If you don’t know who Armond White is, good, but if you read on, you’ll soon find out that he is probably one of the most hated film critics of all time. Out of all of the reviews from Toy Story 3, Armond White, the known critic for the New York Press, was the only professional critic to single-handedly give it a rotten review. He states, “Toy Story 3 is so besotted with brand names and product-placement that it stops being about the innocent pleasures of imagination — the usefulness of toys — and strictly celebrates consumerism.” Find out what Mr. White’s opinions are on some of the best and worst reviewed films of recent years after the break!
Over the last few years I have been engaged with this hobby of film, I have tried reading some of Armond’s reviews and I can’t even finish a single one. Perhaps it is just sheer curiosity that catches me off guard, but whenever I read the first paragraph I immediately remember why I loathe his reviews so much. He just comes off so pretentious, in my opinion, and if there was a living embodiment of a hipster in a film critic’s body, it would be Armond White. He is like my White Castle, I have to have it every so often to remind myself why I never go back.
He is like a bizarro version of a standard critic who has switched with his parallel universe self only to cause chaos and misery in our world. I typically don’t like to read reviews before film, only after so I can have a certain opinion opposite of what I felt so I can get a clear perspective of both sides, but trying to read a review from White is like slamming my head into a pile of glass shards.
Just take a look at these films he turned his nose to:
Up (98% Fresh): “All this deflated cinema and Pixarism mischaracterizes what good animation can be (as in Coraline, Monster House, Chicken Little, Teacher’s Pet, The Iron Giant). Up’s aesthetic failure stems from its emotional letdown.”
The Social Network: (96% Fresh) “Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It’s really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness.”
Bridesmaids (90% Fresh): “It’s an overly contrived jumble, trying out too many comic ideas that eventually swamp the central subject of what a modern young woman expects regarding friendship, courtship and marriage.”
Easy A (85% Fresh): “Easy A is now frontrunner for worst film of 2010.”
The Help (73% Fresh): ” The Help demonstrates the conned intelligence of the “post-racial” and “postblack” Obama era, where the anxieties of unequal yet mutually beneficial black-white relationships are conveniently, speciously, put behind us.”
X-Men: First Class (87% Fresh): “X-Men: First Class trivializes each mutant’s motivation as childish petulance. Vaughn lacks the knack for expressive action, reducing the athletic gallantry Fassbender displayed in Centurion to doing silly things like levitating a submarine.”
Inception (86% Fresh): “Like Grand Theft Auto’s quasi-cinematic extension of noir and action-flick plots, Inception manipulates the digital audience’s delectation for relentless subterfuge.”
But it gets even better with these positive reviews for some of the worst films of the past few years:
Resident Evil Afterlife (26%): “If critics and fanboys weren’t suckers for simplistic nihilism and high-pressure marketing, Afterlife would be universally acclaimed as a visionary feat, superior to Inception and Avatar on every level.”
Just Go With It (19%): “The humorous tangents of Just Go With It are testaments to the fine art of improvisation and of comedy that doesn’t take itself overly seriously.”
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (20%): ” Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is more proof [Bay] has a great eye for scale and a gift for visceral amazement.”
Jonah Hex (12%): “It reexamines assumptions of good and evil-morality tale vs, trite entertainment-by confronting the hideous compromises people make with social conventions and their own desperation.”
Grown Ups (10%): ” Cheerful and surprisingly heartfelt.”
Check out even more of Armond White’s greatest hits from 2007-2011 from Pajiba who I always give respect to for his interesting perspective on film. Or you can check out Armond’s Rotten Tomato Page as well to see for yourself how kooky this loon is.
If I do read reviews I’ll take to Roger Ebert if it’s not a hip new age movie, Ben Sachs, Peter Travers (occasionally), Michael Phillips, Laremy Legal, Richard Roeper, and Eric D. Snider. There are some great bloggers from Screenrant, /Film, Film School Rejects, FilmDrunk, Ain’t It Cool News, and Firstshowing.net that you really need to check out whom have a great sense of film criticism as well.
Image courtesy of FilmDrunk.
Turn The Right Corner 
Have you ever tried seeing a film beyond what is on the screen? Do you understand meaning behind technique and storytelling craftsmanship? Do you even know film history? Films just aren’t stories for entertainment, they are social and cultural allegories. To you, he’s pretentious simply because you can’t comprehend what he’s writing. You know nothing of film criticism.
I’m a big fan of Armond White’s writing. I don’t read film reviews to find out how “fresh” the movie is, I read them for interesting ideas. To me it’s far more interesting to hear someone eloquently dissect how a movie worked on them and how they honestly reacted to it — even if I disagree with his “like/dislike” of it. After all, liking and dislking are probably the two least interesting things that a person can do, I’d rather not have them be the focus of my appreciation of film, my favorite art form. White’s criticism is worthy because he dares to put the focus completely on his reaction to a film, rather than on ideas of whether anyone else agrees with him. By the way, Toy Story 3 was my favorite film of last year but I still enjoyed White’s review of it.
the power of the internet, any ‘hobbyist’ is now a film critic.
ps. if i hear again that Inception is a masterpiece and the Christopher Nolan is the new Kubrick, i will pluck my eyes out.