Not in defense of Armond White

My complaint with said review is in the obvious effort to undermine everything about the film through the use of a consistent use of negative diction. Every 5th word is something bitter and negative. Words like stupidity, foolish, inanity, juvenile, etc....litter the review.

It is one thing to criticize a film for its deficiencies, but to purposely set out to destroy everything about it, including the intellectual capacity of its creators seems wrong. On many levels, the review strikes a chord.

However, lots of people read it; so I guess Mr. White achieved his goal. Not much different than our 24 hours news anchors I guess.

Yeah, well ... Armond just won one of the events at the recent Movie Blogger Olympics:

http://www.celebrityfreakshow.com/2009/08/movie-blogger-olympics-winners-and-losers/

I haven't seen "District 9," or the trailers, or read Armond White's review of it. I did, however, see a film called "Tony Manero," and was utterly baffled by White's review (available online at http://www.nypress.com/article-20034-love-in-the-time-of-cinema.html) in which he wrote:

"One of Raúl's victims mentions, 'Pinochet has blue eyes,' and the dictator's name not only pushes buttons for limousine liberals but also their contempt for lower classes (despite SNF ["Saturday Night Fever"] evoking the neorealist empathy of Fellini's "Variety Lights")."

I don't object to the fact that he didn't like the movie, even if he is wrong, wrong, wrong. What I object to is the sentence above (and others like it), which doesn't make any sense.

His argument appears to be that any one who likes the film must hate poor people, because none of the characters--all of them very poor--are portrayed in a flattering light. And then he links "Saturday Night Fever" to a very minor early film by Fellini to show how much that film loved the working class. And in the same review, he rails against the film's "repugnant" conception of cinephilia, as if the protagonist was intended to represent every person who's ever entered a movie theatre.

Blomkamp has even said the movie is a sci-fi action film, not just a social commentary. I've seen District 9 and thats undeniably true. Yes, there are parallels to apartheid, but is it really pandering? You even pointed out in your review how the third act becomes a non-stop action movie, its main goal is to be a action film. The reason why that nonstop action succeeds is due to the fact it drives the story and adds to the characters. I agree that its unfair for people to already criticize White on his review since many of them haven't seen it, but he is still wrong. Siskel's rule applies perfectly to Armond White, sometime their opinion doesn't matter, they are purely wrong. Roger, you pointed out in your blog on Transformers 2 that anyone who thinks that is a good movie is wrong, Armond loved it. His opinion is filth and pure juvenile, he bashes originality, but loves a straight up mindless action film. I don't believe he is trying to gain attention by giving negative reviews, but he's for the most part inept of giving credible and logical criticism. The world needs critics who have credible taste, Armond doesn't.
"intellectually juvenile New Zealander Peter Jackson."- Anyone who states that is out of his mind.

This was my response to the Armond White criticism from Rotten tomatoes.
-----------------------------------
Armond White defender stated this

"Actually folks, if you read Armond's full review he is quite right in his perception of District 9's only partial exploration of apartheid-as-metaphor. I've seen (and enjoyed) the film myself but agree with him that the "anthropological" aspects of the film are used only superficially as a plot device/metaphor and not fully or adequately explored."

-----------------------------------
I posted this segment from a Neill Blomkamp interview

What do you want people to take from this film?

Blomkamp: Well, it's not a message. I don't want the audience to walk away from this thinking that I gave them some sort of societal message, but what I do want, the reason that the film exists I think in the first place is because hopefully – I don't know that I've done this – I've given them science fiction presented in a slightly different way. So it's not so much a message but it's more like, 'Oh, I really enjoyed watching that film because it was an unusual take on science fiction.' So that's the goal.
http://www.latinoreview.com/news/exclusive-1-1-with-neill-blomkamp-on- district-9-7672
------------------------------------

This is not a deep movie with a cultural analysis or message. This is a sci-fi/action movie in which the social set up and situation is simply used as a framework for the action and sci-fi. As a way to give it a different unique spin and engrossing story. It's "junk art" with more depth, competence and creativity than White is used to (with Terminator Salvation and Transformers 2 for example). Additionally, it supposedly has characters who you actually care about. Maybe that's what confused him.

Other people who have watched District 9 have commented on the amount of humor, and the Peter Jackson outrageous campy gore and splatter fingerprints that it has. Jackson spoke of how the script was almost completely improvised by the main actor who is partially a comedian. The film takes a turn after the start and becomes just relentless action from what Ive heard. All of these should indicate that the movie is not trying to be pretentious or preachy or develop a social commentary. It's just an action movie. If Armond White is criticizing the lack of social commentary being developed in the movie, he fails as a critic to recognize what this movie was supposed to be.

Maybe he's just confused by the fact that most recent action movies are entirely superficial, so when one comes along that has more depth, he mistakes it as a serious movie. Too bad he is in the minority on that. It's not the job of the film to accommodate for this. The development of social commentary was fine for the type of film it was.

My problem is that I think he knows this but chooses to simply play devils advocate. He exploits the subjectivity in movie reception to concoct a marginally arguable stance that goes against the grain and calls attention to himself. That is what we call "trolling". It's illegitimate in terms of reviewing.

Oh, I agree - when White's on to something, he's really on to something.

But, then there's the other side of the coin, when he writes things like, "Vin Diesel and Paul Walker both get spectacular entrances in Fast & Furious (the kind people only fantasized De Niro and Pacino had in Heat) while audiences cheer their tough good-guyness," in regards to Fast & Furious.

Or, his preference for Norbit, and Transformers II. And, when it comes to things like this, it always reminds me of that quote you made about the guy who preferred The Valachi Papers to The Godfather.

Ebert: Sometimes one suspects an element of self-satire.

As a member of the Rotten Tomatoes forums, I thought I could jump in here and give you a little more background on our general complaints with White.

You are right on the money about the general RT consensus hating White for his negative review of District 9. What you may not realize is that this has been a trend with White for most of this summer, and in fact, he has given negative reviews to dozens of films that are well respected by both critics and audiences alike, including There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Jesse James, The Wrestler, Milk, and Synecdoche, New York. In fact, someone composed a flowchart just to show his oddball taste:

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1897/armondwhiteisntinsane.jpg

But my problems with White are mostly because he contradicts himself left and right (He praised GI Joe's "pop-commercial" appeal while he simultaneously criticizes Pixar for being too commercial) , his general condescension, and his cheap potshots at films he doesn't care for. Read his review of Coraline, which is nothing more than White blasting WALL-E as a poor film without really reviewing any of the content of Coraline except in saying that it does right what WALL-E does wrong. He praised Transformers 2 on its spectacle alone without offering any substantial analysis while trashing many of the other summer blockbusters for the exact things he praised Transformers 2 for. He also has quotes like this in his GI Joe review, although I could cherry pick a few others:

"G.I. Joe must be understood as an authentic measurement of our cultural values. Its appeal to the pop-commercial synapses also demonstrates livelier filmmaking than such utter banality as Iron Man and Star Trek and Harry Potter’s Half-Blooded Chintz. "

I don't mind critics occasionally taking cheap shots, but his rhetoric is the equivalent of schoolyard name calling. His reviews, admittedly, are well written and I understand his opinions, and he is probably a very smart man in real life. But his general inconsistency and seemingly constant disagreement with the mainstream makes him seem not like a critic, but a class clown who's trying to rile people up by having a dissenting opinion. That's why his review of District 9 has some of us so riled up- it's more of the same from a critic that has come to be a punchline among the online community.

Ebert: Oh my God. I just looked at that flow chart. Very hard to explain.

This movie was not even a blimp on my radar, but now I really want to see this. I don't think you should take those 14 pages of comment too much to heart, Mr. Ebert. People can be so stupid at times that when a film has taken hold as a staple people just go off the deep when a 'big name' says otherwise. Essentially it's just mob psychology. And yes I do know what apartheid is, and I'm 18.

I'm confused. Is it You, the Living or We, the Living?

Ebert: "You, the Living," but it's easy to get wrong wrong.

I think you make a great point when you emphasize that most people are zealously defending a movie they haven't seen yet!

I've known about Armond White since I noticed his negative review for Up. All I can say is that anyone who doesn't like a film so charming and funny might need more hugs in his life. That being said, as an amateur film critic who blogs about film, I know that no film can win over everyone. Case in point, I didn't like The Band's Visit, and that received a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score. Maybe I need some hugs too.

What's bothered me about the vemon flung at White is the fact that much of it has nasty racist undertones and overtones. When it's all said and done, the worship of District 9 will wane over time; however, those cowards who anonymously post the worst kind of racist hate-speech will have to live with themselves for the rest of their lives knowing what they've done and can never undo. Is it worth selling one's soul over a movie, especially one that almost nobody has seen yet?

Awesome! I just read a glut of White's reviews and they are incredible. Even if I find a new favorite critic you will always be dear to my heart--even if you were absolutely wrong about DOUBT, totally a pedophile!

J

I'm curious, Roger. After reading some more comments here and seeing Armond's opinions on which films are good/bad in the flowchart, has your opinion on his review changed?

I admit, he's a FANTASTIC writer. But as a reviewer, it almost seems like he's purposefully going against highly regarded and liked movies simply to stand out, and get us to talk about him. Which obviously worked out.

You do, of course, realize that (a) Armond White is probably rebelling in all this attention he's getting, since he must enjoy antagonizing people, so you're basically giving him what he wants, or (b) he just thinks very highly of his own opinion and couldn't care less, and all Internet attacks on him are absolutely useless.

In my experience, when somebody has this much of a enraged reaction from the public, it's either because he's a genius, a snoot, or both. You say the man knows a great deal about movies (something I do not question, since I only read his review of Up and therefore don't have enough grounds to hate him). From what I read in said review, the man seems to actually flaunt that knowledge. It is obvious he does know a great deal about movies, but he seems to enjoy rubbing it in people's faces. Seeing a list of the movies he hasn't liked, it's almost like he wants everyone to know "You are all wrong, I am right". I think that it's his air of pretentiousness that turn people off, not just the fact that he hates what fanboys like.

Hey, I admire him for being so independently minded (Mike Spring from the site DVDSnapshot.com is similarly opinionated), but at least he could be less of a braggart about it. Mind you, I'm getting this just from the one review I read.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I have seen (some of) the works of Borzage, Ozu, Demy, and Tarkovsky. I still find him to be fairly transparent and insufferable. As a writer, I think he's decent, but too often asserts his authority instead of letting his opinions stand for themselves; I think, quite honestly, that he just tries too hard to go against the grain. How else can you explain the praise he doted upon The Hurt Locker before it became a critical darling, only to turn around and refer to it weeks later -- after its RT logo was glowing brightly -- as "overrated" in a rather derogatory fashion?

I dislike the pretentious qualities of his writing. I hate to use the most fanboyish of fanboyish movies in my argument, but in his negative review of The Dark Knight, I recall him using his age as a defense of his comments -- and effectively doing so to place himself above his readers, and to speak down to them. No critic, in my opinion, should do this -- especially considering the fact that many of the critics who did recommend The Dark Knight were well above 42 years old, including yourself. None of you prefaced your review with comments about your age or your qualifications, both of which he has done. It strikes me as being fairly amateur and immature, as do many of his inflammatory comments about actors, directors or screenwriters -- which, many times, seem awkward and out of place, as if he inserted them into his reviews solely to enrage readers.

Yes, you could say he foresees backlash and these are preemptive measures. It's still poor form. And, as aforementioned, I dislike the insults and glib comments he makes in his reviews -- it borders on being a form of Internet troll. I am not a fan of Peter Jackson and in fact disliked The Lord of the Rings for the most part, but how is his referring to Jackson as "intellectually juvenile" any better or worse than fanboys calling White an idiot? Mind, this was one of his kinder labels. At least "intellectually juvenile" is somewhat more distanced than outright referring to someone as a cretin, which I'm pretty sure he's also done.

I share some of your sentiments in regard to the rabid quality of fanboys -- some of the Rotten Tomatoes threads are just embarrassing -- and I couldn't really care less about his thoughts on Star Trek, but I am more upset when I see him labeling a strong, intelligent and independent piece of work such as In the Loop as "the low ebb of comedy." Really? Really? The review then proceeds to essentially chastise the film for being anti-war, commenting on the "snarky self-righteousness" of Iraq War backlash. What? Did he actually see the film?

I feel that there's no substance to his comments, and nothing here to indicate that he actually saw the film; I also found this comment particularly insulting (and ignorant): "Iannucci’s sense of place is indistinguishable from The Office or The West Wing."

Iannucci co-created Alan Partridge, one of Britain's finest and most imfluential recent comedies, which inspired many later comedies such as the BBC's Office. Criticizing Iannucci's style for being similar to The Office is a bit like if Rob Reiner directed another mockumentary next year, and you criticized it for being too similar to "Waiting for Guffman." You could at least pay it the service of criticizing it for being too similar to "Spinal Tap."

The comment about The West Wing is even more puzzling -- it's neither stylistically or substantially similar to the television program, and ironically, the film's director (in an on-set interview with a British newspaper) claimed that he was trying to distance the film's sets from that exact program. I would not be surprised at all if White read this interview online and purposefully mentioned The West Wing as a result. I don't recall reading any other reviews noting the similarities -- perhaps because there really are none?

I'm sorry, Mr. Ebert -- I usually agree with your blogs, but in this case, I can't agree that he deserves defense. If it were merely a man expressing his unpopular thoughts, that would be one thing; I'm all for freedom of expression and I'm not fanboyish enough to get my panties in a twist because someone out there -- heaven forbid! -- thought Heath Ledger was "hammy" in The Dark Knight. But the consistent vitriol and downright fallacies he employs in his writing bother me more than anything. He's making a joke out of the profession, in my opinion. Maybe you have more of a right to comment on that than I do, but that's just how I feel.

Plus, to entirely undermine my point and go for a cheap shot: how can someone really recommend both Little Man and Terminator Salvation while also labeling Up as "deflated cinema"? I imagine most people, even if they didn't like Up, would still contend that it is far from "deflated" or "unimaginative."

Mr. Ebert,

you're right to defend a critic against abuse. I totally agree with you here. I also agree with the right, perhaps even the need for a critic to swim against the tide where it's warranted and thought out.

Where you veer off from me is where you extend that defense. This film is by no means a one-to-one mapping of apartheid, and I'm sorry, that simply reflects the difference between hemispheres. If you read some of the reports starting to trickle out of the southern hemisphere, you'd understand that this film clearly references apartheid, and yes, even the "District" is by no means accidental - but, and this is a CRUCIAL but, it isn't _simply_ an apartheid parable retelling of historical moments.

Remove the spaceship and the aliens and you'd begin to make a naturalistic historical film where verisimilitude and accuracy are the yardsticks.

Here, by drawing upon the fabric of apartheid, but also extending its reach to contemporary events, the film takes on quite a different resonance. As a southern hemisphere newspaper notes (NZ Herald), the film also shifts on to show how "a post-apartheid South Africa isn't coping with the influx of refugees from Zimbabwe and Nigeria." It also shows subsequent waves of discrimination between and against successive immigrant populations, and as a well-read critic, I'd imagine you don't need me to painstakingly list these.

So, Armond White was (and is) entitled to call these elements as evidence. You're entitled to say "The fact that you don't know what someone is writing about is not a real good reason for disagreeing with him." Then I'm entitled to say that if someone doesn't really read an exercise in deliberate deployment of genre and ambiguity, informed by a _number_ of further complex political situations which don't seem to be in play in either yours or Mr. White's comments, then you're entitled to be told that you, too, need to brush up on your reading.

And yes, I saw the film at an advance screening.

I completely agree about the juvenile fanboy hate regularly thrown in White's direction. I sometimes frequent the Rotten Tomatoes forums, whose inhabitants are generally a lot more intelligent than the people who comment on reviews, but there is still at least a thread a week essentially consisting of "Armond White likes/hates X, let's mock him." Though at least the people in the forums tend to actually read a review before they criticize it; most of the commenters seem only to read the blurb.

At the same time, White is definitely a problematic figure. He used to be an excellent critic, but lately his writing's gotten sloppy and his idiosyncrasies have mostly calcified into shtick. The last thing an "alternative" critic should be is predictable. Often the tone of his reviews, which tends to suggest that those who don't see it his very peculiar way are blind, is offputting, and he's harshly criticized other critics in print in the past and then in person acted like no bad blood existed between them, which prompted at least one notable critic to tell him where to go. And he's not completely reasonable all the time. A few weeks ago he made the bizarre assertion that Michael Bay learned from Jean-Luc Godard's Made In U.S.A. in order to make Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. As if Michael Bay knows who Jean-Luc Godard even is.

"The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving."
- Waking Life

I do not have a problem with Armond White disagreeing with me on my view of a movie.

I do not have a problem with Armond White missing the point of a movie.

I do not have a problem with Armond White judging a movie on it's goal.

I do not have a problem with Armond White being generally non-sequitor. After all someone has to play the Devil's advocate.

However I have all sorts of problems with this man and how he treats his profession.

I have been a follower of White's reviews for years. By all definitions, the man is a troll, an adequate troll that gets paid to vent what many would seem lies and crazy talk. It seems as if he methodically checks the group consensus on films, and purposefully disagrees with the majority. Of course, to maintain a semblance of credibility, once in a while he will write a review with a sane mindset.

His trolling is evident by his contradictory stances on movies mentioned before by previous users. It shows up in his personal and juvenile attacks on pictures, with repeated uses of the word "stupid" and "juvenile". It also shows up in his long winded articles filled with straw man arguments and ridiculous statements.

One of the reasons I became a fan of “Siskel and Ebert” was the no nonsense approach. Is it a movie you can recommend or not? With Armond White, I only only get a large body of rhetoric.

The thing that really gets my goat is how White drowns his writing in obscure words and references to seemingly show how smart or smarter he is. I did this when I was a teenager to mask my inadequacy and garner attention. Like Armond White it only made me seem pretentious and for a lack of a better term: douchey.

That I have a problem with.

Just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of yours Ebert, and I love how you are so on the ball with technology.

I just got into Ingmar Bergman, and I have a question. What is your favorite? I've seen Persona, and Scenes From a Marriage. I have the rest of his films coming.

Mr. Ebert, couldn't a similar flowchart be made for you? Haven't you bashed films totally adored by fanboys while praising some films they consider awful?

Ebert: Oh my God. I just looked at that flow chart. Very hard to explain.

I think the RT users can explain it. Shame RT won't listen.

Anyway... love ya Mr. Ebert keep up the good work.

As I have seen someone post here earlier, It's the inconsistencies that White has in his reviews that most people have a problem with. He goes and trashes movies that we all know are good movies, and calls them trash, yet he finds that Confessions of a Shopaholic is from "one of the most original contemporary comic filmmaker." He seems to be concerned on being critical of pop culture movies, yet he holds Dance Flick close to him. I'm sure you could get me to agree with him on more art films then mainstream (I love his review for The Hurt Locker, a film which I adore), but you can't honestly tell me that this man should be reviewing mainstream movies. (It's as you said, if you think Transformers 2 is a good movie, YOU'RE WRONG).

Roger:

"since it may be optimistic to expect the posters to have heard of apartheid."

I don't think it's optimistic at all. Just today the bartender looked surprised when I mentioned my 20-year class reunion was coming up. I'm 35, and I guarantee with 100 percent accuracy there are a generation of people entering adulthood just now who would have been barely four or five years old when Apartheid ended in 1994.

That said, while my own review may disagree in places with yours or Mr. White's (I enjoyed the film, though I did make a point to raise some questions), I firmly believe that all opinions ought to be heard, and I will absolutely concede that your review has valid criticisms.

That's just good journalism and good sport to me. The problem is that we live in too polarized of a society today. People desperately want to be perceived as right. It doesn't really seem to matter whether they are factually correct so much as whether others affirm their belief that they are right in their opinion. This prohibits us from having, as a nation, a real dialogue about anything... be it "District 9" or nationalized healthcare.

Until we get over ourselves and our zany need to be more right than substantial and meaningful, we cannot have a grown-up conversation about the arts, the sciences, social policy, or anything else of considerable impact to the well-being of our society. But what do we teach our children? We teach them that winning is more important than adhering to a set of principles on the way there. And we damn anyone who wants to challenge us to observe with skepticism. This fact alone explains a great deal about why we are teetering toward intellectual bankruptcy as a nation in the global marketplace of ideas.

Some critics feel they are above the 'fanboy' movies and because of that, I have no problem when a critic gets called out for it. If a critic has the right to publish a negative review for the public to read, his audience has a right to express their displeasure with his opinions and/or his review.

That being said, the problem with the internet is the lack of civility (although the latest town hall meetings are proving that it has spilled over into real life too). Too many people feel that they can say anything on the internet without being accountable for what they say and that's just wrong.

I'm not really surprised that you to defend the reviewer from the 'fanboys' in this case, but I think there are two sides to this and I agree and disagree with both of them.

If you have one person who writes a the only negative review out of 50 or he's one of the handful who didn't like "Star Trek", why should that reviewer's opinion be respected? I'm not saying that people shouldn't be respectful in their disagreement, but occasionally some reviewers are simply incorrect.

