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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:00 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

Was that elementary school actually in Florida?

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:04 (nineteen years ago) link

"Punditocracy"??!! I love it.

― andy, Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:05 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Sean Thomas (sgthomas), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:20 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Momus (Momus), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:21 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:24 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

"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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Neb Reyob (Ben Boyer), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:33 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:36 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

Al-Jazeera bashing = automatic idiotic review.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:41 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:42 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:43 (nineteen years ago) link

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 (nineteen years ago) link

"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 (nineteen years ago) link

for another, perhaps more informed point of view:

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

― lovebug starski, Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:44 (nineteen years ago) link

"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 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:45 (nineteen years ago) link

MAYBE WE SHOULD LET THE GOVERNMENT MAKE ALL OF THE DOCUMENTARIES

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

hahahaha alex

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:46 (nineteen years ago) link

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

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 18:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Skipping 2591 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Armond's now retweeting Lara Logan and Don Jr. He's gone.

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Wednesday, 23 November 2022 22:12 (one year ago) link

Armond has been gone since this thread started.

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, 25 November 2022 14:31 (one year ago) link

two weeks pass...

His She Said review is, well, maniacal, topped off by this: "She Said follows that specious line of media self-celebration that began with All the President’s Men, the most overrated film in American movie history." Didn't he stop to consider that AtPM is the kind of film that's being pushed to the margins of the Sight & Sound poll? I think he's going to short-circuit and explode soon as he tries to balance all these crusades.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/11/she-saids-celebrity-grudge-match/

― clemenza, Sunday, 11 December 2022 23:01 (one year ago) link

AtPM was already well on the margins of the S&S poll before this year

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Monday, 12 December 2022 00:24 (one year ago) link

"the kind of film"--i.e., I'm speaking more generally there.

― clemenza, Monday, 12 December 2022 01:07 (one year ago) link

Ah right, New Hollywood and all. Carry on

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Monday, 12 December 2022 01:18 (one year ago) link

three weeks pass...

As per usual, his better-than list remains one of the comparatively reasonably/useful things he does any longer:

