By Armond White Movie-watching can never be same after the double header of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his first animated film, and his live-action War Horse. Each film upgrades the way our imaginations construct the world, the way we see ourselves in the digital age. All art devotes …
Dolly and Latifah Reclaim Glee By Armond White Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2001 debut film Camp, the underappreciated–yet secretly influential–pop …
The 2011 Better-Than List for CityArts: Armond White looks back at the best movies that surpass and defy the year’s worst. By Armond White We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling–as much for what they recall about the humanities …
Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission Impossible was a cartoon even though he didn’t direct it like one. The sheer, exhilarating pleasure of Mission Impossible IV (officially subtitled Ghost Protocol) comes from star-producer Tom Cruise’s ingenious decision to cast animation master Brad Bird. This is easily Bird best film since The Iron …
By Armond White You can’t get you mind off Lady Gaga while watching David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Gaga, the ubiquitous pop star summoned up by the same self-loathing zeitgeist that popularized the Stieg Larsson crime novels as well as their Swedish TV-movie franchise, bears an uncanny …
The Sitter Remakes the 80s By Armond White The Sitter confirms director David Gordon Green’s unexpected yet healthy career turn. His 2000 debut George Washington (NYFCC Best First Film prizewinner) about the out-of-reach desires of black and white kids in the modern impoverished South, introduced a sweet yet somber regional …
Weak Celebrity Bio of Marilyn My Week with Marilyn By Armond White Art critics cite Andy Warhol’s 1962 Gold Marilyn Monroe (a tinted print using a Niagara movie still) to exemplify the movie star’s “infinitely reproducible” image. Movie critics simply yell “Oscar!” at Michelle Williams’ image of Monroe in My …
Scorsese’s Fantasy Autobiography By Armond White As a children’s film, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is overwrought and under thought. Its story of Hugo (Asa Butterfield), an orphaned boy who lives in a Paris train station where he surreptitiously maintains the clock mechanisms, suggests a fantasy autobiography. He wants to think of …
Sandler’s Jack, Jill and Tyler Perry By Armond White Adam Sandler’s comedies are not “dumb fun,” maybe that’s why they’re not in critics’ favor. Sandler’s hilarious new film Jack and Jill (in which he portrays both male and female fraternal twins), brings to mind the great line that Ernst Lubitsch’s …
Thud of Recognition: Payne’s Cynicism Ruins Descendants By Armond White “We Didn’t do anything to own this land. It was entrusted to us,” says George Clooney as Matt King, the mixed-race Hawaii-born lawyer in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. King’s pronouncement lands with a thud, exposing Payne’s sentimental cynicism. This serio-comedy …
Puss in Boots Reviewed By Armond White for CityArts In those terrible Shrek movies, Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots was the only consistently satirical character. Banderas’ used his Spanish accent to make Puss a romantic, swashbuckling scoundrel (a banal jest, unlike the poignancy with which Banderas undercut the satire of …
The Rum Diary review By Armond White for CityArts.info Johnny Depp‘s Hunter Thompson persona is no different from his pirate Jack Sparrow–another intoxicated hipster whose antisocial bravado is backed by multi-million dollar Hollywood privilege. Depp is so infatuated with Hunter Thompson’s hipster cool that his new production of The Rum …
Pauline Kael, Criticism’s Last Icon By Armond White Pauline Kael’s reputation as America’s most distinguished film critic is secure. She’s defended by high-placed friends fighting the misogynists and elites who spent the past ten years since her death trying to erase her influence on film culture. Several new books maintain …
Moneyball Directed by Bennett Miller By Armond White Five decades after Bernard Malamud’s The Natural, we still suffer the delusion that men who play professional baseball enjoy the sport. Bennett Miller’s Moneyball exists to prove that America’s favorite pastime is subject to the same greed, envy, anguish and disappointment as …