We look to you guys to help us decide if WE might like a film. Let's be honest -- we don't honestly care if you like it. LOL However, if we feel that a review goes out of it's way to criticize a film or that a reviewer is purposely trying to be the descenting voice when a clear majority feels another way, we have the right to express our displeasure -- but it should be done respectfully.

There is no defense for this guy. He picks the most popular films and insults them, while choosing the least popular and praising them. That is not film criticism, it's trolling.

Here is his profile on Rotten Tomatoes, you can just scroll down and compare his Fresh/Rotten rating with the general consensus

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-2725/

I'm almost convinced that he goes against the grain mostly if not all the time to get these reactions from people.

Hi Mr. Ebert. Sorry, first time posting.

I honestly agree with the comments you make about White's ill-treatment by perceived fanboys and ship jumpers. The thing that at least encourages me on some level, and maybe it does with you too, is that this is at least a step up from G.I. Joe or Transformers as far as movie quality is concerned.
Now granted, that gives no excuse for marching down and literally tearing apart a perfectly legitimate critic (isn't it in their NAMES to criticize?!), and when I told my friends, they had some colorful language to describe that 13-page groupthink tank.
I live with a number of 20 and 21-year old...well, frat guys. And their tastes pretty much fall into the category of "Transformers was awesome!!!" and "The Ugly Truth was the funniest thing I've seen, ever!"
These are people that I literally had to strap down to a chair and beg to watch "The Princess Bride," which, purely by the title, was too girly to even be considered good viewing.
But when one of them talked about "District 9" and looked at its rating on Rotten Tomatoes, their immediate reaction wasn't that they had to see it. Oh no, surprisingly, the following was heard:
Dude 1: "Hey, it got a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. We should see it."
Dude 2: "Just because it got a 95% doesn't mean it'll be good you know"

The typical college guys, proving that breaking the mold is possible, if only in short bursts. See, hope is there...somewhere.
On topic, though, I'm sure Mr. White has tough enough skin, though, to weather through those paltry pages of damnation.

"More to the point is White's reputation as a critic who "doesn't like anything." This is not true. It would be more accurate to say he dislikes a great many films approved of by fanboys."
Since the majority of films he approves of only amount to bull, I'd say its the other way around. Don't forget that he gave good reviews to G.I. Joe and Transformers 2, two critically maligned films with a more than decent fanbase(And Box-office results).

P.S. Those comments on RT should not be taken seriously.

Mr. Ebert, I could not respect you more. You and Gene Siskel really helped inspire my love for film when I was a child in the late 1970s and a teen in the 1980s. You are one of the many reasons I'm a huge film buff.

I'm not a fanboy. I am a person who loves great film. And I will freely admit: I have not seen District 9 yet. I'll will tomorrow (Friday) night.

I respect that you've come to the defense of Armond White. You're more educated in these matters than 99.9 of the population, it seems fair to determine, so your defense of his critique of this movie is airtight.

Here's the issue: that's not the problem. The problem is that when I, like many people, checked out Rotten Tomatoes today, I noted there were 35 Fresh reviews, and one Rotten review.

And I thought: It can't be. Not again. There's no WAY this can actually be Armond White again. But yes, it sure was.

Mr. Ebert, I suppose it's possible that Armond White wholeheartedly believes exactly what he writes in these reviews. It's possible, but I don't buy it. And neither do hundreds, if not more, of true film buffs -- not just "fanboys."

If it looks like a dead fish and smells like a dead fish, it's probably a dead fish. And Mr. White's body of work smells awfully fishy.

"District 9" alone isn't the issue. The issue is that his body of work is so willfully contrary to any legitimate appreciation of film criticism as to be an entirely different discipline.

These aren't mere matter of taste: Mr. White has dismissed numerous films of virtually unimpeachable merit. And he's trumpeted films that as good as spit in the face of anyone with any appreciation for film as an art form or an entertainment medium -- Transformers ROTF, Dance Flick, etc.

Sorry, Mr. Ebert, but there are only two options here. And neither is good. Either...

1) Mr. White quite often truly doesn't know a good film (or a bad film) from a hole in the ground, in which case he should not be reviewing films, or at least having his reviews legitimized by such venues as Rotten Tomatoes, or...

2) He really does craft his reviews, at least on occasion, purely to be provocative and self-promotional. In which case he is as dishonest a journalist as Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair or Janet Cooke and should be summarily heaved out on his rump.

In the case of District 9, perhaps Mr. White made his case. I don't know. I'll see it tomorrow and make up my mind then. But he has not done so, in my opinion, on many of his other reviews.

I hardly expect a film critic to agree with me all of the time. And I certainly don't want a film critic to agree with his or her peers all of the time.

But I do expect a film critic to turn me on to good movies. And I expect a film critic to steer me clear of bad ones. I think we all have the right to expect that.

And on both of those counts, Mr. Ebert, the enormity of evidence indicates that your colleague really, seriously... sucks.

Roger, a bunch of fanboys are acting closed minded in attacking a critic who didn't like a movie about a closed minded system of government. Ironic, isn't it?

While it doesn't matter to me if Armand White doesn't like a movie, I don't really see how agreeing with the "critical consensus" 50% of the time puts him in the middle of the scale.

That sounds pretty extreme to me if one assumes that in general film critics are reasonably well educated and able to spot a good or bad movie. Saying that half the time most of the critics get it wrong sounds like an awful lot.

I looked at the first 30 reviews listed for District 9, plus all of the cream of the crop. Among those 38 or so reviews, only one other critic (Clay Cane of BET.com) agrees with the tomatometer less than 70% of the time.

I don't know if White is the most out in left field in this regard but I'd guess he's in the running. But so long as he's being honest in his reviews and explaining why he feels that way, then more power to him.

Ignoring the fanboy raging that goes on, Armond White is one of my least favorite critics. His reviews drip with a smug sense of superiority as he dismisses most critically acclaimed films as having fooled most critics while championing other films in a way that, frankly, seems just intentionally contrary. He has both legions of devoted sycophants who rally behind him simply because he's so damn contrary, and legions of enemies who'll attack anyone who hates the latest sci-fi extravaganza. Lost in all this is White's work as a whole, which, frankly, I despise and give as much credence to as the ravings of fanboys.

And, for what it's worth, it's not just fanboy flicks that White bashes. I believe White said "Wall-E" was one of the two worst films of last year. Not just overrated, or even just bad which I can understand (even if I disagree on both counts). He called it the outright worst film of the year.

If he didn't seem, as Wes Lawson said, to so often come off as the loud kid in class always raising a ruckus to get attention, it'd be one thing. But stuff like that is just predictable from him.

I apologize for leaving such long comments tonight (this is my second and hopefully last post for the evening), but I'd never paid much attention to White in the past, beyond the more inescapable RT blurbs, and your article caused me to research his writing a bit more in the hopes that I'd find some new appeal. Unfortunately...that didn't happen. I did, however, discover an article written by White -- a substantial portion of which is actually about you. I was curious as to whether you've read it yet, and if so, what your thoughts are.

http://www.nypress.com/article-18219-what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-movies.html

The comments about you begin about halfway through the article:

Permit an insider’s story: It is said that At the Movies host Roger Ebert boasted to Kael about his new TV show, repeatedly asking whether she’d seen it. Kael reportedly answered “If I want a layman’s opinion on movies, I don’t have to watch TV.”

Kael’s cutting remark cuts to the root of criticism’s problem today. Ebert’s way of talking about movies as disconnected from social and moral issues, simply as entertainment, seemed to normalize film discourse—you didn’t have to strive toward it, any Average Joe American could do it. But criticism actually dumbed down. Ebert also made his method a road to celebrity—which destroyed any possibility for a heroic era of film criticism.
At the Movies helped criticism become a way to be famous in the age of TV and exploding media, a dilemma that writer George W. S. Trow distilled in his apercu “The Aesthetic of the Hit”: “To the person growing up in the power of demography, it was clear that history had to do not with the powerful actions of certain men but with the processes of choice and preference.” It was Ebert’s career choice and preference to reduce film discussion to the fumbling of thumbs, pointing out gaffes or withholding “spoilers”—as if a viewer needed only to like or dislike a movie, according to an arbitrary set of specious rules, trends and habits. Not thought. Not feeling. Not experience. Not education. Just reviewing movies the way boys argued about a baseball game.
Don’t misconstrue this as an attack on the still-convalescent Ebert. I wish him nothing but health. But I am trying to clarify where film criticism went bad. Despite Ebert’s recent celebration in both Time magazine and The New York Times as “a great critic,” neither encomium could credit him with a single critical idea, notable literary style or cultural contribution. Each paean resorted to personal, logrolling appreciations. A.O. Scott hit bottom when he corroborated Ebert’s advice, “When writing you should avoid cliché, but on television you should embrace it.” That kind of thinking made Scott’s TV appearances a zero.

Honestly, I just rolled my eyes through all of this. It seems like he just goes after anything mainstream or popular -- including fellow critics. How is it damaging to film criticism to make it accessible for the layman? Once again I can only speak for myself, but I would offer that your program and your writing were at least part of what inspired me to become more interested in film as an art form rather than "just" entertainment. (I'm not just saying that because I'm commenting on your blog, or just because I'm trying to find a reason to refute White; it's the truth.) For White to assert that a televised program about film reviews is undermining the profession's legitimacy is laughable -- especially considering who it's coming from. And when he implies that your program limited reactions to only "like" or "dislike," I find that strange, too, given that I don't recall ever seeing a middle-of-the-road or "lukewarm" review from him ever -- he either loves or hates a film; it's either terrible or a masterpiece. There's no in-between -- at least based on what I've read of his work. For White to veer wildly between opposite ends of the spectrum with his opinions, how is he in a position to criticize others for relegating films' quality to "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"? It's total hypocrisy.

Also, on another note, I would like to point out that he (reportedly) stated in another article of his that Noah Baumbach's "mother should have had an abortion," not just because he hated all of Baumbach's movies, but because he still holds a grudge against the filmmaker's mother based upon an argument from years ago (Baumbach's mother was the critic Georgia Brown, and they apparently got into a heated row on a radio program after she confronted him over erroneous allegations of racism that he'd brought against her in an article). There's an account of this radio interview in the comments section of this link: http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2007/12/white-power-ten-armond-white-quotes.html

If it's true (and, frankly, I don't have trouble accepting that it is), it's another great example of the sort of childish, inflammatory behaviour he resorts to in his writing, which I find entirely unacceptable. RottenTomatoes and fanboy backlash aside, at the end of the day, he just seems like a complete jerk, and not a very insightful one at that. Just my two cents. If other people feel differently, and enjoy his writing, more power to 'em!

I haven't read Arnold Write's review, but I'm reminded of the time so many RT users bombarded David Denby with a flood of hate-anger comments when he gave a "rotten" review of "The Dark Knight" last year. I only read a figment of his review, and it wasn't bad – I disagreed, but he was articulate in what he found unfavorable.

I'm in a interesting stage of my life where I've been exposed to so many people interested in a variety of subjects – art, politics, literature, quantum physics, more art – and yet, it's become even harder to really find someone who hasn't built up a academic facade to guise how much they actually succumb to popular notion.

Only a half hour ago I left the film "(500) Days of Summer" and heard a guy say that it was his favorite movie this summer (pun intended?). "(500) Days of Summer" was definitely a well made movie; yet, it's not something I can really call a favorite, even after hearing my friend and acquaintances rave about the film after seeing the trailer a few months ago. I'm not sure why they were so enthralled about the film except that

a) it is/looked Indie and bohemian
b) had good music and good actors
c) was a love story that looked interesting, quirky and unique or
d) all of the above

...

I don't know I wrote about those two anecdotes; I'm not even sure if it has a point to what I'm saying. I guess sometimes it's so easy to fall into the academia-bohemia-countercoulture trap that promises new things beyond popular notion when really, the whole schmeal deal is as fanboyish as a convention full of Trekkies. Not that it's a bad thing, but maybe some self-reflection and critical thought wouldn't hurt.

I remember giddily receiving "Songs from the Second Floor" in the mail and being floored. I'll never forget it, much like the first time I saw "Stalker." It seems Andersson has kept a similar style aesthetically for "You, The Living;" are all of his films framed in such a way?

Have you seen a film called L'Iceberg?

Ebert: I showed "Songs from the Second Floor" at Ebertfest. Two of his actors appeared, but one didn't say a single word onstage.

I think of the many astute points you make in your defense of Mr. White's review, the most profound is your observation that the reason these people are so upset about his reaction is that it undermines their need for reinforcement that this film is as good as they're hoping, or that it is the movie that is 100% great no matter what. What most of these people fail to understand that it is a categorically immature feeling to worry or react to an opposing opinion so strongly that they feel it is a threat to their own; peer pressure during the teen years notwithstanding, part of becoming an adult is learning to become secure enough in your opinions that it's not an affront to everything you believe if someone disagrees with you. Sadly I've seen this behavior even among professional colleagues, but the bottom line is that if you like something, it doesn't matter if anyone else does, and especially in Mr. White's case, a well-articulated critique of something is thought-provoking and inspiring, regardless whether you disagree with its overall feeling of success or failure (and often, especially when that happens). Too much value is placed on the evaluative aspect of reviewing - good or bad - and not enough on the analytical, which is where so many more insights and real revelations are uncovered about movies. But one supposes, why does that matter if I can't tell if I should spend money on it or not?

I see from the flow chart that I can very accurately use White's opinion of a movie to gauge whether or not I will like it.

I just came back from a midnight showing some time ago, and some minutes ago I finished reading White's review. White is correct in trying to tarnish this film's image because really, it was bad. It fit in line with this summer's, what I like to call, completely conceptual movies. Movies that are made to sell based on a concept like GIANT FIGHTING ROBOTS. White's mistake was that he conducted his berating without any tact. District 9 is worthless, and should be recognized for that. Maybe some value could be attached because of the flipped scenario of Aliens and Humans, but I don't like being sold on a concept without substance (TRANSFORMERS). If you plan on seeing District 9, but understand the history of apartheid, seriously don't bother. If you've never heard of apartheid (shame on you), then save your money and sit in an chair while a friend of yours dons an alien mask and directly in your face yells BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHHHHHH THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR APARTHEID BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHHHHH.

It also has the subtext of us against them--outsiders, unwanted visitors. "Why won't they go home?" Am I hypersensitive in sensing a tinge of anti-immigrant feeling here? Who would ever dream this might be a political parable? Who among the trailer fans will see it that way?

I thought this was the entire point: using a sci-fi retelling of South African apartheid to highlight the dangers of an "us vs. them" mentality. It could just as easily be about illegal immigrants, or the Astrodome in New Orleans.

In other words, White's criticism is from too narrow a viewpoint. The film doesn't have to explain apartheid, because it's not really about apartheid - South Africa is not the subject, it's a metaphor.

But I'll have to actually watch it to be sure.

Incidentally, as of this post, there are at least two other reviewers who gave the film a negative review. Let's see how the comments stack up on those.

No matter how sincere Armond White is, his actions make him seem like a classic Internet troll. That might be why so many people are attacking him - they think he's conning them.

The most suspicious point is that his most controversial reviews have been of movies with a large fanbase that identifies so closely with the fandom that its members perceive a negative review of the fandom as a personal attack and respond with defensive rage. He's also been inconsistent in his worldview (commercialism good in one case, bad in others) and seems to go against the flow, disagreeing frequently with the majority of other critics.

But some of the commenters both here and at RT seem to think that lightweight summer movies can do whatever they want because they don't claim to be serious. This to me is utter nonsense: if anything, it's worse when a lightweight movie uses a serious real-world event as metaphor because it trivializes it. Do these fanboys have the slightest, tiniest clue about how apartheid destroyed thousands of lives? (The cynic in me wonders if they think that bad things only "matter" when they happen to Americans.)

I read White regularly, because he does challenge and provoke me. But I have a hard time with a critic who has indirectly insulted just about movie-going person on the face of the earth. In interviews, he can't name a single working critic worth reading (other than himself). He once called anyone praising Before Sunset as unworthy of the Kael-Sarris tradition, when Sarris himself called that film the best of its year. He often implies some variation of stupidity, racism and gullibility if you don't see the film the same he does. Defends the tastes of the masses, while calling many of their favorite movies deviant. Praises The Hurt Locker one week, insists it's overrated two weeks in a row (by this point, he's right- but it's still remarkably hypocritical). Attacks every other critic for missing the true point of No Country for Old Men (no one but him liked it for the right reasons, apparantly).

I got over his antagonisms early on (steep learning curve though it was)...but I have trouble defending a critic who has so little regard for anyone else in his field (including yourself, in the least generous and most infuriating piece he's written), and no regard for people who miss a point that's plainly clear to him. He's there, and I'm glad he is. But he is one complicated dude to take sides with, beyond the first amendment.

I have just checked the list provided by Wes Lawson. Wow, it was quite a shock! We have some critic similar to him(She does not have any shame about her lack of knowledge on movies and boasts herself as minority), but she is nothing compare to him. She attacked "United 93" and "The Kite Runner" as right-wing propagandas, but we sometimes agreed on some good movies. In contrast, in case of Mr. White, well, only movie I like is "Mr. 3000". In case of "Land of the Lost", I get it and I will see it. Maybe I will like it just like you.

Anyway, even troll has the right about his opinion, and we should talk about it AFTER watching "Distict 9", not before. I think I will like this movie, but I have to wait at this moment. So, I keep my mouth shut.

Life's too short to read people who are insincere. I don't want someone's insincere take on a film, I want to know what he really thought of it. What it actually made him feel. If I don't get that from a critic, he's worthless. Stephanie Zacharek at Salon is another one. Her reviews have no value to me because she has demonstrated repeatedly that she is not sincere. If she has a sincere response to a movie, which perhaps she does, she stifles it and what gets into print is not it. What makes it into print is image-conscious crap designed to draw attention to itself and its author (never the film). If these people wanted to be stars and personalities, they should have become artists and not critics. The critic's job is a humble but important one, done right. When it becomes immodest, it becomes worthless. We're not reading your takes on film because we're infatuated with you or think you're just so interesting. A critic has value only insofar as his writing can illuminate what he's criticizing.

White should have become an internet troll. Zacharek should have become a terrible novelist. Neither is helping the cause of film crit.

I've never embraced any of White's quirks — well, OK, I do enjoy his enthusiastic defenses of Spielberg — but I've never let him get under my skin, just as I've never let any critic get under my skin. (Sorry, critics.) Long before I was familiar with White's criticism, I decided I couldn't let anyone bother me who created a "Better Than" list in 2006 instead of a Top Ten List, solely to stir the pot instead of delivering an honest response to the year in film.

In any event: The effect of the side-by-side comparison chart is overwhelming. My #1 films for the last three years are included in his "Bad Movies" list, although certainly there are also a fair number of bad movies on that list, too. Do I think he's wrong on many of those films? Yes. Do I think he's wrong on every film he's listed as good? Yes. Do I think his writing is without merit? Occasionally, for the various responses above (most damningly, his inconsistency). But if he is a troll, then he is a haphazard troll, because the list above is as cherry-picked as it could be and edited to reach its maximum effect.

A simple Google check reveals a few other films White considers good: "No Country for Old Men," "Happy-Go-Lucky," "Rachel Getting Married," "A Prairie Home Companion," "The Best of Youth," "Vera Drake," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Time Out," "Mulholland Drive," "In the Mood for Love," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Gosford Park," "Being John Malkovich," and others.

Not to defend White on his merits, of course; I'm sure he likes to be the agitator and has developed numerous opinions based on ravenous auteur theory. This is just to say say the cute chart displays half of the story. Maybe his trollery has grown in the last few years. Maybe he does simply have a finicky taste in film. Maybe he does want to pick a fight with people who send data by the megabit. But it seems the most egregious of his sins is not eloquently panning a film; it's not enough for me to say you didn't like it or meditate on another film instead. The real point of debate should be whether he's a good writer, not necessarily what he thinks of Film X or Film Y.

Armond White was at a time among the most dynamic and perceptive critics writing. He would bring a unique racial, cultural, and societal perspective on films -- in addition to putting them in a unique context with other movies. Unfortunately, since The City Sun went out of business, he's something of a caricature of himself, sensationalizing his writing to absurd proportions. So, instead of actually explaining why one movie is better than the other and finding unique common ground, he just throws out baseless, borderline inexplicable comparisons (you cite a perfect example of this in your post), and does tacky "better-than" lists instead of picking his favorites. So, The Darjeeling Limited wasn't a great movie, it was a great movie only in context with Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, an inferior 'hipster' (his favorite derogatory term) movie. Don't get me wrong, there are flashes of that insight here and there, but his ideas that actually have value are muddled in vitriolic ranting, holier-than-thou elitism, and garbled, confused, directionless prose.

And, as someone pointed out, even if you agree with him he will be contrarian, because you don't agree with him for the right reasons. He not only needs to be right all the time, he needs to be more right than you. When The Hurt Locker first came out, he was among the first to review it and use superlatives. But then, he realized, he was suddenly in agreement with those 'hipster' critics he so despises, and now in two reviews (of the Dardenne's latest and G.I. Joe, of all things) he refers to The Hurt Locker as "now overrated". But still, the guy has defended many movies of this decade I absolutely adore, helping to show me that I'm not crazy (or, maybe just confirming it); A.I., Mission to Mars, Femme Fatale (a movie you two agree on!) The Darjeeling Limtied, The Life Aquatic, My Blueberry Nights and RocknRolla, to name a few. So, he's not all bad, but if you read his pieces from when he was a younger critic, you see he has not realized his potential, he's regressed.

