

Except that the second clause in the sentence does not in any way follow from the first. (Not even internally, in his implication that 55 years ago is "contemporary.")

In the context of depictions in race in movies I think that is fairly contemporary, sadly. A lot of sociopolitical problems we're dealing with now stalled out in the 1970s. look at Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven, from 1975: Fassbinder made the perfect denunciation of the media and the contemporary left in Germany at the time, and it's striking how similar it is to our situation. I don't think we've moved much beyond Guess Who's Coming to Dinner on one end and Death Wish on the other.