Throughout 2022, it felt as if Hollywood was daring us to go to the movies. Commercial films either offended one’s intelligence or failed to entertain. When the prestige movie glut began during awards season, it was obvious that most filmmakers were interested only in their own political bias, wrongly assuming that the public would buy it.
Examining the invasion of arrogance, incompetence, and obnoxiousness (and Sight & Sound’s feminist putsch) is both the work and pleasure of criticism — especially needed as the culture tilts toward collapse.
Making a status-quo Ten Best list would be delusional, but this year’s Better-Than List sets antidote against poison, hope against despair. It challenges media hype with good cinema alternatives.
Benediction > Tár
Terence Davies’s opulent Siegfried Sassoon biopic is also a powerful personal reflection on the director’s spiritual, sexual struggle. That same concept becomes so histrionic in Todd Field’s snob-culture take-down, it ridicules itself. Bravo to Jack Lowdon’s silent monologue — the performance of the year.
Father Stu > Everything Everywhere All at Once
Rosalind Ross directs Mark Wahlberg as Father Stuart Long, whose funny and moving religious conversion found real-life, real-cinema faith (Mel Gibson and Jacki Weaver complete the road-to-Damascus jubilation). But the Daniels team in Everything preferred cut-rate Buddhism over Christianity, wasting Michelle Yeoh in a chaotic, faithless, exhaustingly unfunny superheroine jamboree.
Ambulance > Top Gun: Maverick
Michael Bay rescues the American ideal with cinematic brio and working-class brotherhood while Tom Cruise repurposed ’80s junk as America First desperation. Bay’s dazzling vision is superlative. Anyone who doesn’t realize that Maverick is silly is just being silly.
Marx Can Wait > The Fabelmans
Marco Bellocchio’s personal family-tragedy doc reveals the depths of his artistic impulses, yet Spielberg’s indulgence of his own oft-repeated Freudian-Marxist legend (via Tony Kushner) rings totally false.
Dead for a Dollar > The Woman King
Walter Hill’s esoteric Western dramatizes modern America’s conflicting race, sex, and history myths anchored by Rachel Brosnahan’s defiant agency, the opposite of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s misandrist Afro-eccentricity.
Petit Maman > Aftersun
Celine Sciamma’s storybook fantasy intuits a child’s uncanny adult empathy, besting Charlotte Well’s unfocussed, amateurish pretend home movie. A mother-and-child reunion vs. father–daughter estrangement.
Big Bug > Nope
Jean-Pierre Jeunet makes the first great satire of the Covid-era lockdown and Big Tech enslavement. Jordan Peele looks for and curses Hollywood racism while fumbling sci-fi genre tropes.
Nitram > The Banshees of Inisherin
Justin Kurzel probes the psychic roots of an unnerving 1996 New Zealand mass murder through amazing characterizations. Martin McDonagh exploits Irish misanthropy, concocting tribal fakelore.
Raymond & Ray > Babylon
Rodrigo García’s poignant sibling drama unites a broken family and heals a broken land with compassion (not “community”) — a Borzage film for the Millennium. Damien Chazelle’s phony, overwrought history of Hollywood celebrates a broken film industry but degrades its legacy.
My Donkey, My Lover & I > EO
Caroline Vignal’s road movie follows a single woman’s love hunt through the profundity of movie romanticism (from Robert Bresson to Howard Hawks). Jerzy Skolimowski’s updated remake of a Bresson classic is strictly for nihilists.
Crimes of the Future > Decision to Leave
David Cronenberg’s analogy to decadent cinema laments society’s lost morality while Park Chan-wook’s slick, grotesque policier is decadence itself.
Lost Illusions > She Said
Xavier Giannoli’s 19th-century Balzac adaptation exposes corrupt media then and now while Maria Schrader clumsily turns New York Times reporters into petulant feminist Wooodward-Bernsteins.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, Personality Crisis: One Night Only > All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Salutes to two pop music artists (X-Ray Spex and David Johansen) are preferable to Laura Poitras’s nauseating politicization of cultural pseud-activist Nan Goldin. Enjoy the rock ’n’ roll and beware the derangement syndrome.
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
Robert Davi’s compassionate critique of an unignorable political scandal shames James Gray’s made-up TDS scandal. Doofus Gray’s America-hating autobiography is Fabelmans for dullards.
Great Freedom > The Eternal Daughter
Sebastian Meise recalls the lifelong radicalism of one man (Franz Rogowski), but Joanna Hogg’s metaphysical slog is just sub–Sofia Coppola navel-gazing.
Peaceful > The Whale
Emmanuelle Bercot concentrates on the wide impact of the mortality of an artist/father/son (Benoit Magimel). Darren Aronofsky’s embarrassing romp through all social-victim categories pretends spiritual uplift.
Peter von Kant > Tár
Just when we’ve lost sight of art’s purpose, actor Denis Ménochet’s vivid emotionalism breaks through Brecht’s vaunted V-Effekt and director François Ozon transforms Fassbinder’s own alienation devices. Cate Blanchett and Todd Field get tangled in their own false sophistication, a sign of bad times.
Bones and All > The Menu
Luca Guadagnino’s teen-cannibals-in-love movie says more about Gen Z apathy than Adam McKay’s latest failed greedy-bourgeois satire.

Tár is this year's winner of the "multiple better-than list slams" derby.

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Friday, 6 January 2023 17:35 (one year ago) link

Prejudices and bigotry not in full bloom throughout but for him only merely hinted at this time (relatively speaking)

― omar little, Friday, 6 January 2023 17:42 (one year ago) link

Basically yeah. Also, "Tom Cruise repurposed ’80s junk as America First desperation ... Anyone who doesn’t realize that Maverick is silly is just being silly" is his "one for me" given his forum/audience.

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Friday, 6 January 2023 17:47 (one year ago) link

I’m glad his personality defects have given him a safe space free from pushback and a paycheck.

Also:

But the Daniels team in Everything preferred cut-rate Buddhism over Christianity

Man what decent human wouldn’t these days

― omar little, Friday, 6 January 2023 17:51 (one year ago) link

On the other hand, there is also the first tangible evidence that he will, ultimately, re-evaluate the works of Dinesh D'Souza someday soon ...