He says something in one of his pieces in "The Resistance" about how Spike Lee was put on this earth to make Do the Right Thing. Well, on that note, I think White was born here to write about three artists; Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, and Michael Jackson. His appreciations of them are among the most perceptive pieces ever written about those respective artists.

I'm glad that you, the great equalizer, can enjoy Armond, but perhaps you don't know that he made some incredibly nasty attacks on you (more than on a professional level) in a piece a few years back, then he half-heartedly throws out "Oh, I wish him nothing but health". Why, how nice of you Armond! Anyway, this piece is among his most ideologically confused, and features that classic garbled Armond prose:

http://www.nypress.com/article-18219-what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-movies.html

I don't see the need for all these arguments.

In this case, less is more:

He's well-spoken but with a disheartening and awful taste in film
(and that flow chart is more than enough proof).

I suppose you think Ann Coulter and Stephen Colbert are trolls too, eh Roger?

Ebert: Of course they are. Colbert knows it.

I think the most legitimate criticism to be directed at latter day reviews of Armond White is that some of his latter day reviews are not very well constructed. His obviously grand grasp of the English language seems to fail him quite frequently these days, or his editor is not doing their job properly. Further, albeit slightly tongue-in-cheek, his annual contrarian "[Critically and/or Commercially Unpopular Film] is better than [Critically and/or Commercially Popular Film]" is simplistic to the point of nervosa.

Having said that, I enjoy his reviews immensely, and the man has a distinct voice. Generally speaking, I find his opinions, as you also pointed out, rather reasonable and well argued. This is not because he and I are probably two of a fairly select group of people who disliked, say, the beloved "Un conte de Noël." I mean, the man despises one of my favourite films of the year, "In The Loop." Instead, I find in him an intellectually challenging lover of film.

A few months ago I was at a party, and we were talking about Armond. I'll repeat here what I said there. Whenever I read his negative reviews of films that I love, I shake my head, increduluous that the man failed to see the genius in front of his eyes. But then I read his negative reviews of films that I, too, detested, and he covers all the bases, and hits every single nail on the head. Which, then, leads me to question myself: was he right, then, about the others, too?

So he makes me think. And that's all I need from a critic.

I hadn't heard of Armond White before reading this, but I couldn't get over how much he reminded me of longtime critic John Simon. I read Reverse Angle, a collection of his '70s movie reviews, when I was in my teens, and it amazed me how dismissive he was of movies like The Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Network.

To be fair, the movies he did react positively to were good ones; he called The Last Picture Show "not bad by current standards" and actively enjoyed Badlands, All the President's Men, and Melvin & Howard, among others. And when he trained both barrels on a stinker, the carnage was something to see. I'll never forget the opening line to his review of Jonathan Livingston Seagull: "Seagulls subsist on garbage, and, I guess, you are what you eat."

In fact, Roger, you and Gene had a spar with Simon on Nighline over Return of the Jedi. Needless to say, he was against it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB3V3qyZiFM

All to say, White would seem to have become the John Simon of the internet age, more than content to be the lone voice howling into the wind. I'll take the Voltaire stand on his work and go about my business.

And two other things:

The nerdlash against Armond White is, I think, a separate issue, and is actually an off-shoot of our discussion, earlier this week, about the dumbing down of Western society. And it is nowhere near the one that Keith Uhlich was subjected to last year when he posted a negative review of "The Dark Knight" at The House Next Door. He actually received death threats, if I remember correctly.

Secondly, I saw that list yesterday and had a right giggle, too. Glancing at it, Armond might come across as a troll, but his reviews must be taken as separate pieces. The only comparisons that he makes are in the shape of his year-end list of contrarian opinions, which, as previosuly stated, is childish and risible. But, usually, when he is not praising, say, "There Will Be Blood," he refrains from making comparisons to other unrelated movies. I'd like to think that he is just hard to please.

You know me. I always try to find something positive about people.

I'll admit it. Armond White is my second favorite critic to read, after you. I love the way he dismisses movies that other critics adore en mass. Because for the most part, I find critics to be too easy on films. Armond White was one of the few critics to dislike Forgetting Sarah Marshall and A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), two movies I found to be almost impossible to watch. Actually, if there's a movie I hate that most critics worshipped (and Richard Roeper literally worshipped Forgetting Sarah Marshall), I can always count on Armond White to knock that movie down to size, usually with a smattering of obscure references. I can't use him as a completely accurate gauge for what I will like or not like, but he is always entertaining and often brilliant, so even when he's wrong, he's worth reading.

One of the main complaints I've read about Armond White is that he tends to make up his mind about a filmmaker and never waver from that view. For instance, he seems like just about every Coen Brothers movie and hate every David Fincher movie. But I can relate, because I hate every Wes Anderson movie. Something about Wes Anderson's style bothers me, and there's no way for Anderson to avoid irritating me. For most people, The Coens and Fincher make movies of varying quality. But maybe there is something about the Coens that White can't help but love, and something about Fincher that White can't help but hate.

I don't think he's a troll. It could be, as some have said, that he has to scream more loudly because he writes for a relatively obscure paper. And so maybe he is more outrageous in his opinions than he otherwise would be. But he's a blast to read, and more importantly, he doesn't fall in line and bow down to every critical favorite.

I, stupidly, wrote:

"I think the most legitimate criticism to be directed at latter day reviews of Armond White is that some of his latter day reviews are not very well constructed."

Irony, thy name is Ali. In my defence, I am at work, and I try to squeeze these comments in whenever I can. Still, I should have read what I wrote before I hit submit, because that's just terrible construction. Oh, well.

"...it is undeniably original in its depiction of an alien culture, and challenges the usual movie assumption that aliens will be either superior beings, or very hostile ones. These aliens are simply other intelligent creatures, weak and far from home...."

Why is nobody comparing "District 9" to "Alien Nation"? That, too, was a movie where extraterrestrial fugitives were rescued from spaceships and semi-integrated into human society.

Swap "slag" for "prawn," swap sour milk for cat food, and it sounds like "District 9" is a modern take on the same idea, from a South African viewpoint.

Or are we just taking it for granted that this is a more sinister version of "Alien Nation"?

I haven't ever read a review of White's, and after seeing "the Eye Popping Link" provided by Wes Lawson, I'm sure I don't want to.

The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Sweeney Todd, Harry Potter, so many other great films... all bad movies? Did the cloumns in the flowchart get exchanged? And what struck me as most odd was that White hates "every single Pixar film", which just shows what bad taste he has. But still, that doesn't make him a troll.

Oh, it says he liked "Transformers 2". Sorry, he is a troll.

A brief aside regarding Rotten Tomatoes. I just stumbled across their review of Tulpan (2008).

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/tulpan/

It registers a 96% positive with only two negative reviews out of 49. Oddly despite the fact that you gave it a 4 star rave, your review is falsely classified as rotten. Very odd given that the excerpt of your review reads: "Tulpan is an amazing film. It shows such an unfamiliar world, it might as well be Mars." So much for placing near biblical faith in the RT number.

Ebert: They're fixing it.

No no! Roger! I love you, man but now your blog posts contain spoilers too? I suppose I'll have to read your blog posts the way I read your reviews; top and bottom paragraphs only.

Ebert: I try avoid spoilers in review, but in a blog, anything goes. But..what did I give away in this entry?

I just ordered "You, the Living" on DVD. White's review, your posting and all that fanboy anger has at least had that one very concrete side effect.

I think District 9 use of Apartheid is similar to the original RoboCops use of Free-Market Capitalism. It doesn't really have a direct opinion about it (other than its bad) nor offer a solution, but uses it as a springboard for telling its story and satirises it mercilessly.

It takes a big man to admit a change of heart on an issue, especially one as hotly-debated as this. Mr. Ebert, thank you for acknowledging today the legitimacy of concerns we've been feeling for quite some time about Mr. White.

Favorite recent AW quotes:

"NOTHING IN CINEMA this week is more important than Transporter 3. It’s been a long time since a new movie has been so spiritually and aesthetically exhilarating. Producer Luc Besson, director Olivier Megaton and star Jason Statham work at the top of their imagination and abilities—not like they’re completing a formulaic sequel but reinventing the action movie genre...When Megaton makes Godardian symbolism of Martin’s hand retrieving a key from Valentina’s, Transporter 3 evinces greater art than Van Sant’s studied poetic effects...It’s true visual wit. These are not stunts; they’re objets d’art. Somewhere, Buster Keaton is smiling and Spielberg should take notes."

"Made in U.S.A. and 2 or 3 Things have more in common with the visual wit of Michael Bay’s Transformers 2. It is Godard’s bold example that taught Bay to love sound and image. All these films share a visual language and a way of seeing the world that is rooted in an artistic use of technology. What a triple bill."

Roger,

Speaking of critics, I'm happy about the A.O. Scott post for "At the Movies". I respect his opinions for much the same reasons I respect yours. He had a wonderful article a few days ago that seemed to echo pretty closely your journal entry on the dumbing down of America. The line in his article that reverberates is 'What kind of person constantly demands something new and yet always wants the same thing? A child of course. ' I was quoting that to my wife during previews preceding the very good Funny People last night... Though, I am quite pleased to hear that "District 9" deals with such deep political issues. Hopefully in some around the corner way, the mass audience for District 9 will be faced with a contemporary issue they weren't expecting to deal with. Maybe, but for the most part, not.

I have a different perspective on why White's review is maybe not to be defended, but having not seen the movie, I can only comment on the review itself. I am not going to fall into the trap of "Well, he thought [presumably good] movie was awful while at the same time thinking [presumably bad] film was excellent, so his opinion is invalid," (the bane of modern American politics.)

One of the things I notice in his review is his propensity to break the fundamental rule of narrative -- show, don't tell. While I appreciate that it is, to some degree, a critic's job to tell, because often times showing gives away too much of a movie, but I have to ask: When you declare an allegory "ludicrous," as he does in the third paragraph, you should at least drop a detail or two in there. Simply because it is a movie about aliens living in a slum of Jo'berg does not mean it is ludicrous. If it were a movie about aliens living in a slum of Jo'berg competing to win fabulous prizes in bizarre game shows sponsored by a Japan which has returned to Imperial ambitions from a century or more ago, and it was expected to be taken as an allegory for apartheid, that may, in fact be ludicrous, but then again, maybe not. (Isn't it all in the execution, in the end?) Again, having not seen the movie, it may very well be that this is precisely what happens, but since he does not tell us this, I cannot be expected to believe him. (I have noticed, Roger, that although you do label concepts or movies as ludicrous or a synonym thereof on occasion, you always seem to support this statement very well in subsequent paragraphs.) He goes on to say that because this movie does not progress the way the history of apartheid actually progressed, it is made to be "trivial." But this film does not seem to attempt a retelling of history, only to show us how this could happen in a similar way. If that were the case, we would know the ending of this film without going to see it. To this degree, the premise of the movie, anyway, is that of science fiction in the purest sense, though from what you have written the execution somewhat fizzles that feeling.

Further, he goes on to label the way sci-fi and "mockumentary" elements are blended as "idiotic," and Peter Jackson as intellectually juvenile. I considered the Lord of the Rings films to be a sensitive interpretation of Tolkein's wonderful novels, (though I mourned the exclusion of Tom Bombadil) so to the latter opinion, I can only respond, "prove it." There are many more examples of this in his review - adjectives, many hurtful or insulting, applied to just about everyone (directors, writers, his audience) to which I can only respond, "Do you think that is how these people are? Then prove it." We must be careful in our use of adjectives, and he is not. This is why I read your reviews, and not his - sensationalism is fine, running against the grain simply because the grain runs one direction is fine. Violating the rules of narrative, I don't think that is fine.

I would not call this trolling, though certainly deliberately slamming movies that most critics liked does nothing to hurt his public exposure. Rather, I would simply call it bad writing. His style reads easy enough, but his substance seems to lack.

Armond White seems to have something hardwired in his brain that makes him contrary for contrary's sake. He may believe what he writes, but he might not if he had no outside input...

Something is wrong with that man.

I have to veer away from my Internet compatriots, many of whom are fellow RTers, by saying that Armond White is not a troll. Despite the undeniable press and publicity that White has been gathering over the last couple of years thanks to his various reviews (both in regards to their freshness/rottenness and their specific sentiments within), it doesn't seem to me that this is his aim.

I think that, as you mentioned, he's writing for an "alternative" news source, and therefore has a tendency to write thusly. But therein lies my real problem with Mr. White: he writes solely for the shorthand of a presold audience. It is one thing to have opinions that go against the norm. It is entirely another to spin the kind of interpretations and perceptions that Mr. White gets from the thematic, artistic, or even existential points of the films that he reviews. It's the hyperbole that really pisses people off, methinks. And he uses hyperbole not for the PURPOSE of pissing people off, but rather as something that his readership will be interested in mulling over and ultimately agreeing with. The problem, of course, is that if you're not predisposed to coming to the same interpretations/perceptions that Mr. White does, you're going to be very lost, very confused, and possibly rather offended by the notions he espouses.

From the standpoint of looking at the art of criticism itself, I think Armond White teaches us (inadvertantly) a valuable lesson. When a critic dislikes a movie and explains why in the terminology of opinion, emotion, and basic structural analysis, I think most of these criticisms can essentially exist unchallenged. If a movie made you sad, then that's what it did; you can't argue against that. If a comedy didn't make you laugh, then that's what it didn't do; again, no argument can be raised. But when a critic goes further into sociopolitical realms in his review, especially when they seem contrary to what would be expected, the decent thing to do would be to give these notions full effort of justification and explanation, helping the readership understand how the critic could have come to this perception of the work. It's like showing your long division mathwork. Mr. White is less forthcoming with this than most of us would like him to be, meaning that he's only going to accurately touch the opinions and mentalities of a smaller group of people. He divides 8 by 2 and says it's 5, and doesn't want to show us how he got there, but simply says it's his right to see it that way. It may indeed be his right, but it's just as much the right of others to perceive that as baffling, nonsensical and, yes, arrogant.

This is why I stopped reading film criticism after David Manning of the Ridgefield Press quit.

I just don't know who to trust anymore.

Ebert: Yeah, and he wasn't so negative.

There's one particular South African history reference that most critics are not aware of: the name "District 9" could be seen as an inversion of the famous "District 6", the area of Cape Town that was subjected to "clearances" of Coloured people to allow Whites to move in. It's a shameful episode in SA history, one that has become folklore, and even an off-off-off-Broadway musical.

Ebert: I mention Cape Town's District 6 in my review. The first time in my life I heard the "Meet the Beatles" album was at a party there.

Wow.. Reading that list makes me think Mr. White is actually a Gramscian plant, seeking to undermine American culture.. Or could he just be an epic prankster?

I mean, c'mon.. _Norbit_?!

The biggest problem with Armond is that he makes sense. He always seems to be spot on on what a film does wrong. It's just that he leaves out what was good in the film enough to be able to call it bad. Armond knows he's a contrarian, I think he believes being different is more important that meaning honest, he must also have a grasp on how relative criticism is.

Roger, your editor explained it best.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/01/do_the_contrarian_its_the_whit.html

His comparisons usually make no sense, he's been quoted - http://peet.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/the-contrarian-fallacy-armond-white-vs-the-hipsters/ - as saying he doesn't care about writing style, only about taste - in other words, as Emerson put it, his need to be right may be outweighed by his need for others to be wrong - and he'll too often make some rather wild assumptions about the audiences who liked or didn't like a film and why.

Tragically, his "District 9" review happens to be one of his better and more coherent and his wild accusation - that it comes from a second rate film culture - for once, has some merit. The movie, after all, has a disappointing action oriented final act that doesn't resolve anything all that intelligently or provocatively. (Neither did "The Matrix", another fan boy movie praised as a holy grail.)
I agree with him - can't believe I'm saying that - such a final act (amongst other little problems the movie has) is a sign of a second rate movie. Maybe a good second rate movie but second rate nonetheless. (Perhaps the director will move on to brighter and better things in the future...)
So, yes, White wrote a fair negative review.

But when you anger readers with bad writing for so long, it's like the boy who cries wolf. They won't listen to you, even when you're 'RIGHT!'

And if it really does come down to a critic being a man of good taste, as White wants it to be, then he is not a good critic, as we all know.

And for all his great quotes (about "A.I." and so on), try this:

"Ballast (another Frozen River, wallowing in the miseries of the underclass) is designed to provoke bourgeois moviegoers’ pity."

Or people who feel.

Mr. Ebert, I am sorry to inform you that you are wrong. Now, now I know you hear this a lot but let me explain. First, off the identity that the aliens in the movie representing the South African apartheid was already strongly revealed. Any interview with Peter Jackson or the director would reveal this and since the people that post obviously are fans, there is little doubt that most of them have followed this film as it developed. Or at least, you would know this if you did your homework.
In you calling this film a mainstream popcorn film, there is large list of evidence that proves you wrong. First and for most is that it is rated (R). Yes, (R) the rating that would mostly deny this film that old so supple demographic that could make this a popcorn movie. Another reason is that it is made by a first time Director Neill Blomkamp for $30 million dollars, 'The Hangover' was made for more money, the film was not designed to give you ooh-and-ahh feelings, but to tell a story. White's review is condensing to the point of ignorance, to the possible audience. No, the main reason for the defense of film is obviously Mr. Jackson's production and the overall look of the movie. It was made, not to be popcorn movie and to judge it as such is foolish. It's like judging Citizen Kane as being an intense thriller. It doesn't work.

Ever since your 'Dark Age' post, you have become cynical to the point of denying any film that looks mainstream a fighting chance. I hope this is not the case. I know the success of Transformers 2 have upset you, but we all need to get past it. We are your friends. Do you need a hug?

I just wanted to tell Roger, or the webmaster rather, that the link to this page is broken. Coming from rogerebert.com, it sends you to:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/08/in_defense_of_armond_white.html"

with the quotation mark at the end ("), the link is dead. You have to delete it yourself to get to the page.

Ebert: Strange. Not my experience. Anyone else?

Hi, Roger. A couple of personal impressions...

First, on the tenor of the comments you read on RT's forum about Mr. White's review. I find it all too common that people don't trust figures of authority these days. After Watergate, Irangate, Whitewater, various congressional and Senatorial misdeeds, George W. Bush and his administration...everyone assumes that any authority figure is either lying outright...or if not lying, not revealing all of his/her reasons for arguing his agenda. In Canada we had a government get elected almost purely on the strength of being able to sell to the electorate that the other guy had a "hidden agenda".

Second, on Mr. White himself. I've read a few of his reviews, and learned not to read any more. It's really rare for me to take an almost instant antipathy to someone, but Mr. White managed this feat. His writing is often obscure and parts consist of what MS Word would politely evaluate as "Sentence fragment. Consider revising," a self-mocking error message if ever there was one.

But what really turned me off Mr. White was his point of view and his language.

On his point of view, I seriously question if he saw the same movie I did. For example, in his review of the Dark Knight he complained how the movie is steeped in darkness and moral turpitude, and cited in particular the scene with the ferries. Well, in the movie I saw, even the hardened criminals, some of them already convicted murderers, would NOT press that button to save themselves. That seeems to me a positive affirmation of morality, rather than the reverse.

As for his language, he doesn't explain, he declaims - this is inane, this is juvenile, this is puerile; and then he does not explain why he thinks this is so. This rhetorical trick is called "bullying" - either someone understands what he is saying in which case the person must agree with him, or the person doesn't agree with him because the person is a moron.

Personally, I know someone whose attitude is "I'm right and you're wrong, even if you agree with me." I call this person the "Greek God of Absolute Certainty", and I avoid this person as much as possible.

@ Suzanne, "We the Living" is a book by Ayn Rand. I wonder if the title of Andersson's film is a reference?

My problem with White's reviews is that I rarely feel that he's genuine. When I read a Roger Ebert review, I know I'm getting real feelings, reactions, and perspective. I feel like White takes a contrarian position simply to take it and piss people off. It's an attention whoring position, because let's be honest, nobody would know who the hell Armond White was if not for his famously contrarian reviews.

This White guy gave Up (Up!) a rotten (rotten!) review and Transformers 2, Terminator Salvation, Dance Flick, Next Day, and G.I Joe all fresh reviews. That says it all.

I was originally going to put this comment on the Dark Age thread, but this new one attracted my attention, because I've never heard of Armond White.

There was once a time when I thought I might like to write a critical column, covering TV, movies, news, sports, general stuff.My idea was to hold snarkiness to a minumum - I really thought that you could say what you liked or didn't like without resorting to mean-spirited attacks. Brother, am I glad I didn't try.

Contrary to the DA thread, it isn't that people are geting dumber - it's that they're getting meaner.That approach to life is not for me - and not because I don't feel that way. I do, far more often than I'd like. Meanness may be the greatest temptation available in today's world, and I find myself fighting it all the time. It's not limited to criticism of the arts, sportswriting, or even journalism in general. We see meanness around us all day, every day, everywhere we go. God help us, we've gotten used to it.

