By Armond White At this point in Ben Affleck’s directing career, I’d rather have him back simply as an actor (provided he’s well directed). Affleck the auteur chooses worst material than Affleck the actor. And he lacks the skill and seriousness to make the stories believable. Argo, Affleck’s newest job, …
Won’t Back Down contributes to the education crisis By Armond White A dyslexic child looks into the camera at the end of Won‘t Back Down and correctly pronounces a word she had previously stumbled over: “Hope.” Thank God for the smart-aleck in the audience who loudly responded: “Boo!” Whether or …
Atrocity Exhibition By Armond White Harvey Weinstein called for a summit meeting on movie violence soon after the Dark Knight Rises massacre. It hasn’t happened yet but Harvey’s word is movie law. So, instead, The Weinstein Company this week releases John Hillcoat’s Lawless, the most promiscuously violent movie since The …
Hit & Run flattens the road movie By Armond White Dax Shepard, the lead actor, co-writer (with David Palmer) and co-director of Hit & Run, aims for the bleachers. He’s made a lowest common denominator comedy with a road movie premise about Charlie, a guy who leaves his witness protection …
History Shines in Whitney Houston’s Sparkle By Armond White When Whitney Houston sings “His Eye is on the Sparrow” in Sparkle, her good gospel performance is unexpectedly stirring. Playing the mother of three talented daughters who have formed a singing group that unravels the family, Houston’s heartbroken recitation also seems …
Stallone creates a new genre in The Expendables 2 By Armond White Sylvester Stallone has created a new genre: Self-Camp. The Expendables 2 reunites the same over-the-hill gang of big screen hooligans as in the first installment but this time with a better, almost polished, sense of humor. (“Rest in …
http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/voter/783
Born Cynical By Armond White Already obsolete, last decade’s financially successful Bourne trilogy–The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy, (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum, (2007)–needed re-booting to suit the new administration’s political pragmatism (the persistence of foreign policies and espionage strategies once deemed unpopular). But the series’ awful rote cynicism (characterizing …
Citizen Kane or Vertigo, which is more fun? By Armond White Now that Sight & Sound’s decadal critics poll has given the #1 spot to Vertigo, toppling Citizen Kane (to #2), it confirms that film culture as we used to know it has toppled as well. Citizen Kane held sway …
The clash of art and reality should be a cultural turning point By Armond White The Christopher Nolan Batman movies are not exactly life affirming, so why do pundits refuse to connect those films to last week’s Aurora, Colorado, massacre at the midnight showing of Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises? …
Chen Kaige’s Sacrifice bring light to current darkness By Armond White Combing the richness of his 2003 father-son film Together and the Chinese historical legend of his 2009 film The Promise, Chen Kaige creates a stirring, fascinating story of family and national heritage in Sacrifice. The personal drama moves into …
Knight Rises, Culture Falls: How Internet fanaticism over The Dark Knight Rises overtook film culture By Armond White Already, The Dark Knight Rises has caused movie media to embarrass itself. Those front page headlines in both the Daily News (four stars) and New York Post (four stars) are heralds of …
The Citizen Kane of movie-musicas as legend would have it By Armond White The fact that Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s 1952 Singin’ in the Rain was later to inspire art as different from itself and as unignorable as both Michael Jackson’s Black or White music video and Stanley Kubrick’s …
Their Own Private 9/11 Margaret’s DVD and Dust Bunnies rescue the elite By Armond White Advance word on the DVD release of Kenneth Lonergan’s film Margaret hailed it as a “masterpiece” yet no one calls it a good movie because it isn’t even that. It’s the latest event from our …
