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A Quiet Place: Day One
(2024)
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Armond White
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A Quiet Place: Day One, Nyong’o agrees to her own stigmatization -- a perpetual victim archetype in another shabby enterprise.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
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Armond White
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A punishingly long, TV-style Western epic that both oversimplifies and overcomplicates the history of the expansion of the North American continent.
Posted Jul 05, 2024
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Daddio
(2023)
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Armond White
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Daddio’s duet sustains Hall’s commitment to the humanism missing from today’s gender wars.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Last Summer
(2023)
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Armond White
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The surprise of Last Summer -- maybe its shock -- is that Breillat uses Anne to go beyond obvious political messaging.
Posted Jun 27, 2024
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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Armond White
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Lanthimos literalizes a “theater of cruelty,” misunderstanding Antonin Artaud’s original concept in favor of fashionable nihilism. Lanthimos’s phoniness doesn’t intend to shock audiences, but to indulge their decadence.
Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Inside Out 2
(2024)
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Armond White
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Inside Out may have been the best of all Pixar films, but what made it so owes to a premise that went beyond childhood innocence to imagine everyone’s psychology. Now, Inside Out 2 resorts to trite, “family movie” insipidness.
Posted Jun 14, 2024
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Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
(2023)
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Armond White
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A psychological epic of extraordinary richness. Its cultural comedy and spiritual tragedy are an uncanny Millennial mix.
Posted May 31, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Armond White
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For all this busy-ness, Furiosa has no emotional power. Despite Miller’s directorial signature, none of the pandemonium matters; his quirky wizardry is remarkably impersonal.
Posted May 24, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Armond White
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Whether or not the clearly progressive Schoenbrun intends it, I Saw the TV Glow warns against the cultural reality of passive media obedience that has replaced active, scrutinizing media consumption -- the ultimate tragedy of Gen X and Gen Z superfans.
Posted May 18, 2024
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Evil Does Not Exist
(2023)
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Armond White
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Evil Does Not Exist isn’t a political film, but Hamaguchi mounts a bully pulpit. He has made an ideological horror movie based on climate-crisis sanctimony.
Posted May 10, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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Armond White
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Challengers, in its story of romantic unfairness, observes a generation’s sexual awareness and unawareness. It contradicts HBO’s Euphoria, in which Zendaya and showrunner Sam Levinson exploit drugs and sex merely for sensationalism.
Posted May 06, 2024
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The Fall Guy
(2024)
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Armond White
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All of the film’s fatuousness substitutes for the lack of relatable substance in contemporary Hollywood product. The Fall Guy blazons the insipid content that the movie industry never tires of selling us.
Posted May 04, 2024
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Salvador
(1986)
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Armond White
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It is Stone’s cynicism that recommends Salvador for contemporary viewing. No other American filmmaker this millennium dares Stone’s candor about the sins and absolute corruption of political journalism.
Posted Apr 26, 2024
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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
(2024)
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Armond White
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Though no more realistic than a QT debauch or Matthew Vaughn’s ludicrous Kingsman franchise, Ritchie’s movie refashions such adolescent sadism so that this patriotic violence feels larky.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
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The Long Game
(2023)
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Armond White
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Directed and co-written by Julio Quintana, The Long Game exploits easy sentimentality to gain political advantage.
Posted Apr 20, 2024
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Leave the World Behind
(2023)
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Armond White
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The most insolent executive-office musing ever committed to film -- a full-out assault on the nation’s people.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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Armond White
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Garland tries for visionary virtuosity, faking rawness and sensationalism, all to predict America’s collapse. Designed to be fun, it is, instead, offensive.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
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Coup de Chance
(2023)
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Armond White
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The superficiality of these urban sophisticates should sting, but it hurts less than it ought because Allen merely evokes the superior films that ignited his culture-vulture leanings, fooling American gatekeepers for a while.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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La Chimera
(2023)
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Armond White
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In fact, the arty posturing in La Chimera is rather conventional.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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Shirley
(2024)
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Armond White
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[A] sometimes touching but fence-sitting portrayal of Chisholm... Yet, midway through Shirley, both Ridley and King seem to have finally realized their folly and, like responsible pop artists, give Chisholm flashes of integrity and complexity.
Posted Mar 29, 2024
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Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
(2023)
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Armond White
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"Do Not Expect" has enough audacity and insights for a dozen movies stuffed into one. The film’s plenitude shows how people subsist alongside the irresistible rise of media fascism.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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The Zone of Interest
(2023)
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Armond White
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By keeping concentration-camp obscenity off-screen, while referring to it obliquely through sci-fi sound effects and abstract visual metaphors, Glazer invites a new, smart-aleck sanctimony... Glazer has made an oddly complacent movie for an amoral era.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
(2023)
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Armond White
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Rather than expanding and becoming richer, Anderson’s method folds in, like origami.
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Spaceman
(2024)
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Armond White
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In the farthest reaches of outer space, Kafka is transcended. Spaceman expresses our anxiety rather than leaving it at politics.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Robot Dreams
(2023)
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Armond White
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Director Pablo Berger uses anthropomorphism to explore the complexity of human passions. That means Robot Dreams is a cartoon for adults.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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Armond White
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It’s all fatuous, like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films... Nothing in Villeneuve’s Dune series is as good as Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, which revives mythic understanding of both mankind’s history and fate.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
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Poor Things
(2023)
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Armond White
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The basic response to any Yorgos Lanthimos film is repulsion. Anyone delighted by Poor Things, his smirky, smutty uglification of The Bride of Frankenstein, falls for his usual depravity.