As I said above, I'd never heard of Armond White before reading this blog. He's obviously not the first critic to attract attention by being contrary to everybody else, and certainly won't be the last. I imagine the real test of such a critic is if you are offended by his writing even when you agree with him. That's happened to me a lot over the years; Ron Powers and Gary Deeb always seemed to like or hate things for what I felt were the wrong reasons, often rooted in personal spite. Mr. White's lists (which didn't reproduce well) only showed yes-or-no, with no context and no basis to (pardon the expresson) criticize. Forgive me, but the whole thing strikes me as - - - sillier than hell.

If you were here watching me type this, you'd be seeing a lot of head-shaking; It seems that "I may be wrong" is a phrase that just might disappear from the language if we're not careful - and that's a concept we need to hold onto.

Just to drag in another thread: I hope all goes well with your prospective new voice. And don't forget: Scor-sess-ee. ;)

No legitimate critic can defend both transformers and g.i. joe as hallmarks of our culture.

Whoa, hold on there, Mr. Ebert! Please don't retract your defense of my beloved Armond White because of that silly chart. Sure, White is sometimes cantankerous, angry or even "trollish"... but he's also one of the few critics to interpret a movie visually, and in a social context. His writing is very reminiscent of Pauline Kael, a critic who (lest we forget) panned "Reds", "Raging Bull", "Network" and "Sophie's Choice" while singing the praises of "Tequila Sunrise", 1976's "King Kong", and ""Big Business". Was Kael a contrarian? Would she be crucified on Rotten Tomatoes if she were alive today?

What frustrates me about that chart (or Rotten Tomatoes, for that matter) is that it boils film criticism down to black and white, good or bad, thumbs up or down. Mr. Ebert, you yourself rail against the necessary evil of the 4-star system as not allowing a nuanced perspective of a film. Armond White has never said that "Transformers 2" is good, but he does discuss the undeniable appeal of large-scale spectacle (which I disagree with in that particular case, as "Transformers 2" is one of the most depressingly bad movies in years). He ultimately rejects "There Will Be Blood" but if anyone actually read his review, they would observe his praise of Johnny Greenwood's score, Robert Elswit's remarkable cinematography and Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, which he calls the most astonishing cinematic creation of that year. Rare is the thoughtless dismissal / celebration in an Armond White review. Let's not pretend that he just reflexively bashes the acclaimed movie of the moment; how would that account for his rave of "The Hurt Locker"? And one could hardly claim he only likes obscure art: look at his love for Spielberg, the Coens, Michael Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen.

I honestly feel that the average Rotten Tomato user would rather have a Ben Lyons agree with them then an Armond White challenge them.

I find myself annoyed that anytime a sci-fi film has explosions you manage to tack on a phrase about how something 'blows up real good'. I do not watch science fiction solely to enjoy explosions. Otherwise I'd simply go Youtube and watch a clip show of Micheal Bay films. Could you please move onto another cliche that doesn't cluster those of us who watch these films into a category of ignorant violence mongers?

The political undertones were not lost as many of us as you seem to believe, and indeed were a strong reason I looked forward to its release.

Having read Armond White for a good number of years I have to say I find him a contrarian more than an actual critic. He seems to survey the field and then blitz a film that everyone who loves and then praise films no one likes much.
I often feel he is just playing a game much more than truly reviewing or giving insight.
One reason I am suspect of him is that he pairs movies off of one another. And I hate when critics do that. Rather than stick to what works or doesn't work in a film they contrast it with another film to make their point.

I'm disappointed in your backpedaling, Roger. Armond White may be a provocateur and a willful iconoclast, but it's unfairly dismissive to call him a troll. I can't abide his right-wing political frothing, but luckily he doesn't bring that to the table most of the time. What I value in White is that he is absolutely fearless in his willingness to read a film against the grain. In this regard, I wish there were more like him in the Tomatometer, whose diehard followers seem inordinately predisposed to believe that its possible for there to be objectively great or objectively worthless art. It's untrue. (And I say that objectively ;D) I believe that the critical community is failing to provide the whole story when any film gets 100% (or 0%) at Rotten Tomatoes.

Even a filmmaker as great as Ozu (and to me, he was one of the very greatest, though the best films by Borzage are in the same class) deserves to be scrutinized by an unforgivingly hostile critical eye. Another great (though in my view less so) filmmaker Nagisa Oshima took his films to task for being too conservative, in his view. Awareness of criticism like that only makes me appreciate a film like Late Autumn all the more, because it withstands the criticism and still proves itself a masterpiece. Likewise, White's unique readings of films I love or hate can help me see things in them that I wouldn't have otherwise. A voice like that should not be suppressed, or dismissed. It should be celebrated.

I was reluctant to come to the same conclusion, but I, too, recently decided that White is just a troll. For a short time I admired him for not being afraid to speak what I thought was his genuine opinion. However, upon close inspection of his track record, a clear picture emerges. The link you provided says it all.

The most shocking thing about all this is Ebert's admission that he had to withdraw his overall defense of White because "I was not familiar enough with his work." Here's a snippet from Wikipedia's description of White:

"He was recently re-elected as Chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, a post he held in 1994. White has served on juries at the Sundance Film Festival... Tribeca Film Festival and several National Endowment for the Arts panels. His reviews for New York Press, Film Comment and The City Sun have been discussed in The New York Times, Time magazine, Cineaste and Sight and Sound and the web magazine Senses of Cinema."

How could Ebert not be familiar with White's work?

Ebert: I've gone to his reviews on specific films but hadn't seen many of the reviews now mentioned on that chart. In a case like "Synecdoche," so many critics disliked it that none stood out.

It's gotten to the point where reading critics and critics talking about critics is more fun than watching the movies they're talking about.

What I object to most about White isn't his studied, stubborn, near-predictable contrarianism (because I have to admit, I appreciate his spirited and repeated defenses of sometime critical faves and sometime critical punching bags Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson -- or even his apparent love for Jason Statham action trash, which I also dig), but his relentless score-settling. That's where he truly earns the "troll" title -- he is incapable of writing more than a few hundred words without mentioning how some earlier popular and/or acclaimed movie is overrated, or how some critically reviled movie is underrated. Even his ten-best list at year's end is explicitly set up as a "this is better than that" list where critical favorites are rebuked in favor of what he considers underappreciated gems. Which would be a neat idea for a list alternative, actually... except that virtually all of his reviews already perform that function, obsessively at that. That is to say that White thrives on the exact sort of quick-look charts that gave Roger pause; he seemingly can't stand the idea that you'd read one of his reviews and not know that BY THE WAY, I CANNOT ABIDE THOSE PIXAR MOVIES AND IRON MAN WAS HORRIBLY OVERRATED.

As a part-time critic, I understand the instinct -- especially when you don't get to cover every last movie -- to wedge in a few extra opinions about other works, and champion/tear down movies you feel were particularly ill-served by reviews and/or box office, and surely movies don't exist in a vaccuum and it's appropriate to bring up other titles at times. But White does so with such regularity that he's either, yes, a troll or, hey, maybe, kind of insane. Not insane because he liked Death Race or Dance Flick or whatever, you understand. Or insane because he disliked There Will Be Blood. Insane because he cannot stop telling you about it even years later.

Wow, I was aware of White's review but haven't read it yet. I was not aware it has created such a storm of protest. Probably because I rarely look at Rotten Tomatoes for support or denial of a film. Now, after reading your post, I'm more excited about seeing the film, and reading White's review, and reading other reviews. I may even attempt one, but after all this, what more can be said? I will make a point of seeing the movie first before reading White's review, and then I must reread yours, then compare it with my own assessments and understanding.

Now if more viewers can do that, and learn from the experience instead of knee-jerking with a vitriolic attack because their movie of the moment hasn't made everyone a fan, well then, we might all learn something.

Hell, I may even dislike the film, too. You never know.

I am a trailer fan and I definitely see this as a political parable. That is what made me a trailer fan. If I thought it was just a bunch of stuff "getting blowed up real good" I would have filed it away as a movie to get from Netflix sometime in the next couple of years.

I like contrarians better in politics than in entertainment, perhaps because I fancy myself as politically contrarian. A film reviewer who mislikes what other reviewers like simply to spite or oppose them isn't very useful, although one who likes very different things than what others like without such a reactive motive is usually interesting.

That written, I really want to offer a minor factual correction to Mister Ebert's review:

In the sixth paragraph he writes, "...the alien language incorporates clicking sounds, just as Bantu, the language of a large group of African apartheid targets." Bantu is not a language itself, but a language family, or rather the B sub-group of the Niger-Congo family. However, the phonologies of the Zulu and Xhosa languages, which are Bantu languages spoken respectively by 23.8% and 17.6% of the South African population, include click phonemes, which they probably borrowed from the Khoisan languages of the Kalahari desert, which formerly had a wider range. It isn't an important mistake and indeed isn't too far from accurate, but my insufferably pedantic B.A. in Linguistics (and Political Science) started making angry, insistant noises when I read the sentence in question. I must, however, warn that I used WikiPedia to refresh my knowledge, which was acquired several years ago and had been left stumbling aimlessly and half-awake in the nethers of my memory.

You know not to trust a critic who has to wait till the other reviews are in to decide what he or she thinks. This is hardly a new thing, but it seems to me to have become much more widespread since the growth of the internet, where people can see very quickly what the general consensus on something is. I have entire conversations with people who refer to every movie I bring up as either 'underrated' or 'overrated.' I want to say to them (and a couple of times I have), has there ever been a movie rated at just the right level? Theirs is not so much a response to a movie as a response to the response. I can understand it to an extent; if I hate a movie that everyone says is great then it'll probably make me hate it more, while I'll also get a bit of a kick out of being Different. Any critic worth his salt should repress such adolescent urges and simply respond, and analyse their response. The internet has given everyone a platform to be as loud as they like with their opinions, and some people enjoy this so much they'll purchase several opinions wholesale and pass them off as their own, or when they have seen the movie in question they will try and take the cool route; they risk perverting their own built-in responses by always taking a distanced, ironic look at things. Sooner or later they may find themselves unable to get even basic kicks out of a movie; they'll be too busy deciding whether they should like it or not. For them, movies are generally either terrible, or masterpieces. They are not subtle people.

Ebert: My reviews usually go online late Wednesday, and often i am writing without reading anyone else, although of course I am interested in how a movie is being received. According to my Metacritic score, if I studied other reviews more, I might be less of a pushover.

Has anyone fact-checked "armondwhiteisntinsane.jpg" - i.e., actually read these reviews? Generalizing a critic's opinion of a movie as "good" or "bad" (... or "thumbs up" or "thumbs down") from a 1,000 word review is not always an easy call.

(Also, why is everyone calling this a "flowchart"?)

This is his review of Norbit.

http://www.nypress.com/article-15678-norbit-well-(fat)-suited.html

Some choice quotes of mine are...

"If Murphy hadn’t already perfected doing multi-character turns in his Nutty Professor movies, Norbit would be enough to confirm his status as the most brilliant comic actor in America."

"Here, Murphy’s gender/ethnic split embraces a sense of freakishness because Norbit, Rasputia and Mr. Wong are all, also, on a realistic continuum. We laugh at their types since we, in fact, recognize their types."

"Because Norbit is essentially an occasion for Murphy to exercise his talents and drives..."

"It’s significant that Murphy has moved past the family quandary of The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps (where he was at his most brilliant) into an area of sly social commentary."

"When Mr. Wong querulously says “Blacks and Jews love Chinese food. Go figure!” it tweaks the anomalies of American habit at which ethnic comics are rightly bemused."

"Murphy responds to post-Dave Chappelle self-insult comedy with a better, more experienced sense of self-awareness (that is, self respect). Norbit is the meek part of Murphy, yet he wears a perfectly spherical Afro (like the teens in TV’s “What’s Happening”) that is like a halo of blackness—a nostalgic affection for his own youth."

"Dig the name, Rasputia. It’s a satirical ghetto moniker that brilliantly suggests a blinkered awareness of the non-black world; a joke worthy of Murphy’s terrific animated TV series “The PJs.""

"A perfect illustration of his buoyant sketch-style is the water amusement park sequence where Rasputia appears in a bikini and mounts a water slide."

Like the band Simple Plan, Armond White is fantastic until you realize that it isn't some of the most brilliantly conceived irony since A Modest Proposal. The man knows how to be sarcastic and throw his tongue in his cheek, but he picks on the littlest things to declare a movie bad, and ignores the big things to declare a movie good. Imagine if you tried to write a positive review of Transformers 2, Mr. Ebert. You would get an Armond White style of review: Something that finds a single good virtue about the film and/or ignores the flaws entirely. Now imagine that you tried to write a negative review of Synecdoche, New York. You'd end up ignoring the brilliant themes of the film and honing in on one thing that you can reason to be a flaw. You milk this flaw and say that it ruins everything about the movie.

The problem with Armond White reviews is that he lacks sincerity. Maybe logic. Often both. He's looking for ways to give Transformers 2 that positive review, and he's going to enjoy the reaction.

Also, some bits you'll find interesting.

"It always comes down to this: Movies you must experience versus movies that threaten to diminish you. That’s the point of making a Better-Than List rather than pretending that the typical over-hyped product constitutes a consensus of worthwhile movies. Most of these high-profile films insult one’s intelligence, while the year’s best movies vanish from the marketplace for lack of critical support. This tragedy is exemplified by the scary acclaim for the year’s worst: The atrocious Slumdog Millionaire and Pixar’s hideous Wall-E, the buzz-kill movie of all time. Trust no critic who endorses them."

And finally, this article.

http://www.nypress.com/article-18219-what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-movies.html

I just want to point out there are some mistakes in that link. Armond White gave POSITIVE reviews to the first TRANSFORMERS, TROPIC THUNDER, and TOY STORY 2.

As for TRANSFORMERS 2 being better than SYNECDOCHE, NY... well, it is. They're both indulgent, difficult movies to sit through, but TF2 is a beautifully rendered monument of summer blockbuster "matter." SNY is bad filmmaking.

I've been reading White for a long time. I know exactly what's right about him, and what's wrong about him. Generally, the fanboys have the wrong idea. White judges ALL movies--even easily dismissed ones like TORQUE, TF2, and accepted escapism like IRON MAN--as artworks.

I like to think he is not a contrarian, and for a while, I don't think he was. But lowering his opinion recently on THE HURT LOCKER, SIDEWAYS, and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN after they garnered huge praise does not speak well of him. It's a neurosis that White does not want people on his side.

Still, when he's right, he's right. And though he's been slipping lately (GI JOE really ain't all that), he's one of the few critics worth reading. His understanding of cinema as a populist *artform* is far above what 95% of approved Rotten Tomatoes critics are writing.

Fanboys crying that he's "ruining" the Tomatometer ratings by not kowtowing to the party line are in fact calling for Stalinism.

I'm always fascinated by positively-rated reviews (e.g. three stars) that end up sounding rather negative. I assume this is some sort of psychological phenomenon, where the reviewer knows it is essentially a good film, but doesn't want to like it, perhaps because they enjoy being the contrarian arm-chair pundit (White).

Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing this movie (I have not seen it, i am not a "fanboy," and I'm old enough to have fathered many posters here). Although I had one issue with your review, Mr. Ebert: You said "Despite its creativity, the movie remains space opera and avoids the higher realms of science-fiction." However, if the movie is about apartheid, then it's not really about the higher realms of science fiction in the first place. Being about apartheid, it is inherently space opera, since the setting is merely a science-fictionized universe, playing out a parable of present-day race-relations. (Yawn?)

I guess this isn't really a problem with your review... although I'm still at a loss as to why you would give the movie three stars and yet draw so much attention to its flaws. It confuses me. I'd rather be lazy, see three or four stars from my favorite film critic, and go see the goddamn movie without having to figure out "what he really meant."

;)

Ebert: Can't space operas tell parables?

Armond White is no mere troll. Were it not for his reviews, I might never have encountered the films of Charles Burnett. Although I'd claim TRANSFORMERS 2: ROTF was one of the worst and most unpleasant films I have ever seen, I can defend White's review as a legitimate, dispassionate appraisal of what happens on the screen. The way he writes about Michael Bay is roughly akin to the way some cinematic revisionists discuss the work of Cecil B. Demille. To me, it's depressing to think that sixty-five years from now, our descendants might be looking at TRANSFORMERS 2 in the way we view SIGN OF THE CROSS ("Oooh - a fight! Let's go see!"), but so goes the way of the world.

Although I do think White is intentionally a contrarian, I can tell that at least he actually watches and thinks about the movies he reviews. In my book, this puts him above Rex Reed, who I'm not entirely convinced does those things.

Hello, all of this is a fascinating read.

I'm no fanboy and I've been avidly reading film critics since the sixties. My fave was the late Jay Scott:

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/publications/globeandmail/scottjay

One fan lovingly wrote:

"Jay Scott went to every movie with the sincere desire to find some reason to like it. When something authentic did shine through, he tended to give the movie a very high score, no matter about small flaws. He never failed to see through a well constructed movie that lacked heart. It was sad when he passed on."

Jay Scott wrote funny and incisive reviews (I'm still searching for his books) and he had a true love of cinema, popular or not, unlike monsieur White. I must agree with the fanboys and others, Armand is a troll, however tall he may be, and he's becoming as much fun as Perez Hilton... and he certainly is no Jay Scott.

ciao from Montréal!

The obsessive fanboys that go ballistic in the comments under negative reviews on rottentomatoes are silly, what puts me off is his negativity. He seems to have a very narrow view of what movies are supposed to be and liberally uses the term "hack" to denigrate anyone he dislikes. Judd Apatow is a "Tv hack" Quentin Tarantino is a "hipster hack" etc. He is above anything remotely postmodern or clever and will trash the idiot masses who don't realize that any Emperors not named Spielberg are naked.

Roger,

I think your mention of "fan boys" not liking White because he doesn't like what "they" like is quite accurate. That, & the general tone of "their" objections to his writing often betray what has become an unfortunately predictable sign of the (uniquely?) American propensity for taking matters of opinion so personally.

I have a British friend who lives here in Omaha. After moving here, he remarked how taken aback he was about how so many Americans can't seem to have a reasonable discussion containing points of disagreement without taking things personally, or going on personal attacks as a result of the disagreement itself. You've obviously experienced a good deal of that on this site...

It's one of those sad-but-true realities, especially so when discussing the world of entertainment. Issues of justice, poverty, life, etc. I can see potentially getting heated over; but is one critic's views - contrarian or otherwise - worth getting so worked up over?

Personally, I think not.

Roger,

You wrote earlier that "You may be surprised to learn that White agrees (or, for that matter, disagrees) with the TomatoMeter exactly 50% of the time."

I wasn't quite certain whether you thought this was a high or low rate of agreement. In fact, I had no idea whether this was low or high. So I pulled up the rate of agreement for a number of prominent critics. It turns out that 50% is remarkably low rate and would seem to indicate an appetite for perversity by Mr. White.

ROGER EBERT 77%
BILL ZWECKER 64%
GEOFF BERKSHIRE 79%
GENE SISKEL 88%
MICHAEL PHILLIPS 80%
MICHAEL WILMINGTON 78%
MATT PAIS 74%
GEOFF BERKSHIRE 79%
A.O. SCOTT 77%
STEPHEN HOLDEN 77%
MANOHLA DARGIS 76%
DAVE KEHR 70%
JANET MASLIN 77%
BOSLEY CROWTHER 71%
DAVID DENBY 69%
ANTHONY LANE 64%
PAULINE KAEL 60%
ANDREW SARRIS 71%
RICHARD SCHICKEL 74%
RICHARD CORLISS 74%
DAVID ANSEN 83%
LISA SCHWARZBAUM 80%
OWEN GLEIBERMAN 73%
JOE MORGENSTERN 76%
KENNETH TURAN 78%
PETER TRAVERS 79%
J. HOBERMAN 77%

Ebert: People are always correcting my understanding of statistics. Does 50% mean White is in the middle? Apparently not. Judging by these figures, is means he dislikes a lot more movies than the norm.

Remember that no critic reviews everything, and most are more likely to review a movie they like than one they don't. I arguably review more different movies than any critic named above (190 so far this year), and most of the "extras" are indies, docs and foreign films playing at Chicago art houses. That probably means I give a larger number of positive reviews. But the percentage only tracks a critic's relative standing with others on the same titles, not his overall positive/negative score.

Metacritic grades a little differently. On average, on a scale of zero to 100, they say I grade nine points higher than the average critic. Phllips, 1.3 higher. Gleiberman, 4.5 higher. Edelstein, 2.9 lower. Berardinelli, 4.6 higher. Dargis, 8.8 lower. Scott, 3 points lower.

What does this mean? It means I'm lenient. It also possibly means I give a lot of 2.5 star reviews, which on their digital scale rank are translated into positive point scores. Berardinelli, the only other critic above who gives stars, is also higher.

f they read my reviews instead of just looking at the stars, I might score lower. Who knows?

Roger,
I thoroughly enjoyed "You, the living"....
Any chance of you reviewing it sometime?

Ebert: Week from today.

It can be hard to tell sometimes when someone is being sarcastic, but I hope that you're not sincere in dismissing Armond White as a troll based on that list. It would be easy enough to construct a list like that for almost any critic, including you, by being careful about which movies are included in which column. Don't forget that your middling review of Fight Club and your praise for Van Helsing would be proof enough for some people that you yourself are a troll.