My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time
My Son Hunter > Armageddon Time

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Friday, 6 January 2023 17:55 (one year ago) link

lol would be surprised if he hasn’t gone there already

I guess my thing is AW now uses criticism as a mere delivery system for rallying bigoted forces to a fascist cause, he rode the pipeline in such a predictable and mediocre fashion and his career has a tragic arc. Reading flappy’s defenses upthread also reminds me there are plenty of people who love to see a good rant and don’t care about the collateral damage.

― omar little, Friday, 6 January 2023 18:16 (one year ago) link

This is exactly right. It's not even "blind pig finds acorn"/"broken clock is right twice a day" — there's absolutely no value in his opinions anymore. Even if you agree with him politically, his table-pounding is so fucking tedious. That said, I've been meaning to see Dead For A Dollar anyway, and now I want to know more about Nitram.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 6 January 2023 18:39 (one year ago) link

exhaustingly unfunny superheroine jamboree.

well, this is the exact correct summation of everything everywhere

― J0rdan S., Friday, 6 January 2023 18:49 (one year ago) link

AW now uses criticism as a mere delivery system for rallying bigoted forces to a fascist cause

Wow, well put.

These pairings make less sense than ever, in large part because he's collapsed so badly as a writer; a good writer can connect disparate things.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 January 2023 19:21 (one year ago) link

Yeah and he’s collapsed partially because he’s way too concerned about making sure he leaves space for anti-trans/anti-female/anti-sexual assault victims/etc in his non-reviews

― omar little, Friday, 6 January 2023 19:26 (one year ago) link

To be honest I never thought much of him as a writer, he was never very good at specifics of cinema and his opinions were dishonest and based upon the reactions of others. For example hence his championing of the unknown, not distributed Hurt Locker curdling into distaste as soon as it started getting positive notices from everyone else.

― omar little, Friday, 6 January 2023 19:29 (one year ago) link

Big Tech enslavement

God is there somebody particularly stupid about America reactionary thinking more than the usual

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Friday, 6 January 2023 20:14 (one year ago) link

Yeah and he’s collapsed partially because he’s way too concerned about making sure he leaves space for anti-trans/anti-female/anti-sexual assault victims/etc in his non-reviews

There’s an interesting parallel(or direct linkage) with how collapsed American movement conservatism is, too.

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Friday, 6 January 2023 20:18 (one year ago) link

he's collapsed so badly as a writer

This ... or else he doesn't have editors who are willing to help him out anymore. There's always that possibility too.

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Friday, 6 January 2023 20:23 (one year ago) link

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 (one year ago) link

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 (one year ago) link

otm

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 6 January 2023 22:13 (one year ago) link

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 (one year ago) link

"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 (one year ago) link

would spoonerize

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

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 (one year ago) link

I really don't want to give him clicks.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 February 2023 06:34 (one year ago) link

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 (nine months ago) link

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

― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 7 July 2023 17:55 (nine months ago) link

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 (nine months ago) link

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 (eight months ago) link

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 (eight months ago) link

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 (eight months ago) link

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

― clemenza, Friday, 25 August 2023 02:48 (eight months ago) link

one month passes...

Unfollowed him on Twitter, finally

― 50 Best Fellas (Eric H.), Thursday, 28 September 2023 02:47 (six months ago) link

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 (six months ago) link

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

― omar little, Wednesday, 18 October 2023 19:03 (six months ago) link

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 (three months ago) link

I agree more than I disagree!

― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:29 (three months ago) link

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 (three months ago) link

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 (three months ago) link

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

― Wack Snyder (Eric H.), Friday, 5 January 2024 16:39 (three months ago) link

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 (three months ago) link

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

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 5 January 2024 22:16 (three months ago) link

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

― clemenza, Friday, 5 January 2024 22:46 (three months ago) link

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

― clemenza, Friday, 5 January 2024 22:58 (three months ago) link

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 (three months ago) link

Super Mario Bros. > Occupied City

― underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Saturday, 6 January 2024 08:20 (three months ago) link

Lady Ballers > Orlando, My Political Biography

― Wack Snyder (Eric H.), Saturday, 6 January 2024 15:15 (three months ago) link

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