Posted Feb 27, 2024
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Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
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Armond White
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Green and Ben-Adir mostly present facile charm to advance today’s facile notion of celebrity-heroism.
Posted Feb 22, 2024
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The Palace
(2023)
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Armond White
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In a scabrous, outré attack, Polanski caricatures the ruling class so mercilessly that their humanity is almost unrecognizable, but then, it’s too recognizable.
Posted Feb 21, 2024
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The Princess Bride
(1987)
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Armond White
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What’s unacceptable about this threadbare fantasy is its contemporary irrelevance. Reiner and Goldman betray the instructional tradition that fables and legends pass on.
Posted Feb 09, 2024
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The Taste of Things
(2023)
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Armond White
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The Taste of Things encapsulates our neglected artistic, moral heritage. Hung’s defense of artistic passion starts with the human touch, then illumines our basic needs and spiritual appetite.
Posted Feb 09, 2024
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Anatomy of a Fall
(2023)
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Armond White
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Her storytelling is so assiduous that it’s a shame Triet’s “ambiguity” is also predictable.
Posted Jan 31, 2024
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The Crime Is Mine
(2023)
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Armond White
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It’s Ozon’s way of addressing today’s social crises -- incessant lawfare and fake news, all of it compacted into this brilliant, perplexing farce.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Origin
(2023)
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Armond White
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DuVernay fails to be compelling. When her candidate’s pitch lands, it’s like being buttonholed by a strident politician.
Posted Jan 27, 2024
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Mean Girls
(2024)
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Armond White
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Fact is, the very idea of repackaging Mean Girls is insulting. It perpetuates the degradation that has overtaken pop culture since 2004, the year the culture broke.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
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May December
(2023)
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Armond White
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May December is salacious and insidious. Misrepresenting real life, it is a transgressive act of criminal reprieve.
Posted Jan 12, 2024
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The Color Purple
(2023)
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Armond White
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Winfrey’s musical reworking of The Color Purple is essentially tuneless and unpleasant.
Posted Jan 06, 2024
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All of Us Strangers
(2023)
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Armond White
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What cinches this daring perspective is actor Andrew Scott’s phenomenal characterization as a weakling who grapples with gradual self-awareness.
Posted Dec 30, 2023
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The Holdovers
(2023)
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Armond White
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This pity party is too transparently allegorical.
Posted Dec 30, 2023
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Maestro
(2023)
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Armond White
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This disingenuous biopic is symptomatic of our era’s convenient reliance on moral equivalency. That’s the only explanation I can think of for Cooper’s peculiar approach to his subject -- half reverential, half reticent.
Posted Dec 23, 2023
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Rebel Moon: Part One - A Child of Fire
(2023)
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Armond White
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Working as his own cinematographer, Snyder makes the narrative as lusty as fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, but the sensual daring produces kineticism and wonder that matches The Thief of Bagdad.
Posted Dec 20, 2023
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Saltburn
(2023)
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Armond White
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Films about English class privilege used to be sane, continuing a proud tradition. Now the worst people in Hollywood make films about the worst people in the world. Fennell sells attitude to replace knowledge and feeling.
Posted Dec 15, 2023
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American Fiction
(2023)
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Armond White
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The problem isn’t simply that American Fiction can’t live up to Everett’s breezily compacted humor and convoluted linguistic games -- such as a protagonist named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison -- but that Jefferson himself deals in stereotypes.
Posted Dec 15, 2023
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Past Lives
(2023)
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Armond White
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Hollywood romantic icons may be in disrepute, but Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are dull, inexpressive performers whose emotions are as flat as the untrained subjects of a documentary.
Posted Dec 08, 2023
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The Strangler
(1970)
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Armond White
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Discovering The Strangler enriches appreciation of how playful and poetic movies can be. The murder-mystery plot goes beyond guilty titillation and reveals an understanding of human nature.
Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Thanksgiving
(2023)
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Armond White
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It is more attuned to contemporary trauma than any other movie. This horror flick about modern obscenity helps us see it for ourselves.
Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Napoleon
(2023)
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Armond White
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Napoleon is protracted, as if running time and rambling narrative incidents amounted to substance. Napoleon parades an empty spectacle for a market uninterested in learning from history.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Marvels
(2023)
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Armond White
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This is false sophistication, especially in this case, when it covers up the visual ineptitude and chaos of The Marvels.
Posted Nov 28, 2023
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The Killer
(2023)
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Armond White
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Fincher’s rejection of The Smiths aims to destroy the band’s great contributions to civilization. This anti-art horror film appeals to the hipster appetite for self-destruction.
Posted Nov 18, 2023
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Priscilla
(2023)
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Armond White
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The new biopic Priscilla, Sofia’s version of these events (based on Beaulieu-Presley’s memoir), is her most accomplished film. This time, Sofia nearly justifies her accolades as America’s ultimate female filmmaker.
Posted Nov 07, 2023
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