Thanks for reevaluating your defense of Armond White. I find it impossible to take him seriously. It's one thing to be a loud-mouth contrarian, but his practice of name-calling (most commonly deriding anyone who dares embrace those films he doesn't as "hipsters") and baiting arguments with hyperbolic put-downs I suspect even he doesn't believe in effectively makes him the Ann Coulter of criticsm. I read him far more regularly when I lived in New York, the same way those who can't stand Howard Stern tune in for more abuse day after day -- in my case, if for no other reason than that his arguments forced me to defend my own stance on any given director or film in my own head.

If I have one hard-and-fast rule about film criticism, it's that every film is someone's favorite movie, and it's not my place to insult others for finding something to like about it. I can helpfully steer them to better options or spell out my reasons that I don't think it works, but it's tacky to just insult your readers outright for not sharing your "enlightened" taste.

I'm reminded of Kenneth Turan's review of Apocalypto, in which he claimed, "Gibson has made a movie that can be confidently recommended only to viewers who have a concentration camp commandant's tolerance for repugnant savagery," or the countless other critics who lazily fall back on statements like, "You'd have to be mentally retarded to like such-and-such a film." There's no place for that in critcism, and yet, it's virtually the only trick White knows, wrapping his vitriol in punchy pronouncements that, when evaluated more carefully, seldom make a lick of sense.

For a spell, my favorite blog anywhere on the web was "Armond Dangerous," in which a courageous New York critic attempted to deconstruct and make sense of White's latest rambling screed each week -- a futile endeavor, if ever there was one. White's like that crazy guy who can be found on every college campus in America, shouting at anyone who'll listen about how they're all damned to hell. There's no sake arguing with the man. He's not rational. But he sure knows how to call attention to himself.

A friend and I are pretty much certain that, had Armond White reviewed Speed Racer when it opened to a tsunami of negative reviews (rather than the week beforehand, as he lumped it together with Iron Man), he'd have seen the total wrongness of the mass consensus and given it total praise (which it deserves, I'm completely serious).

I didn't know much about Armond White until this recent controversy with District 9, though I have seen his negative reviews countless times on Rotten Tomatoes. My problem with Mr. White isn't the fact that he doesn't like some of these mainstream movies, because after all, he is entitled to his opinion, but like many of your other readers pointed out, the problem with Mr. White is the sheer paradox found in his reviewing pattern. In his recent positive review of "G.I Joe" White writes "G.I. Joe must be understood as an authentic measurement of our cultural values. Its appeal to the pop-commercial synapses also demonstrates livelier filmmaking than such utter banality as Iron Man and Star Trek and Harry Potter’s Half-Blooded Chintz" yet in his review of "District 9," White goes on to complain of the "pop-sensationalism" of the movie.

Roger,

I can understand readers getting upset about bitter and incoherent attacks against a movie, but proper reviews cannot be undermined simply by showing where the person has fallen with their other reviews; one review may be right on the money and the rest may be flops. Nor can you necessarily discredit the review without actually seeing the movie solely based on the opinion of the reviewer. With both situations, it's basically arguing something other than the what is in the review. Really, these reviews should be the start of some kind of insightful discourse on the movie, which does not seem to have happened in this case.

And if you do not care for the opinions of a critic, what does it matter? Do not read them. A critics review is supposed to spark thought and to give you an idea of whether you will enjoy your time at the movies. If the review does neither of these for you, it's better just to find someone else. Although the tomatometer is a good barometer for a movie, keeping a 100% is more about luck and the audience base than the quality of the movie.

Incidentally, what are the two other movies that got 100% on rotten tomatoes this year?

I was recently cruising through Kingsley Amis's collected letters and this post reminded me of one of his very specific psychological characterisations - as those familiar with him would know, Kinglsey was always, always very specific, and most often colourful too. Anyway, the term is "f* fool", which in his world strictly meant an individual with sufficient natural intelligence that he should indeed know better than to carry on as he does, were he not clogged with the tea leaves of various ill-worn theories and faux-academic patter.

I don't think Armond White is a troll so much as somewhat gunked up with mutually incompatible theories and too confident of his intelligence to let that distract him from, or undermine his belief in, his leaden brilliance. His occasional moments of genuine critical insight and knowledge cannot be disregarded; I just think his sheer bloodymindedness and overcooked intellectualisation, have unfortunately for him - but not so much for us, humourous as they are - gotten the better of his talents.

Why is it so inconceivable that hundreds of people would have seen this film on a Thursday at midnight? The sort of people that want to see District 9 are often the sort of people that are internet savvy, that know about RottenTomatoes, that would jump at the chance for an advance screening, the likes of which are offered by ComicCon, AintItCoolNews, and so on and so forth.

People didn't jump on Armond White because he didn't like a movie that they liked. Very few of Armond White's oft-contrarian reviews attract 550 comments. They jumped on him because he touched something that affected them deeply and profoundly and called it "the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema -- the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture."

District 9 shook me. I am a twenty year old film student at USC, who -does- know who Borzage, Ozu, Demy, and Tarkovsky are, and was profoundly affected when I saw District 9 last night. I'm sorry that you can't seem to connect with it in the way that I and so many others have, Mr. Ebert, but the fact is that this film resonated extremely powerfully with a lot of people, and dismissively assuming them to be fanboy attack dogs isn't fair.

People are not pissed at White just because he tarnished District 9's perfect 100. I'm sure some, the actual fanboy attack dogs, are. But the reason why the rest of them got mad was because White is a blatant contrarian; you yourself called him a troll just now. And why wouldn't he be? How many film critics do people know by name? You, of course; you are and have been the most famous film critic for many years. Richard Roeper, since he co-hosted a television show with you (not to dismiss Mr. Roeper's intelligence nor talent as a critic. There are many brilliant and talented critics whose names would be met with blank stares from the average moviegoer.) And Armond White, because the internet-savvy have noticed that he consistently bad-mouths quality films that other critics (and fans) champion. It has made him, to a degree, famous. It has made him a known name. It has given him the sort of reputation that when he attacks something that many people hold dear, when he tarnishes a perfect score of a film that many, including myself, were shaken by and feel deserves enshrinement in the cinematic pantheon, he attracts hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of comments attacking him back.

I cannot agree with your review, positive as it was, but even if you had given District 9 one star, or none, I would have known that you had come to your opinion honestly and respected and defended the fact that you possessed it. The same cannot be said for Armond White. That man prostitutes his knowledge and authority (which you rightfully point out that he possesses) by publishing contrarian reviews for the sole purpose of increasing his public profile. Perhaps it is for a good cause; people -do- read his reviews, if only for ammunition to stoke their anger and to use against him, and in doing so they will discover, for the first time, names like "You, the Living." Perhaps he is trashing good films that frankly don't need his approval to succeed, in order to call attention to good films that -do- need people to broadcast them. But that's just speculation.

I hope that in time, you can re-evaluate this film as something other than "apocalyptic silliness." You ask why the prawns didn't defend themselves with their obviously superior weaponry; I could respond that since District 9 began as a humanitarian effort in the film's diegesis, the prawns did not feel themselves threatened, and did not initially object to most of their weapons being confiscated for peace-keeping purposes, and by the time that District 9 became more of a concentration camp, there were so few remaining weapons (and so few Prawns willing to face the suicidal prospects of declaring war on humanity) that they lacked any other option.

But in the end, your thoughts are of course purely your business, and my hopes that you'll re-evaluate the film are purely sentimental; you, specifically your review of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo," are responsible for my love of film, and it is unfortunate that you cannot share in my love for "District 9." I'll continue to enjoy your passion for cinema at least once a week, when every Thursday I check your newest round of reviews, and I can say that with much more confidence than if you had defended Armond White.

Ebert: If they saw it at midnight CDT, their comments couldn't have been posted until 2:30 a.m. My entry was posted by 10, and those 14 pages of comments were already in place.

I so often hear "Who cares about the critics. Use your own mind." But when I know another critic's mind so well, and feel it so perfectly linked to mine in departments of merit, art, and entertainment recognition, I am using my own mind by wanting or not wanting to see a particular film.

Just this week, I met two military pilots, one from Bahrain and one from Colombia, who invited me to the cinema. "What would you like to see?" they asked. "Orphan." "No, I don't like like scary movies. We'll see "The Ugly Truth." That sounded scarier to me than "Orphan". I was invited again a few days later to see another film with them. "We're going to G.I. Joe." My only consolation in subjecting myself to such a thing would be telling myself "Hey, look at me. Here I am with two military pilots, watching a(wannabe cartoonish crap) military movie. How often does this happen in life?" When I received that offer, the first thing I did was type in rottentomatoes.com. I already knew that you suffered through it, so I was hoping that someone, someone, from a worthy newspaper found it enjoyable and that I could carry a mask with their mentality to the movie theater with me. That's when Rotten Tomatoes does come in handy. Besides finding validation for your feelings on movies already seen, if you're being forced to go to a movie, you can research whatever good someone else got out of it and make it your mission to see what they saw.

And kudos to those who see things no one else sees.

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I have not seen this film yet but I intend to do so tommorow. I know it's not perfect, but I'll watch it.

Not to annoy you, but I saw that there was recently a U.S. film release of Evengelion in theaters. It technically contains the first couple of episodes with some changes. I would still recomend seeing the show first however. The reason I keep on pushing is still of the pschological depth of which this show goes. It even goes to the last two episodes of the show are dedicated to pschological analysis of the people (Note: for full understanding of what's going on, see the episodes then the movie). I would really love to see a review from you on this subject very much.

Sincerely,
A reader/Daniel Noonan

JHessick,

There are actually 3 2009 releases that register 100% on the Tomatometer:

Afghan Star
The Damned United
You, the Living

Mr. White liked "You, the Living" and has not yet reviewed the other two films.

Rotten Tomatoes' top rated movies can be found at:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt_year.php?year=2009

Roger, I'm glad you retracted your defense of White. His review of DISTRICT 9 (which I just saw, and thinks is incredible entertainment) may well be his opinion. The issue his ignorant, snarky comments about Peter Jackson, and belief that the movie "represents the sloppiest and dopiest pop cinema -- the kind that comes from a second-rate film culture."

The guy is (yes, I'm stooping to name calling) a douchebag. In fact, any critic that consistently insults the audience of films they don't like is worthless as a critic. Plus, he's just plain wrong on Jackson, and the film.

Worse, White is a legendary Spielberg sycophant. Now, I love the man, too. I would classify myself as a Spielberg apologist. I have tried to find a database of his past reviews, but I do know he called AMISTAD the best movie of 1997. Um....no. And The Beard has been known to lapse into using an "infantile mind" here and there. He hates David Fincher. He dismissed PAN'S LABYRINTH but praised BEDTIME STORIES? I would not be shocked to hear that he thinks HOOK is a classic.

Nobody has 100% consistent taste. Looking at his flow chart I, too, liked DEATH RACE (a movie right in PWS Anderson's limited wheelhouse), and found THE READER insipid, even with my dear Winslet. I take issue with some of your out-of-nowhere reviews (TOMB RAIDER 1 & 2? SPEED 2? CELLULAR? That horrid ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 remake? The overhyped fanboy wet dream SKY CAPTAIN? Really, Rog? Those are better than DEAD RINGERS? RAISING ARIZONA? WEDDING CRASHERS? FIGHT CLUB?? EDWARD SCISSORHANDS? THE ELEPHANT MAN?

I know you hate the Star Rating system, but I'll even admit that it still sticks in my craw that I think you shorted several movies 1/2 a star; ALIENS. HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. THE INCREDIBLES. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. SLEEPY HOLLOW. Grrrrrrrr!

As an aside, I will say I don't think ever written a more spot-on review than you did for SUPERMAN LIVES.

Still, your opinions are always explained. And aside from the recent TF2 flap (which, btw, is overblown, off the mark, as insulting to the "dummies" who liked the movie as it is to call "elitism" on those who didn't, and really gave that hunk of junk far, far more credit than it deserved. Every generation has it's dumb entertainment. They are just all different.), I don't recall you insulting, talking down to or demeaning an audience. It's fine to call out a filmmaker. But to hold undeniable grudges like Armond? I remember wondering if you had one against David Lynch. Then MULLHOLLAND DRIVE came about. And THE STRAIGHT STORY. And INLAND EMPIRE. Lynch, to you, grew and evolved. You didn't hold BLUE VELVET (I am in the crowd that believes you are wrong on a legendary scale), WILD AT HEART, or DUNE against him.

In short, Armond White is nuts. He makes it personal. He comes off like an elitest even while he dumps one widely praised films like THE WRESTLER. I don't believe it's in intentional. It's just in his nature. But it makes him an awful, awful critic.

DISTRICT 9: disgusted you gave it the same star rating as TRANFORMERS 1. I found it to be spectacular entertainment. Blomkamp says it perfectly in the quote a poster gave above: it's not a lesson film. If it were people would bitch about that. It's a sci/fi parable, with just enough commentary to make the rest of it resonate. The complaint that it devolves into action is off the mark. That's what it is. And with all the Bay hate, and slams that he can't shoot action (and he can't), what Blomkamp does blows TF2 off the screen. The main character was given just enough details for me to sympathize with him. Pay attention to the opening scenes, and the opinions people have of him. And then his eagerness to do his job, satisfy his bosses, please his company.

It's right there with HURT LOCKER and WATCHMEN for me so far this year.

Perhaps White believes what he is saying profoundly.

But he's daftly wrong. I'm glad you switched your defense, Roger. The equilibrium in the Universe has returned to normal again.

3 more things:

1)Rob is right. SPEED RACER is genius. It's ahead of it's time. It will be rediscovered someday, and people will regret missing the theater experience.

2)RE: White's "grudges." I think we all have filmmakers we just don't get. I have found Charlie Kaufman intolerable. But I also think he is original, ambitious, and his own man. I just do not get it. That's better than calling him "infantile."

3)Roger, you never reviewed OBSERVE & REPORT. It's another of my top 10 movies of the year so far. Did you see it? If so....well? If you didn't, how come?

Thanks for indulging me.

Frankly, I'm excited that there's a biggish-budget, wide release film that's going to show our kids that aliens might not necessarily land in LA or Washington, DC, and that, hey! there are other parts of the world with people that have problems just like our own.

This is from another one of White's reviews: "Children of Men is only deep on its surface. Cuarón cannot edit scenes for rhythm or real feeling, which is what separates his eschatological set pieces from the wit of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Minority Report or Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers—films that treated the experience of social collapse as personal, rather than a game."

As you said, Roger, "WTF"?? Starship Troopers showed social collapse as personal? And Children of Men did not? Yeah. I'm sorry, this guy may be a misunderstood original, but his taste in film, his reasons for watching movies have practically nothing in common with mine.

Furthermore, Starship Troopers did not show social collapse at all. The movie barely even showed Earth-side society, and when it did, the latter was portrayed as an idyllic technocracy. The rest of the movie was about pretty soldiers unloading weapons on goo-spewing bugs and getting slashed and impaled in return. Armond White is WRONG.

Roger,

You wrote earlier concerning Mr. White's divergence from critical consensus that "People are always correcting my understanding of statistics. Does 50% mean White is in the middle? Apparently not. Judging by these figures, is means he dislikes a lot more movies than the norm."

Technically this is not true. One could diverge from the RT consensus in either of two ways. One might either give a favorable review to "Cop and a Half" or a grumpy critic might award only 2.5 stars to "Deliverance."

However your instinct was correct in the case of Mr White. This year he has written favorable evaluations for only 37% of the movies that he has reviewed. 27 out of 74 films.

Conversely, Manohla Dargis, who is widely considered to be a tough grader, has praised 66% of the last 50 films she has reviewed.

Armond has preconceived notions of what cinema absolutely must be. If it does not align to his preconceived standards, he will dismiss it. Never mind any attempts to understand, to ask questions and to renew one's insight; because why bother when your opinion is so high on the pedestal? Armond is never wrong; the movie is. Armond is not dumb; you are.

This is starting to sound like those impossibly ironic feats only Chuck Norris can do. "Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants."

Movies like Transformers 2 are alright by him because he knows they are not trying very hard. They're "safe" topics. When he tries to engage in intelligent criticism, he is the equivalent of a FOX News coverage: I do not doubt he believes what he says, but I cannot be certain that what he says is an opinion to be trusted. He is a critic. Bias and condescension does not make a tolerable critic. In regards to his reviews, the man is professionally bi-polar.

No, Armond does not need to agree with my opinions to make him a good critic. I disagree with you a lot, Ebert, but you write in a manner that communicates your thoughts clearly---even in spite of the occasional sarcasm. You are *articulate* and insightful, and there is a modesty in your choice of words. Armond is, if one thing, articulate. He likes words. But he is not a good critic. There is little understanding in his articulation and even less modesty. His intelligence is dated, his mind is static; the man would rather attack what he does not understand rather than renew insight. His reviews are not reviews but rants. Cinema to him is politics. Art is a mere preset.

Mr. Ebert, you do realize Armond White has written more than one article claiming you and Mr. Siskel, and the "Thumbs Up" tableau, has ruined modern day film criticism beyond repair?

Roger,

Have you read White's What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies? It's mostly a diatribe about you. I think White is a self-important contrarian blowhard who should be knocked upside the head with your Pulitzer.

http://www.nypress.com/article-18219-what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-movies.html

Ebert: In the article, he writes:

Permit an insider’s story: It is said that At the Movies host Roger Ebert boasted to Kael about his new TV show, repeatedly asking whether she’d seen it. Kael reportedly answered “If I want a layman’s opinion on movies, I don’t have to watch TV.”

This is a complete invention. I never spoke with Pauline about it.

Here's an insider's story where you know the insider: She did once write me that I was writing the best film criticism in American newspapers, but that was a long time ago, in 1968, and besides. I have kept that note to myself for all of these years, but if there was ever a time to quote it, that time is now.

I have never confused myself with the truly great critics, a mistake Armond White sometimes makes.

Travis Goodwin: No no! Roger! I love you, man but now your blog posts contain spoilers too? I suppose I'll have to read your blog posts the way I read your reviews; top and bottom paragraphs only.

Hey, that's what I do! I usually read the first paragraph to get what the movie's about (if I don't already know) and the last to get your general impression and if there are any "wow" performances, etc. I usually wait until after I see a movie to read the full review. I try to see movies as fresh as I can, then see what "The Rog" has to say about it.

I've read a couple of Armond's reviews and I honestly think that some of them seem to be genuine, the problem is the mixing in with seeming "troll" reviews. Being so critical of popular movies seems par for the course for most critics, the problem is when they do nothing to back up their reasoning or use flimsy logic and the like.

I do not believe this happened with District 9 as that particular review read like an honest opinion even though some of his other reviews seem like attention grabbers.

Seems like a bit of a logical fallacy to discount his point of view for District 9 based upon other reviews, do they have a name for that? Why does a movie need a 100% meter anyway? I would be far more suspicious of a movie with 100% than one with 96% or so simply.

This is the first brow-creasing I've ever done in comparing critics.

Shayzus, what time is it? 7:32 p.m. I've been going over a backlog of White's movie reviews since around 4 p.m. I didn't even realize the pic Rodge put up was of Armond White. I thought it was Desmond Tutu or somebody from South Africa to illustrate his other point. But this wasn't the writing of any American white writer I know of.

Thankya Jesus here's a guy who saw through "Slumdog Millionaire" from the same angles I did, and, when you talk to a real Indian rather than reading the condescending reports of the American press about it, the same angles a good part of that country also found rather insulting.

And for instance: WHY WASTE SPLEEN on Michael Bay? He’s a real visionary—perhaps mindless in some ways (he’s never bothered filming a good script), but Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is more proof he has a great eye for scale and a gift for visceral amazement.

This guy's no troll. We've seen here fun reasons to "waste spleen" (great phrasing) on the flick, but that doesn't invalidate White's observation one bit. He didn't watch the film, he observed it, certainly more coolly than we did.

Gran Torino is a calculated throwback to All in the Family’s topicality, plus a comic/tragic star vehicle for Eastwood to show off his late-career legend as a serious actor-auteur.

I can't bitch about that either, even tho' my Chinese-Japanese-Korean-highly-accomplished-and-educated friend just praised the hell out of Gran Torino on the phone to me a couple days ago. (the first Asian friend I've ever had, too.)

"We Were Soldiers": Anyone who doesn’t laugh at the cliche Negro inarticulateness probably also believed Gibson’s Patriot contention that there was never slavery in America.

Correctamundo. But a white middle-classer would have to have known more than only the sight of little gaggles of gangsta-dressed boys from a distance in the high school hallways to realize that, wouldn't he?

There's a half ton of quotables in this guy's archives. Just google "Armond White" and you'll get Armond White himself (and realize the pic Rodge put up wasn't Desmond Tutu or whoever just out of jail after all).

Intriguing, the blogger Roger referred us to, his remark that a black American watching the movies must "translate." S/he has to "translate" all those white actors in a way us whites do not. S/he also has to "translate" considerable cultural differences, both highly uniquely American, but distinct and to yet a high degree isolated from each other, not necessarily for guilty reasons.

It isn't that this is undesirable. Good god, who wants a melting pot of creamy light-brownish humanity where you can't discern anything but one flavor?

Us white moviegoers get a kick out of the phrase "blowed up real good," we see. It's gone from a funny skit on Second City Television 30-odd years ago to a national cultural shorthand useful enough for Roger to make a point and get a giggle in his reviews. There's a psychological cultural origin to this short-hand, native to us northern farmboys that automatically makes it funny. If there are any American blacks reading this, grown up in a black family, who also think it's gut-funny, I challenge you to explain why -- in detail. Because I bet you have to "translate."

Maybe I sound like a "troll" now, but I submit that Armond White is garnering this annoyance and accusations of "contrarian" because he's an American black. For that, he must see the movies he reviews from wider angles than us whites do. The reason I haven't run across anything I object to, so I like to think, is that he transcends both, if writing from an escritorial tradition that does not appear to include the cadences of Robert Benchley.

I don't think he lays it on too thick, like others in this thread have complained. His style takes a little getting used to, like Ornette Coleman does; once you get it, it's a lot of fun to roll with and there aren't merely little snippets of "brilliance" as accused. It all fits. He's merely not pleasing the go-along-to-get-along crowd that's complaining about him. If I am not mistaken, this crowd is white.

It's the same kind of quality that's kept me an Ebert fan all these years -- I can tell whether or not I'll like what Roger does by his own clear exposition. If I want "the greatest movie ever" I'll read the Yahoo audience reviews.

Dammit, White's archives go back 7 years, but I can't find "Traffic," which was 2003, I think. That was the only flick in 30-odd years where Roger "fooled" me. I thought the pandering to racial fear was so embarrassing I walked out before the movie ended. I wanna see what White thought of it. Don't tell me I shoulda finished it, Rodge. I didn't walk out all that early.

Some decent/good/great/well-received movies Armond White has given positive reviews to:

Coraline
Rachel Getting Married
W
Transamerica
anything by Wes Anderson
anything by Stephen Spielberg

Anyone else seeing a common thread? All these movies/directors deal/tend to deal with broken or dysfunctional families. Maybe this gives us a glimpse at why Armond is the way he is?

Don't forget that your middling review of Fight Club and your praise for Van Helsing would be proof enough for some people that you yourself are a troll.

Yes but those people would be fanboys. Fight Club is a fanboy film. It's not a critical darling and if it ever becomes one it will be only thru sheer force of numbers from fanboys and other people too shallow to notice that the film's a thematic mess.

I remember, years ago, having seen Boaz Yakin's 1994 film "Fresh" on your recommendation, and loving it. Later, I read Armond White's evisceration of the film, and actually second-guessed my own opinion of it. I was a callow 24-year-old at the time; I no longer allow my feelings about a film to be swayed by critics' contrary opinions (whether I respect them or not). That said, if I find I disagree with an Ebert review, I at least find the fact that we disagree fascinating, as I agree with you about 85% of the time. Armond White, however, can sit on a tack. To paraphrase Angela Lansbury in "The Manchurian Candidate" (which he no doubt hates): Armond, why do you always write as though your head is about to come to a point?

Some of his arguments are just plain WRONG. I know, I know... it's his opinion, it CAN'T be wrong, right?! Well, yes it can be. It's wrong in the same way as saying that "in MY opinion, slavery should be legal". That's an opinion, and it's WRONG.

I would also like to point out that had the aliens been replaced with blacks, and the ship in the sky been erased, he would have likely enjoyed it. He's just trying to be a sourpuss. Move along, nothing to see here.

I read about 20 of his reviews last night. I have to say I disagreed with about 15. However, there was something instructive even in the reviews that I didn't agree with at all. For instance, I love Stille Licht. I saw at TIFF, I am Mennonite, I thought there was really plausible and wonderful things being done with light, time, and resurrection and the movie and it made me think and want to talk about the film with everyone. Great film. However, I don't think White is just trolling when he critiques the movie. From what I know about Mennonites there was something that just seemed a bit false about how people were dealing with faith, family, friendship, worship, and time. There was a sense in which the Mennonites functioned in a way not entirely keeping with the injunction to always treat people as ends in themselves and not as means to another end. In this instance, I could argue that Witness is a better film although it actually gives less of a claim to vere similitude, because at least it seem to "get" what anabaptists means when they say they want to witness to an alternative life of peace. I thought that his comments tended to be overwrought but that doesn't mean there isn't major truths in them. I think he is a bit of a gadfly and I think that is just fine.

I hated District 9, but I agree that this critic wrote a very bad review, and generally does write bad reviews.

Really though, Rottentomatoes users go after every critic they disagree with. There are perfectly good negative reviews on District 9 that are full of people flaming the reviewer for not watching the movie.

Here's why I didn't like it (SPOILERS):

1. I think the documentary style opening has a lot of promise. It's funny and interesting, and it's the main reason I liked the short film "Alive in Joburg." This style is quickly abandoned.

2. There is so much juvenile crap in the movie. The only reaction the audience had when I saw it today was a few giggles when the alien laser beam explodes people. I didn't like the "screen splattered with gore" effect. I didn't like when the guy in the giant robot suit picks up a pig and throws it at some bad guy. These are both effects that feature prominently in some video games. They belong in video games, where they increase immersion and add a visceral feel. They don't belong in movies.

3. There is no character development. One moment we have this guy overseeing the torching of alien babies, and then he's telling the alien named Christopher "Don't go there, it's like a concentration camp." What the hell did I miss here? If he knew it was a "concentration camp," why did he support the eviction? Does growing an alien hand suddenly make you aware of injustice? What??

4. There is just too much action, and none of it is interesting. It just takes up too much of the film. It felt like it eclipsed the promising first act.

5. I hate the ending, but for a different reason than most people. You get these text message "Aliens were relocated in District 10" "Aliens are reproducing pretty good" "MNU is being put on trial for experimenting with aliens."

WHAT? How did MNU get caught? I watched the movie, I swear, but where was the "whistleblower" scene? If I saw it right, the main character fully transforms into an alien. Are they asking us to accept that everything worked out because of events that weren't shown to us? That's a major cop out.

The funny thing is that District 9 would have really pleased me if it had been like an "Alien Amistad." If the movie had been about the events that the 3 ending sentences hint at. It could have been a courtroom drama WITH ALIENS. I would have really appreciated that, moreso than the movie we're left with.

As for the "Apartheid parable," that's very well and good, but it's not enough. There has to be an interesting story that features here as well, and I must have have missed that story.

It is incredible that such people exist in the world, but I truly believe Armond White thrives on the attention he gets for differing from the norm. And while I hate his reviews, he's certainly entitled to write them. What I hate is the amount of attention he gets for writing the way he does. Have you looked at his review comments page on either RT or the NY Press website??? Is there a single reviewer out there who has generated that level or debate??

Like the Bill O'Reilleys and Ann Coulters of the world, White thrives off of public outrage. Does he believe what he writes? Does it matter? It's an opinion, and his is making him more famous than [fill in critic no one knows, which is most of them]. Like Coulter and O'Reilley, however, White's opinions are only relevant as long as he is around to spew them, and I doubt he'll have any sort of legacy after his death.

Anyway, I wish everyone would shut up about Armand already. If people didn't get outraged at what he writes, he'd very, very quickly disappear.

I was just looking through some of the comments on this post and just wanted to add to one that you replied to, where someone got We the Living and You, the Living confused, and would like to add that We The Living is novel by Ayn Rand, who is an excellent writer.
Also, I think Armond White is a unique critic with a different view on films, even though that view is more negative and bitter towards popular depressing films, and glowingly positive reviews to films that have happy themes.

Roger I think you are willfully omitting White's main point: this is a movie set in South Africa in which the black actors are regulated to bit parts save the Nigerian gang leader who is a racial cartoon and ultimately the most brutal inhuman character in the film.

The move has three narrators in the documentary framing device who are all white. All the major authority figures are white.

Why is this? Why are black people mostly playing the backdrop and vicious cannibals? I kept waiting for one mention of South Africa's real racial history, but no. In the movie, it almost seemed like apartheid was still in place, assumed but never address.

If the use of an allegory about racism involves pushing the actual victims of racism to the margins and one kind of racist role, then that allegory has kind of failed or is repeating the same thing it's commenting upon.

I have been hoping you would eventually weigh in on Armond White's method of criticism. He seems to enjoy bashing your style, and I am both pleased and not surprised you have chosen to return that with praise and rationalism.

My lovely girlfriend, who I know often reads the blog and my comments, loves to say that it isn't important what you say, but how you say it. Therein lies my biggest issue with Mr. White. He is as entitled to his opinion as anybody else. If he truly believes "Death Race" is a better film than "Synecdoche, New York," it is his responsibility as a professional film critic to espouse those sentiment in a coherent and accessible manner. Spending several paragraphs essentially telling his readers that anyone who disagrees with him and meshes with the critical mass are complete buffoons is not acceptable. Often, White does not even explain in his reviews why he dislikes a movie, instead praising a film he considers to be better while stringing together long sentences calling everybody else stupid.

White has a strong understanding of film, I think, but his bullishness makes him unreadable. He refuses to acknowledge his own intellectual shortcoming and condemns those who dare disagree with him. White's defenders often cite his Tomato-Meter rating, noting that his is a lot more consistent with the consensus than it initially appears. Perhaps, but it is very rare you will find a popular, successful movie he finds worthwhile. To me, this is beyond coincidence. I truly believe White purposely writes negative reviews of movies he knows will be successful to draw attention to himself and in the process insults the culture we live in for finding these movies enjoyable.

Part of me wishes I understood White better. I think I have a strong vocabulary, but I find myself re-reading White's reviews wondering what he is trying to say. As a budding journalist, I know readability is probably the most important component to a story. Does White believe that by confounding his readers, he will seem smarter and therefore right?

I don't want to say White is a troll, because at times he is brilliant. But sometimes it is hard to think otherwise.

Thanks for the post, Roger. I'm vacationing on Martha's Vineyard this week with very limited Internet access, but i had to make sure to check the blog, as always.

My biggest problem with Armond White is that he often decides early on which filmmakers he will love and which filmmakers he will hate forever. On that basis, it can be fair to conclude that he will almost always spring to the defense of any film made by Altman, Godard, Spielberg, De Palma, Oliver Stone, Charles Burnett, and the Coen Bros.

Sometimes I can be disappointed when he DOES NOT rally against the majority rule. Remember, Roger, when you and the critics trashed Francis Ford Coppola's comeback, "Youth Without Youth" (2007)? I adored that film. Unfortunately, White sided with you guys. Oh, bother!

Now, regarding Spielberg's "A.I.". I am pleased that White has the guts to place it on his Top Ten list of the greatest films ever made. Would I put it on that list myself? I don't know about that, but I've seen "A.I." dozens of times since first seeing it as a ten-year old when first released in 2001, and I have admired it increasingly with each viewing.

What a lot of people don't know is that Spielberg is faithful to Kubrick's vision from beginning to end in the film- including the finale in which David is resurrected by the supermechas (not "aliens", as some people initially believed). In your review, you seem confused about the whole point of the ending. You wrote:

"...the robot does not genuinely love. It genuinely only seems to love. We are expert at projecting human emotions into non-human subjects, from animals to clouds to computer games, but the emotions reside only in our minds. "A.I." evades its responsibility to deal rigorously with this trait and goes for an ending that wants us to cry, but had me asking questions just when I should have been finding answers."

Your first mistake, Roger, is in believing that Spielberg wanted the audience to cry over the film's ending. Just as Kubrick would have done, Spielberg makes the point that the supermechas, in attempting to find one last piece of evidence from mankind's past, try to wrest it out of David (Haley Joel Osment's robot) by inventing up an artificial fantasy for him. But it lasts for only a day... and then David, before the supermechas can take any further advantage of him, decides to commit suicide. The supermechas, thus, are left without their only remaining key to past completely spoiled.

Enough rambling about the meanings of "A.I.", though. Armond White's original review of the film does indeed make it out to be the kind of film you say it was: the kind of film that is supposed to make the audience cry. But then Armond White wrote a second review of "A.I." that is wiser, and more thought-out about the film's purposes. In his second review, White wrote:

"Spielberg finds a delicate, adroit expression of longing that blows fairytale wishing sky high. This is spiritual aspiration–not mere hipness–and the final half-hour of A.I. achieves an erotic plateau that is also metaphysical. Whether you observe it as memory or theology, it’s so beautiful it’s shattering."

For me, though, the absolute best review on "A.I." is the one written by your good friend Jonathan Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum, like White, hailed "A.I." as the best film of 2001, and for good reason. Did you ever read his review? Rosenbaum wrote of the film:

"A.I. is consistently dialectical–almost to the point of schizophrenia and at times to the very edge of incoherence–most often with rich and complex consequences. Take the end of the movie. Is the cloned Monica, resurrected and “corrected” to satisfy a robot’s programmed cravings, much closer to something human than David, created and programmed by man in his own image? Is the love of either character genuine, programmed, or some combination of the two? The line separating life from death, being from nothingness, even the present from the past–”I am…I was,” says Gigolo Joe as he gets hooked and reeled in by a scavenger-police plane like a hapless fish–remains as ambiguous as the line separating orga from mecha or human from inhuman that runs throughout the picture. It’s a line very much like the one separating viewers from the characters in a film or video."

Pretty neat, huh? Armond White and Jonathan Rosenbaum are in agreement, for once!

You pretty much sum up all my feelings on this matter. I hate the way fanboys will automatically beat up on a critic like White just because they don't agree with him. That said, I like White himself even less. I sometimes think White has his opinions made up before he sees a film - praising to death anything that Spielberg touches (see Indy 4, even the Spielberg-produced Transformers 2), while damning anything with a cynical point of view (Dark Knight, There Will Be Blood). And some of the excuses he makes up are just laughable. According to White, the Indiana Jones series was an attempt by the filmmakers to work "through disoriented feelings about Americanism and the world."

Most of all, White just strikes me as an angry, bitter, contrarian who fancies himself superior to popular taste. You know, he wrote an essay, "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies," where he denounced your writing, saying that you had really contributed nothing to film criticism. I don't know what White thinks he has contributed, but I know this for sure - you have done far more to affect the lives of moviegoers than White can ever hope to achieve. Your criticism, in print and on TV, always seemed to me to be founded in a deep love and appreciation for movies. I never get that from White - in fact, I often get quite the opposite impression.

i have ot agree with u roger on this one big time. this guy gives critics a bad name and ppl lik him and rex reed are the reason the ppl dont take critics seriously anymore and simply see them as the crazy ppl with the signs tht proclaim the end is nigh. i dont feel this way but alot of my friends do. i also feel ppl like him discourage aspiring filmmakers like myself. critics r about giving how they feel about a movie this guy jsut goes againt the popular vote.

Armond White puts me in mind of David Thomson--and the two of them remind me of Socrates or Diogenes, in that they prick at our sides and goad us to rethink our views, sometimes almost ruthlessly. A professor of philosophy I know always grimaces a bit at Soc. & Diog. "They're really not 'philosophers,'" he admits. "But they keep us on our toes."

So maybe White is no "philosopher," but I will read him, if only to feel the instructive sting of his contrariness--and to sometimes see a film in a startling new light. Like those two Greek gadflies, he can be irritating and self-important; still, when he's right--as he mostly is about, for instance, A.I.--he's pretty much right on.

p.s. And he's also mostly right about District 9, especially in its misappropriation of South Africa's past. I kept thinking of Alien Nation, although that picture's metaphors understood racism better, both its origins and effects.

I, like many casual readers of the internet, have a problem with Armond White. It's not that I disagree with him. I disagree with critics from time to time and there are some whom I disagree with more or less. I do not have the same taste in movies as you, Roger, and there are some movies you enjoy that I detested (the last Mummy movie, for example) and some movies you hated that I adore (The Usual Suspects and UHF spring to mind).

The problem that I have with Mr. White is that often his reviews, unlike your reviews, do not allow for the chance for another opinion to exist. I can read one of your reviews and gain a better idea of if I am going to like a movie or not. I don't always agree with you, but you write your reviews in such a way that gives the viewer enough information to gain some insight if, based on their personal taste, they would enjoy the film.

Take, for example, Mr. White's review of Up. He spends so much time picking apart the Pixar "formula" and his problems with the company that he forgets to review the movie. Furthermore, he sites his own personal favorites as examples of good animation, and they include Chicken Little. However, after reading his review, I didn't know if I would like the movie more or less. I just knew that this guy didn't like Pixar. His reasoning didn't make much sense to me, and he doesn't cite examples so much as state opinion as fact before quickly shifting to the next point. It is a tactic common in politics but has no real place in serious film reviewing.

Again, take his review for 500 Days of Summer. It again offers little insight into the movie, and, upon seeing the film, I quickly realized he had not allowed himself to become involved in the movie. Anyone who would use the word joyless to describe the Hall and Oats scene has some serious misconceptions about joy.

Finally, though he and I agreed on the whole on The Hurt Locker, his review again is full of flaws. It is the only review I have seen that doesn't give a single line to Renner's fantastic performance. In reading his review, one can not even gather that the movie is actually a thriller, with very little action. In fact, they can't gather much of anything from the review, except it's about a guy who defuses bombs and the direction is solid.

I would never get mad at a critic merely for disagreeing with the mainstream, other critics or myself, even on a regular basis. But Armond White seems so caught up in his world of hating movies that he forgets that the reason he is writing these long winded diatribes is because there are people who actually want to view these movies, and are looking for him for guidance on to which movie would best suit their interest.

Armond White's reviews are no good to anyone except for Armond White.

That being said, the man's got us all talking about us, and there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Reading stuff like this really scares me. I had never heard of him til this entry, but I'm kind of appalled. Not that I care what he likes, people are free to like what they like, and if someone likes a terrible movie like Transformers, more power to them. What kind of baffles me is that at times he will enjoy movies that are actually good (the only one I saw was Rachel Getting Married). He doesn't have a rhyme or reason for why he dislikes a movie.

It's kind of like he makes his reviews for the week then randomizes the text. His reasoning doesn't make sense with the movies he's rating.

He'll just saying things like "this is another classic example of terrible film-making".

Methinks he doesn't know much about film-making?

Armond White is one of the few critics (along with you) that I read regularly. I certainly don't agree with him all of the time (or even most of the time these days). He does have an unfortunate tendency to be contrarian for contrarian's sake & to display the traits of a bully. If you disagree with him or like something he doesn't like - you must be either stupid or immoral according to his logic. His politics are also baffling. Even though he was initially known as kind of a leftist critic who often (perceptively) exposed racism in both Hollywood films (and their reception) - he's become a bit of a fundamentalist neo-con attacking what he perceives to be liberal smugness. That being said, I find him pretty entertaining & occasionally, he can be the lone sane voice of reason. For example, I actually agree with his assessment that Wayne Kramer's Running Scared is superior to Scorsese's The Departed. It's hard to side with him when he prefers Eddie Murphy in Norbit to Murphy in Dreamgirls. But I wanted to high five him when he slammed Atonement which I also hated. My biggest complaint with Armond White these days is that I don't necessarily feel like I'm learning anything or having my perceptions shaken up in a fresh way. He's written some reviews in the past that actually provoked serious thought and were full of genuine insight. I also feel that his prose can be unnecessarily purplish and convoluted, so that I'm not really sure what he means. Still, I'll continue to read him. I actually find him far more useful (as with most good critics) when he likes something. It is a pity that even in those cases, he feels the need to write about how most critics and audiences just don't get it. While I would agree that film culture has deteriorated in the mainstream - there are still many intelligent voices (both critically and in the audience) out there. There is something about White that feels the need to prop himself up as the lone honorable man battling a righteous battle against the barbarian hordes. A fellow poster commented on White's recent comment denigrating The Hurt Locker as "now overrated" when his original review praised it as one of the few great Iraq War films. This is White at his worst - calibrating his opinion based on the opinions of others rather than judging the work itself on its own terms. It's a shame since White's comments about the Hurt Locker in his original review are actually pretty perceptive. Still, I agree with you and think that he's a valuable critic. We need people to dissent when they're dissenting with genuine intelligence and reason.
On the topic of District 9 (which I liked alot) - I do think White may have a point with regards to the portrayal of the Nigerian cannibals/witch doctors. That aspect of the film was problematic from a racial perspective. However, he launches an attack on Peter Jackson as if Jackson was the main villain at hand. The film is clearly Neill Blomkamp's vision. White is also perfectly within his rights to wonder if the film is exploiting real tragedy such as apartheid related riots in Soweto for cheap thrills. I'd say the film works in a B movie way with a nice dose of social commentary - but it is primarily a scifi action film - not a serious treatment of race - but I don't think it's pretending to be much more.
I guess I'm defending Armond White - without agreeing with him - or disagreeing with those who point out his many flaws. But you have to admit he's one of the least boring critics out there. And I don't think you can doubt his love of cinema. So I'd say - more Armond White - and less Ben Lyons.

Ebert: Now you have me.

Wolfe said:

"I find myself annoyed that anytime a sci-fi film has explosions you (Roger) manage to tack on a phrase about how something 'blows up real good'."

That's okay, Wolfe. I find myself getting annoyed when a sci-fi writer and/or director thinks that 'blowing (stuff) up real good' is characterization and plot.

Sci-Fi film = Blow stuff up good =/= great film.

I'm so honored that I was able to change Roger's opinion on something. I came back today to Rotten Tomatoes and this page and was just tickled that my name was mentioned. I appreciate it greatly.

Nothing really more to contribute, just thanks.

Roger,

I can understand your defense of White's intellectual faculties. But consider his irresponsible and reprehensible attacks on the character of the directors, actors, screenwriters, critics, and audience members whom he dislikes. I've always admired the fact that you've never resorted to such tactics.

I started a group on Facebook contending that Armond White is not a real film critic. Now before I get into the reasons why I believe that I want to establish the fact that I believe Armond is an intelligent, eloquent individual with an undeniable knowledge and passion for film. That would be wonderful if he was simply an acquaintance. But perhaps you have not seen his "Better than" lists? Or Jim Emersons wonderful pieces detailing why his criticism is indeed not criticism is just inverse blurbmeistering (which is not a word but you get my meaning)?

I can explain my point on my own, but Jim does it far more eloquently and thoroughly in his blog posts:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/01/do_the_contrarian_part_i.html

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/01/do_the_contrarian_part_ii.html

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/01/do_the_contrarian_its_the_whit.html

I entirely understand your defense of Whites intelligence and passion for film. But please understand that his fiercest critics are not fanboys, but fellow cineastes. I hope that you will read this post and consider what I've written here.

Whatever virtues may be present in White's criticism are obscured by his insistence on playing a Me v. Everyone Else game. Reading through White's "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Movies" article, I came to the conclusion that his real issue has nothing to do with critical discourse, and everything to do with positioning himself as being different than the others. He seems to be saying, "What they like, I don't. And they are so stupid for not liking what I like. They really need to like this director, or that movie, instead of what they do like."

The irony of the article is that public discourse should never center on preferences. We should never worry about how much any given critic likes a movie, but we should wonder why. We should seek to know what they saw in the picture, and consider their views. Somehow it seems like White wants everyone to consider his views, but he's not terribly willing to consider others.

He also seems to deliberately misunderstand the purpose and function of a show like "At the Movies". The goal of your show always seemed to be that it would tip viewers about coming attractions. I don't think it ever posed as serious, academic criticism - and that was the joy of it. It helped promote a culture in which average people could feel more comfortable in discussing movies - both high and low.

Ebert: Exactly. The most important thing we did was the most simple: Show two people caring enough about a movie to discuss it, and argue when they differ. Too many moviegoers are uncritical except in the most basic ways.

White quoted me correctly in saying that in print you try to leave out cliches, and on TV you use them. Let me explain. One of the things you learn in writing for radio or TV is that some words and phrases "hear" and others simply don't. The advice John Wayne got so long ago is to some extent true: People can only listen so fast.

Well-written, complex prose resists broadcast (not audiobooks, which are another matter), Nobody can hear the punctuation, or understand an ambiguous word, or deal with long sentences. I've not infrequently written newspaper sentences of 50 or even 75 words, and I breeze through Henry James with pleasure. But try that on TV. You have to say it directly and clearly, and use efficient adjectives. Yes, and sometimes cliches you would never use in print.

"...and would like to add that We The Living is novel by Ayn Rand, who is an excellent writer."

Armond, is that you? ;)

Roger,

Here is essentially the mission statement of the group I have started, in case you are interested:

"Armond White is the resident 'critic' at the downtown freebie The New York Press. No New Yorker I know has ever heard of the publication, let alone read it, but that's beside the point. White is a mean spirited contrarian whose 'criticism' simply consists of pointless comparisons, name dropping, and flashy put downs without any substantive material to back them up. He's sort of like an eloquent, and crotchety version of Ben Lyons. His ivory tower is firmly planted above vaguely defined 'hipsters' and 'nihilists'. He often makes a point to attack critical consensus even though he doesn't bother to clarify what or who he's talking about.

Perhaps most repugnant are his vicious and uncalled for attacks on the character of film makers, screen writers, producers, and assumed audience members. Such bullying and blatant disrespect has no place in criticism or journalism, and he should be ashamed of himself. He has a list of favorites who can do no wrong ranging from Steven Spielberg, Jason Statham, Jean Luc-Godard, Jet Li, Walter Hill, John Moore, Eddie Murphy (he loved Norbit), and others. He also has a list of people who can only do wrong, without any exception. These people include Christopher Nolan, Todd Haynes, Will Smith, Neil LaBute, Samuel L. Jackson, Christian Bale, Michael Mann, Spike Lee, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Kevin Smith, Sasha Baron Cohen, and others.

This group is for anyone who believes that Armond White is not a film critic, but a contrarian, boorish man who discourages thought and discussion in favor of a binary of 'You must agree or else you are a despicable human being' where "pop" must triumph over 'nihilism'."

Also, I think you might find this site interesting:

http://armonddangerous.blogspot.com/

Not only does Armond White have bad taste, he also comes off as extremely homophobic in my view. Check out his review for Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park.
http://www.nypress.com/article-18014-dirty-old-man-voyeurism.html
His headline is "Dirty Old Man Voyeurism" and the subject line below that is "Gus Van Sant still fetishizes skater boys with his stylized images." He goes on to refer to it as a "jailbait drama" even though in the film itself, the main character's sexuality is far in the distant background. Gus Van Sant is one of few openly gay filmmakers working in the mainstream. Why can't he make a movie about a teenage boy without being accused of sexual perversion? Trying to equate gay people to sexual deviants is a common tactic of homophobes and has been used for centuries as a means to oppress them. Think, "They're after our children!" Such vile hate speech is what leads to homosexuals being banned from the Boy Scouts, banned from adopting children, and formally banned from teaching in schools. In his review, White does nothing to support such bogus allegations, probably because he's smart enough to know that there is no support for such nonsense. So instead he tucks it into his headline and opening paragraph, never to be reckoned with. But his distaste for homosexuals is clear in the use of such loaded words and phrases as "Dirty Old Man," "fetishizes," and "jailbait." Why does he use such words? Because a gay man made a film about a teenage boy? All gay men were once teenage boys themselves. I don't understand this. Does he attack heterosexual filmmakers for using teen boys as their protagonists? Accuse of them of fetishizing? Of course not. Read the review, see for yourself. This guy is a bigot. I can feel it.

"I have never confused myself with the truly great critics"

This is blasphemous. What will it take to confuse you, a second Pulitzer?

I read your new comment first and then your original defense of White. In your re-evaluation, it seems to me like you may have fallen into the same trap as White's detractors. If he votes with the TomatoMeter 50% of the time (so to speak), I don't think he's a troll.

What's so bad about being a fanboy? What is so bad about trolling around? I like being a fanboy and I'm proud to troll around other blogs and message boards. In every film review I have read, it seems as though critics want us to approach a film the way that they do. Well, when I troll around I'm trying to do the same thing because I take pride and dignity knowing that I like certain films and dislike others and I want other people to know why.

Being the proud fanboy and troll that I am I will come clean. In one of Mr. Ebert's previous posts I said that I respected the films The Godfather and Citizen Kane, well that was a lie. I found both films too long and very boring. I fell asleep during both films and I have no regrets doing so. Call me an idiot for not liking these movies and tell me that I don't know cinema, I don't care. I like the films that I watch, and if people think they are bad, then I'm more than to happy to troll around to express why I like them.

Ebert: Well, you can write well. Someday you will go back to those films and like them. Mark my words.

NORBIT?

Ebert, I fear you have opened pandora's box. White possess to grand an ego to let your slight of him go unanswered. I sense an epic contest brewing. I'd wager he waits for you to review the next major studio release first, and then reacts directly to your review in his. I'm pulling for you Ebert. Few can match wits against you and come out on top.

Hi Roger,

Aside from the fact that this post is about Armond White, perhaps you know that you're forging a Movie Club with the blog. I went to see Hurt Locker and Knowing, specifically because of your blog postings. And, I wasn't sure about District 9, but the blog convinced me to go watch it this afternoon. So, your blog is effective as a lobbying tool, but with the comments it becomes the Movie discussion club. I wonder what type of comments your original reviews would generate.

I hope all is well.

Omer M

Uhmmm...

"...by simply jettisoning exegesis and replacing interest in content with production stills, personality profiles and a humor column that witheringly trivialized the critic’s pursuit."

Armond's right. That sounds exactly like a show that used to be on TV with these two guys named Ben & Ben!

Seriously, though, what I find amazing is that all the "alternative press" movie critics are pretty dang consistent WITH EACH OTHER. Like the goth dudes that assert their individuality by dressing like EVERY OTHER GOTH dude I've ever met. Every major city has one, here in Phoenix it's called the NEW TIMES. You can find "alternative" news, shows, and contrary movie reviews. And on the back page you can find ads for hookers. Under Therapeutic Massage. Just saying.

So, go ahead and exegesis his movie reviews all you want guys and gals. Armond's job description is to go against the grain EVERY SINGLE TIME. If that means praising NORBIT and trashing GRAN TORINO, so be it. People don't read the NEW TIMES to find a regurgitation of informed popular opinion. They read the NEW TIMES to get an alternative perspective (read contrary) to the mass critical consensus. Or they read the NEW TIMES to find a hooker. In either case they pick up the newspaper to find something out of the norm. Like herpes.

I think that this guy, that has gotten all of you so riled up, has done his job 100% and deserves a raise. Have you read the flowchart? Do you think what he does is easy? Do you think it's easy to write even 100 words in praise of NORBIT??? How about even 50 words in a coherent paragraph that doesn't make you sound like a trite Eddie Murphy fanboy? Or trash GRAN TORINO. I couldn't string 10 words together against one of my favorite movies of all time. I don't think there are many people in the world that could. But, Mr. White can. So, yes, he is a highly evolved, extremely intelligent, troll. But he trolls, not to gain notoriety by inciting a negative reaction, but ironically, to appease his public. The same public that would love to see all the sacred cows slaughtered and made into avante-garde hamburger meat a la carte medium-rare because I'm on Atkins.

Defending his reviews is pointless. Because he will always try ardently to be in the minority opinion of his peers. You can agree with him or not. His opinion will always be different than the norm. Then you can flip to the back page. And get a "massage."

Totally unrelated: I would pay $$ to have a computer program that read your reviews in your voice. It would be awesome!

Here's a different viewpoint, of the "Armond is crazy" variety.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/awful-links/armond-white.php

Ebert: Somehow I missed White's review of "Pan's Labyrinth." I am grateful for this link, which provides this quote from it:

"Del Toro's monster movie routines lack the freshness of hearing The Ting Tings vivify the crisis of identity that Hellboy bungles."

ARRGH! That's not a flowchart! It's a table!
(What is this rotten fruit business everyone's talkin' 'bout? I like popcorn with my movies.)

"I am forced to conclude that White is, as charged, a troll. A smart and knowing one, but a troll."

Who forced you?

Ebert: Me.

Bless my soul, Rex Reed is still going! Still battering his tiny fists against the barrel-chested Goliath of bad taste. Thanks for the reminder, Justin Wegner!

I disliked Rex Reed when I was a kid, but then I got a sense of humor.

But, for instance, I'm not going to see the latest Harry Potter flick after having read Roger's review, which didn't hate it. I can see I won't care for it. Rex, however, is battering his tiny fists against it, which is old-school amusing.

It's almost 1 a.m. and I've been sitting here reading Armond White's stuff most of the night. I see he hated "Beowulf" for the same reasons I did, tho' he didn't mention that they'd turned Beowulf into a chest-beating World Wrestling Federation barker, like I thought. Bad.

White's views seem to probe into a kind of subconscious of the movie world. That's really unique. Rex Reed doesn't do that...

Of the upcoming courses available for my senior year of college, two creative writing courses that I'm especially excited about are one called "Fiction into Film" and another that is a basic screenwriting class. From my experiences, it seems that college writing workshops try to teach people how to be critics just as much or even more than they teach they how to be writers. Yet I wonder how genuine most of the feedback we get in class really is considering that most professors stress early on that we should limit ourselves to critiquing plot devices and structure while refraining from actually saying whether we find the stories interesting or entertaining.

Ebert: They're just plain wrong. They don't want critiques. They want book reports.

The Internet offers vast opportunities for an ordinary person (such as myself) to express an opinion to the public. If I wanted to be idealistic, I could praise the fact that it seems to be a very "democratic" thing: people can freely express opinions, exchanged ideas, converse with one another, etc.... If I wanted to be pessimistic (which is my usual attitude), I could easily say that many of these people are total idiots.

Some of their opinions seem poorly informed. Some come close to being bigoted (I've seen a few that didn't even try to hide it). Some just seem to be loud, angry, biased, and close-minded to all opinions but their own. The list could go on and on. I get the idea that people have not been improved by the Internet--their many flaws are merely put on display.

I could go on for hours about the so-called "fanboys," but it's 3:39:55 in the morning, it's rapidly becoming more "morning" than "night," and I should eventually pretend to go to bed. I'll just say that I have found them to be far too single-minded in some cases, and that many seem incapable of expressing more than a superficial opinion (I have seen many things be labeled as "awesome" or "horrible" but few explanations as to why). I dislike anybody (including myself) who seems to wholeheartedly support something or reject it based on a single principle.

If I were to try and go somewhere between my idealism and pessimism, I could come to a more practical conclusion. The world is a scary, complicated place. The Internet is even scarier. One can rarely live in total harmony with it. For me, the scariest thing is to be lost in a hail storm of opinions that not only are not my own, but are also not well-supported, fun, factual, or intellectually (or creatively) stimulating. To have to hear frequent lauding of the new Transformers movie (from fans), or scathing condemnations of the sixth Harry Potter movie (from the so-called "purists" or "fans of the books") is a form of torture to me. I find myself in disagreement with these people.

The only true consolation that exists in all of this, is that one can make their own choice of where to go (or which critics to read). I choose to rarely go to sites such as Rotton Tomatoes (at least the fan-based portions of it) because I know I will inevitably be upset. I choose to come here because I'm a fan of Roger Ebert, I'm interested in movies, and because I like this blog in particular. I like to read something that will challenge me to think, to consider something in a new light, or inform me of some new idea. It is also one of the few sites I visit where I make a point of reading all of the comments posted at the end. I get the idea that the people posting here are well-informed, thoughtful, articulate. The pessimist in me finds few reasons to be incensed, the idealist is happy, and the regular mindset in between seems to be the one behind this particular comment. In short, I like this blog and (surprisingly enough) find myself liking the people who post comments here. This place has recently become a haven for me.

I get the idea that this has been a rather scattered and particularly rambling comment. I might have been a bit arrogant at times; if so, I apologize. I guess that is my flaw: I am arrogant, in addition to continually being lost, angry, and alone in a world I barely understand. That's never a good combination of things. The bad news is I now have a platform to speak from....

Ebert: That's not such bad news.

thank you for introducing me to Armond White. i might not agree with some of his reviews, and reconize him to some extent as a professional wind up merchant, but its great to read someone who so intelligently challenges the audiences assumptions.

"making batman grim isnt the same as making it serious"

right on! you can say that about so many modern hip, cynical films

That scene from "You,The Living" was the best thing i've seen all week!

Roger, knowing through your writing that you have spent time in South Africa and have friendships with several SA liberation struggle luminaries, I am a bit surprised by your views on D-9.

The film is set in some sort of a contemporary post-liberation SA, there are black & white people working side by side in the MNU, there are black middle class 'talking heads' etc. The aliens cannot be representing the downtrodden masses suffering under apartheid because the downtrodden black masses are depicted in the film as xenophobic alien haters.
The aliens cannot be representing the many poor africans from neighboring countries who have left their 'planets' to seek wealth in sunny prosperous south africa because africans from neighboring countries are depicted in the film. i.e. as the nigerians.
The nigerians are depicted as criminals & cannibals so any pretense that the film has about being anti-xenophobic is lost, the film is highly xenophobic towards nigerians.
I could go on but have to say that Armond White is quite correct when he says of District 9: "Its a non-sensical political metaphor"

Rather what I think this film is, apart from being a shoddily-written trash sci-fi/horror movie, is an unintentional reflection of young, middle-class white angst in the urban new south africa, made by a "white flight" escapee. I think this angst strikes chords with a certain strata of young, socially confused americans.

Historical facts aside I think Armond White's review is great. And I have enjoyed where you have taken the debate. If he's the troll, you are not the billy goat, you're probably another troll under the bridge.

Ebert: Actually, I suspect it's not intended as about the "new South Africa" but about the apartheid period itself, with "prawns: substituted for "kaffirs." That explains why all the authority figures are white, and most of the Africans are paid subsidiary uniformed employees.

Lets get to the heart of the matter: Armond White is a smart, conservative black man who knows his stuff (regarding not just film, but culture in general) and can intelligently articulate his bold opinions. I know this rubs a lot of whiny, white liberals who see themselves as the gatekeepers of all that is "true art" the wrong way, but hey... GET OVER IT! I have never heard of the guy until all this hype, but I have since read a few of his articles at www.nypress.com and I was impressed (especially his spot on reviews of liberal hack jobs like 'Bruno' and 'Milk'). I saw 'District 9' tonight and loved it. I have also read Armond's review and it made me think (oh no, how dare he!). He does make a good point about one thing. It is funny that all the stuffy white, liberal film critics who cried 'RACISM' at Michael Bay's harmless dopey robots in 'Transformers 2' are know hailing 'District 9' as a masterpiece. They seem to be turning a blind eye to the fact that the main black characters in 'District' are portrayed as cannibalistic, barbarian thugs! Hmmmmm...

Although there might be valid things in his review of District 9, a film with a rather silly premise I am not interested in, I remember this guy some four years ago in a controversy about Gary Indiana's homoerotic interpretation of Bresson's Pickpocket where he tried hard to refute the claim from a religious/conservative standpoint.

A bunch of teenagers were tricked into seeing a movie about Apartheid, racism, and the like. Success! Fantastic film. The action was necessary to show how far humanity would go for their own desires. I love how the film also showed the horrible nature of man when confronted with the potential for magic. Man will kill man for that magic. Man kills albinos because he believes albinos have magical properties. This is important stuff. We must pay attention.

When the critic David Edelstein wrote for Slate, he would invite other critics to participate in an online panel at the end of each year to discuss "the year in film." In many of those years Roger Ebert participated. In one of the years in which Mr. Ebert did not participate, however, Mr. Edelstein invited Armond White.

The result could best be described as a disaster. Put in terms corresponding to the childishness of the tantrums he threw, Armond White does not play well with others. He seemingly does not understand how to participate in an intellectual give-and-take. When another critic made a point on which Mr. White disagreed, he would declare the first critic wrong and expect the conversation to end. When the others continued the conversation Mr. White howled his displeasure.

Mr. White does not see his reviews as part of a national conversation on film. He sees his reviews as the final statement, delivered from the mountaintop.

Unfortunately for him, he does not have the talent, the gravitas, or the intellect for such a role. He does not even see the extent to which his own biases and neuroses are guiding his opinions.

Mr. White attracts readers of two stripes: on the one hand are the intellectually bored, who find Mr. White's unconventional opinions "challenging," and on the other are the rubbberneckers, who are amused by the "bat-shit crazy" guy and want to see what he will say next. Yet I suspect that none of the readers on either side actually take the reviews seriously.

I haven't heard of Armond White before tonight, but I think his oeuvre deserves more than a debate on his alleged troll-ness. After enjoying his pieces on G.I. Joe and District 9, I gather the vitriol he inspires is due in part to an incongruity between the type of reviews most people want and expect from a film critic and the analysis he provides. By examining a movie in its specific social, cultural, or historical context (he writes things like "District 9 confirms that few media makers know how to perceive history, race and class relations," for gods sake), White is overstepping the boundaries of normative critical discourse and providing intellectual discussion that few want to understand or care to consider when they walk out of a movie theater. White is a good critic (or at least an important one) because he watches movies in an enlightened way and communicates this convincingly; and because he uses words like "idiotic", "juvenile," and "silly" to attack what he sees as deficiencies (what passion!).
To attack White because he seems to hate movies that most love does not do justice to his methodology-- how he got there--something I believe far more worthy of debate.

whoever said ann coulter hit the button.
throws a bit of light on both (very clever, very grotesque) personalities.

'hate' may be the operative word: to inspire hate, to sow hatred--trying to make others hate as one hates, what one hates, and to make oneself hated in the process.
yes, this seems part of it--to become an object of hatred, because one has then created more hate in the world.
less important, perhaps, but touching: to jealously protect a few precious beloveds (spielberg, pauline).

but i love seeing, all along this thread, such passion for films, and for reading about them.

While taste is subjective Armonds views on comedy are demonstrably wrong. See raves for Norbit, Little Man

It's a bit of a cheap shot to attack White as someone who "could praise 'Transformers 2' but not 'Synecdoche, NY.' Or 'Death Race' but not 'There Will be Blood,' " especially when you take the reviews out of context. After all, cinephiles could just as easily scoff at a critic who could praise "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" but not "Blue Velvet." Or "American Wedding" but not "Straw Dogs."

Adam Zanzie, I also really liked Youth Without Youth & was also disappointed that neither Roger nor Armond liked it. There were maybe a handful of critics/cinephiles who seemed to like that film (I recall Matt Zoller Seitz and Larry Gross being among the few who admired it). But I'm mainly just happy to see Francis Coppola making personal films again.
And you're also right about the AI reviews by both Armond White and Jonathan Rosenbaum. That's a case where Armond's writing is actually very valuable. Plus, it was especially interesting to see Rosenbaum's critique of AI since he's usually a skeptic when it comes to Spielberg. But even he had to admit Spielberg's accomplishment when it came to respecting Kubrick's vision (and yet making it oddly his own).That's a film that actively gets people angry when you even suggest that you liked it (I've had friends who are intelligent cinephiles look at me like I was crazy when I suggest that I really liked it). But it's heartening to see intelligent defenses by people like White, Rosenbaum, and A.O. Scott. BTW, Rosenbaum is another interesting case of a highly intelligent, literate critic who often takes a contrarian view (especially with more mainstream films) that can get people riled up. He's not nearly as strident as White. However, I recall the war of words that ensued after Rosenbaum's less than kind assessment of Ingmar Bergman appeared in the NY Times. Roger, I recall your intelligent rebutal (which even Bertrand Tavernier commented upon in support). I personally find this kind of passionate, intellectual debate exciting - when it's backed up with intelligent, articulate writing. And I'd love to see more lively debates on tv as well - like the ones Roger and Gene Siskel used to have. It's a pity that there aren't as many films worthy of these arguments.

I've read a few of Mr. White's reviews, and the material you linked in your piece. He has a brilliant mind and a tremendous thesaurus, but his reviews aren't really about the movies he's seen, they are about his perceptions of reality as evoked by the movie.

One of his criticisms of the new "Shaft" movie versus the old "Shaft" movie is that John Shaft has been 'de-racialized' in the new film. My God, I got beat about the head and arrested so as to help 'de-racialize' this country. The original Shaft and most all of the original 'Blaxploitation' films clearly showed two Americas, and only did the rough edges of each culture meet as they ground against each other. The new Shaft is not true to the film in that regard, but it's reflects a better reality.

I find White to be brilliant, an evocative writer, and yet he's offtracked again and again by his own inability to shed his childhood and grow into the new world. He tells the world that Spike Lee has sold out. I don't think so. Last time I heard Spike, he still thinks that I want to see him plowing my fields.

Satire = OMGTROLL!!1

http://www.filthyrichmond.com/2008/11/harrassment-at-movie-theater_11.html

Ebert: The entries on that site are hilarious and kind of brilliant. Either the posters are going along with the joke, or they missed it.

You mention that people wanted to see it because "aliens got blown up real good." That's not actually the case. When I saw the trailer it interested me because it seemed intelligent (whether the film actually is or not I don't know). The parable gave it something to say beyond "blowing stuff up real good". From the trailer I saw, i thought it was a case for NOT blowing the aliens up because they are living creatures too.

I was excited about this movie because I have been waiting for an intelligent mainstream scifi movie. Star Trek is not bad but it was light popcorn fare. I want something that takes advantage of the incredible scope of the sci fi genre and says something profound. This may not be that film (I haven't seen it yet) but the trailer at least gave me hope that it COULD be. For me, that's enough to make me excited. From talking to other sci fi fans, I've gathered that's what they wanted the movie to be too. Perhaps their defense of the movie comes less from fanboyism and more from trying to convince themselves that this movie is what they want: proof of Hollywood finally treating scifi as something other than a "cute little fantasy movie with guns and stuff" and more as a legitimite genre with so much potential.

It saddens me to see the fantasy and scifi genre be treated as Saturday Afternoon fare. Both are incredibly flexible genres because ANYTHING can happen. Because anything can happen ANYTHING can be said and done. Fantasy doesn't necessarily mean Conan or Lord of the Rings. It simply means something fantastic plays a part in the story. I suspect the only thing holding fantasy/scifi back from being a great genre is that it attracts so many talentless hacks with limited imagination.

I am sorely disappointed this movie was not what I was looking for.

Ebert: Not everyone saw in the trailer what you did.

He's still a million times better than Lou Lumineck

Ebert: He's never smacked me.

Before today, I knew nothing of this Armond White or his oddball reviews.
I have just perused several of his older reviews.
To me, the conclusion is very obvious.
The man is a comic genius.
His whole ouevre is a Kaufman-esque joke, and the butt of the joke is everyone who responds to his reviews.
I mean, just look at the brilliant use of language.
He uses an extensive knowledge of cinema to obscure the fact that he is mocking everyone with an extensive knowledge of cinema.
He is pushing your bright, shiny buttons. "Trolling" requires two elements--an obstinate fisherman and some dumb-ass fish to take the bait.
Guess which one gets the last laugh?
Brilliant stuff.

Ebert: Hmmm.

Trolling is wrong for the same reason lying is wrong and why it must have been included in the decalogue, it degrades the social mass. I'm reminded of Tagore:

Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

I have to say that, having seen the movie last evening, I enjoyed it a great deal. It was far more searing in its depiction of the dark side of human nature than I anticipated. However, perhaps the most fascinating part of the experience, which will stay wtih me for years was the audience reaction.

Some individuals, enough to be notable, laughed during parts of the film that portrayed horrifically brutal acts committed against the innocent aliens. I am still unsure whether they were too myopic to understand the metaphor, or so callous that it could be amusing. Either is chilling to me, but I found it an instructive lesson in the way in which many different factors can influence your opinion of a film. The audience greatly enhanced my horror at our capacity for cruelty.

If it wasn't for Rotten Tomatoes there wouldn't be much controversy over his reviews. I find blogs like yours to be Oasis's of intelligent discussion but for the most part Messageboard and Comment thread arguments are for the dregs. This obsession with ranking art is pretty silly, I wonder if it has anything to do with the pervasiveness of sports culture. Half the debates on messageboards seem to be Who is better "Scorcese or Altman"? type debates. If someone is absolutely certain that a movie is a great why should one dissenting voice instill so much impotent rage? Perhaps they aren't as certain as they thought they were....

Someone should make 'The Mote in God's Eye' into a sci-fi television serious or movie. That's an epic, thought-provoking work of sci-fi if ever I've read one.

Not everyone can get readers by quality of writing alone.

Ending in Apocalyptic Silliness? There was no ending. This was obviously an open-ending. Chapter 1. Act 1. Whatever you want to call it. The "ending" completely opens up for District 10. Christopher promises to come back in 3 years, etc. There was NO APOCALYPSE. A skirmish with the best looking battlemech ever made for a live-action movie to date.

Any gamer worth his salt knows that this storyline develops just like a Shooter story line. Protagonist begins as reluctant anti-hero, weak and not prepared for whats waiting for him and suddenly there's a transformative event. (Spray)

Then he gets involved once the Evil Corporation's plans is unveiled. He begins fighting back. Begins with hand to hand battle, gradualy the weapons get stronger and stronger, leading up to the "Boss Battle" with the Battle Mech. This is quite possibly the first video-game movie not based on a video-game and it's a master piece.

Also lacking is the American Hoo-Ha-ism and that's a good thing. It's gritty and bloody and very organic. Any movie that can make me feel sorrow for a CG bug looking over another dead Bug deserves 5 stars. Any movie that can make be believe in the friendship between a human and CG bug deserves 5 stars.

Well, so far I'm close to agreeing with davekat, except that a troll goes fishing for trouble and it's pretty obvious that White leaves it to come to him. Whereas, Rob Roman's indignant speech about the man sounds like it was delivered outside the gates of a Connecticut Whites-only country club where he was just denied membership.

Kurt Vonnegut's story about The Smart Bunny comes to mind. A bunny with an IQ of 225 and an enlarged cranium was smart enough to realize that rabbits didn't need all that intelligence. So, hippity-hop to the doctor's office she went, to get a good part of her brain removed.

On the way there, she was shot by a farmer, who took her home to his wife for a stew. When she looked at the size of the Smart Bunny's head, she thought there must be something wrong with her. So she and the farmer decided not to eat the Smart Bunny after all.

I'm sure White has no plans to head for the doctor's office, but there are a few people who apparently would like to shoot him.

Your suspicion is a shallow bagatelle, Mr. Roman. I'm not "intellectually bored" and I'm taking White's reviews seriously. He's certainly got a better sense of humor than you do.

I understand that it was not one of your favorites, however, I would be very interested to see what Mr. White said about a film like Cry, The Beloved Country.

This incident just might be the beginning of the end for aggregate review sites like Rotten Tomatoes. They must love reviewers like this, because his deliberately contrary comments are going to drive more and more traffic to the site. How long before other less-principaled reviewers start using the same schtick? Afterall, it will raise their profile, and generate revenue for Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone except the audience wins! I can see a time where sites like this are ignored because people will look elsewhere (maybe back to actual newspapers?!) for an objective, honest review.

Ebert: I don't think any particular critic drives visitors to a site. What RT, Mega, IMDb and MRQE do is drive visitors to a critic.

From my reading, he doesn't seem so much a troll as someone who's fed up with the herd instinct upon which conventional "wisdom" depends, and has mounted an attack. Only cattle should have a problem with this.

Does that mean he's always right? No. It means he's doing something important, and that serious people should stop mooing and engage him seriously.

Just because Mr. White writes intelligent reviews doesn't mean that he's not a shameless self-promoter, much as Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. You could argue that those men are intelligent as well, but they serve mainly one purpose- and that is to aggravate to a point where people watch their show- much like a driver watches the aftermath of a bloody car accident. Mr. White is very good at drawing attention to himself and his newspaper. See- he satisfies you by dropping in a good review here or there, to build up his review-cred.

What I'd like to see is when Mr. White posts his reviews on Rottentomatoes. Is it after the mainstream folks have weighed in with their reviews? That might be a "tell" as Mamet puts it- to see if he's going deliberately against the mainstream.

What I hate these days in the blogosphere, is that many bloggers are playing this devil's advocate simply to punch up their sites hits. If I reviewer's not being forthright, then I don't care much for them.

It is a fresh pleasure to me in my fast approaching dotage - I call it the springtime of my senescence - to come across this online wonder where the interminably witty, intellignet, and intelligble Ebert comments his very self! Well, maybe this technology thing ain't so bad after all.

Anyway, Sir, as a longtime admirer of your style and someone who has had many rattling disagreements and agreements with you in my disconnected skull, I am glad for, and look forward to, the chance to throw them in your direction.

I hope this finds you in good spirits and better, if not improving, health (my anonymous and oblivious friend, we are outliving our welcome, I fear - it was a wonderful party though, and there's still time for a drink or two more; and I'll be damned if anyone tries to usher me home) and good spirits with my very, very warm regards,

Leo.

PS - Armond in prose is no match, and never will be, for your hearty melange of humour, general erudite bonhomie, and the double barreled brilliance of your ironic distance and emotional sincerity.

This is kind of funny. In May, I discovered him thanks to his bad review of "Up", and have since been starting an online petition to get him fired for several reasons. Mainly, he's racist. What follows is a direct quote from an article by White about Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married?":

"Most critics don’t “get” Tyler Perry basically because most critics are whites who are not only clueless about Perry’s African-American culture, but unsympathetic to his particular expression."

http://www.nypress.com/article-17405-white-lies.html

Above is the link to said article. There are other examples, but that one is my favorite.

This requires a quick history of me: I lived in Africa for 2 years, something I highly doubt White has done. I have lived in several other coutnries as well, but White does not know this, nor is it an apparent possibility with him, because if you are white and American born, you just don't get it. Writing off critics because they are white, what is that, if not such.

Also, he's "reviews" are not reviews, but rather polictical grandstanding loosely (Oh so loosely) tied to the movie at hand. He should a political lobbist, not a film critic. Please see his review for "Up" in which he turns into a liberal springboard that he's attacking. Was I the only one to miss the politics in the movie?

Also when is talking about the movie at hand he's still not talking about the moive at hand. His "Coraline" review was esstentialy "Wall-E sucked, this does not." That tells me nothing about the movie, how it looked, it's pacing, lighting, etc.

Finally, he can like/not like any movie he wants, it's his opinion. But it's his job as a film critic to explain why, which he fails at, even when I agree with him.

How do "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" and a British rock/pop band tie-in together? I ahven't the foggiest bloody idea, but White sure thinks that the song by the band is better than the movie. Huh?

...exactly. So because he is a racist, because he doesn't actually review the movies, because he makes references that make no sense, and because he's a bully with the only right opinion (in his mind) that he must berate everyone else, makes that everyone else turn sour on him.

The final finally: I disagree with you on "GI:Joe" and found it to be rather fun, so did White, but after reading your review I understood where you came from, after reading his, I felt insulted, and that's a movie we agreed on.

PS- If any of this seems loose or not entirely coherent, I'm in a rush, so I'm very sorry!

Ebert: About Tyler Perry, he may be right.

Ebert: Actually, I suspect it's not intended as about the "new South Africa" but about the apartheid period itself, with "prawns: substituted for "kaffirs." That explains why all the authority figures are white, and most of the Africans are paid subsidiary uniformed employees.

Again, as Armond said: "Its a nonsensical political metaphor"
There were no Nigerians in South Africa during apartheid. Here’s an excerpt of Blomkamp from salon.com:

QUOTE
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/08/12/blomkamp/index.html

Q So does this story take place in contemporary South Africa, or further back, closer to the apartheid era?

A It's the present. It's totally the present. I've gone back every year, so it's not like I went back a decade later and was shocked by the changes. I've watched the city's gradual changes. It's more like this is an alternate reality of contemporary Joburg. In my mind, a black government is in control, and I assume that the white government -- with apartheid ending in 1994 -- did the same thing to the aliens...

Q There's a very dark comic side to this story, in which blacks and whites come together to treat another group worse than blacks were ever treated under apartheid.

A I was pretty aware of that. I thought that was a pretty funny concept. Another part of recent South African history that isn't world news is that the collapse of Zimbabwe has introduced millions of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants into South African cities. So you have impoverished South African blacks, hoping for a better life in their own country, faced with an influx of millions of impoverished Zimbabweans who have come to South Africa to build a new life for their families. Now you have this powder-keg situation, with black against black, which is highly bizarre.
END QUOTE

Now that we have established that the story is contemporary, presumably with an ANC government in power continuing apartheid segregation (!) against the aliens, it is strange that the filmmaker has chosen all the central characters, including the mockumentary ‘talking heads’ to be played by white actors. The black characters are minor parts or savage gangsters. This gets back to the earlier comment I posted. District 9 unintentionally reflects current middle-class white male south african angst & identity crises. The feelings of alienation are about fitting into new society as a minority race group guilty of an evil past. Whilst also harboring a hidden racist resentment against the new political hegemony (liberated south africa)

That’s why the final egotistical shoot out scene is between the well meaning white nerdy tech-guy hero (representing the director) and the old school white racist apartheid paramilitary enforcer. All this against a blurry backdrop of black societal ‘chaos’. Very post-colonial. I'll have a gin & tonic redbull please.

Interesting then, that Peter Jackson presents this film. Antipodean mafia? Now there’s a new term.

Mr. Ebert - in reference to andrewv, and by extension, your comment.
I think you're being rather unfair, as well as offering bad advice to andrewv, especially according to the well-considered reflections you make on effective criticism.

The reason that college professors stress critiquing formal elements is so that they don't get hundreds of papers saying, repetitively, "I think this film is crap" at great length but with no substantiation. And yes, it happens over and over and over. Professors do want personal reflection, but they'd prefer that it's a conversation, an opinion with some foundation, rather than a kneejerk reaction. That's the difference between a critical response and a drunk guy who tells you "You know what I think..?"

This is especially important given what happens time and again in classes (and, for that matter, in all manner of "debates") - a lot of people don't understand the difference between just attacking something at the level of pure intuition, and engaging with it to say how it functions and then tethering that to why they don't like it. It's the difference, surely, between destructively criticizing, and effectively critiquing (which, of course, can still have a destructive sting if it is warranted). Especially given that useful teaching is a process, slowing the process of thinking through a piece forces students to also slow down their inclination to rush to "pure" judgment, if you will - that is, a piece of uninformed complaint or wholehearted approval.

It doesn't matter what type of a film viewers are confronted with, whether it's an exercise in seat-filling, or something else: there are always elements they can engage with in order to make for a meaningful discussion, even if it's a wholescale (but _substantiated_) slamming of what they've seen.

Ebert: Fair enough. I taught a course in film criticism once, and discovered it was essentially a rhetoric course. I spent much more time correcting writing errors than evaluating content. I'd circle a misspelled word and a student would ask, "what's the matter with this? The possibility that it was misspelled didn't occur to them.

I'd like to politely point out a small oversight you made in your analysis of Mr. White:

His Rottentomatoes average. Saying he agrees with his compatriots 50% of the time doesn't paint a full picture.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/author/author-2725/

Any movie as far as I can see where he agreed with his compatriots is almost always either a review of a very old movie or one that got a limited release. Take a look at any movie that received a wide release and you'll understand better what his game is. I think I found maybe one or two movies (Admittedly, a very brief analysis) which appeared in over 1000 theaters where he agreed with the Tomatoes "Fresh/Rotten" averages over the past three years (The only one from this year being Coraline), none of which were "Extremely wide" releases in say, 3,000 to 4,000 theaters.

He indeed is just a contrarian, giving positive reviews to the likes of Transformers and GI Joe while scoffing at say, Star Trek or Dark Knight. It's a theme that continues for literally each and every "Blockbuster" review he's done in his career.

To Elizabeth:

When did you get inside my head? Every single sentence of your post reflects exactly the opinions that I had about District 9 and that I have about sci fi in general.

I read White's reviews on a regular basis. I have concluded that he is "contrarian" for the sake of being contrarian (the flow chart is but a small tool that leads me to this conclusion, as it does not capture the substance of what he wrotes) as well as intellectually inconsistent. I don't want to be accused of reading his mind, however; this is only my opinion.

Something bothers me much more than this - I believe his reviews are not only angry (fine), but hateful, and his words are those of a man who presumes to know what are the motives, and what is in the minds, of other men. The hate and the computer fortress-room psychoanalysis are what disturb me about White, since a case can be made that he is not contrarian (either as is or just for the sake of being so, either one of which is theoretically fine if you can defend your views and apply your standards - if you have any - consistently).

White's existence was first brought to my attention through a book I recently purchased (the book itself was published in 2006) called "American Movie Critics: An Anthooogy from the Silents Until Now (Expanded Edition)." This book includes selected excerpts of selected' critics writings that the editors considered to be the critics' most interesting/provocative/best/representative (one, more than one, or all of these adjectives apply to some of the selections, I think). If you didn't know already, an entry from you is in this book about Lubitsch's "Trouble in Paradise." (pp. 636-639). You know, the article you began by writing "When I was small, I liked to go to the movies because you could find out what adults did when there weren't any children in the room."

Mr. White is in the book at pp. 570-578. The authors selected, for his entry, his review of Do The Right Thing (which he praised) and Malcolm X (which he trashed). The introduction to his entry contains a blurb from Pauline Kael: "Armond White's race-based approach to movies is more than challenging-it can be unnerving. Often when I start one of his pieces I think he's way out of line, but when I go further I see that he's on to something. He's one of the few writers on popular culture who rose a reader to do some fresh thinking."

Nothing wrong with the differing views of the two films per se. And I agree with Kael that White's reviews can be challenging, unnerving, that he's on to something, sometimes, and that he encourages fresh thinking. Yet the tactics he uses in service of this encouragement are sometimes deplorable.

In the Do The Right Thing, he affected to know what message Lee was intending to send (I think one can argue what a movie means based on what it shows on the screen, but for a critic to tell us what a filmmaker meant is presumptuous. I notice when you enter into this realm, you proceed with humility, using such words as, "I think what filmmaker X might be telling us is..."). Example: "By fetishizing [Radio] Raheem's beat box, Lee honors the medium that expands the indigenous musical expressions of American's different ethnic groups. This, clearly, is a criticism of the monopoly that other, more socially mobile ethnic groups have made of movies, television, and the print media." I think this statement MIGHT reflect what Lee is trying to do; but I cannot say that Lee "clearly" intended to send this or that or any other message.

The "Malcolm X" review really bothered me (not because I gave both films 4 stars, as you did), because the review gives one the impression that once "Do The Right Thing" came out, White developed a self-anointed official orthodoxy as to what a black filmmaker must depict in his films for the filmmaker to be "genuinely black" in White's eyes (and for the film to be considered "good"; the "authenticity" component seems to have been developed by White as a proxy for "quality.")

White hits early and hard: In the first paragraph, hhe writes: "The shocking thing is that.... Spike Lee, ao so-called outspokesperson (Albert Murray's term).... pretends to shake up America's white-dominated culture industry while trying to attain all its benefits, from money to influence." Here, White claims (as fact) that Lee "pretends to shake things up" "while trying to attain all its benefits." (White makes this statement without proffering facts. The statement simply comes off as a declamatory personal insult).

Before I go any further, I should note that the Malcolm X review only contained one mention of Do the Right Thing, and the mention was Joe Klein's observation that Do The Right Thing was incendiary, while according to Klein, Malcolm X was "tepid." Perhaps Klein has hypocrisy issues, but at least we are given at least so much as two sound bites to form the basis of a hypocrisy argument. Futhermore, White does not articulate a standard employed such that under the standard, "Do the Right Thing" passes his test and "Malcolm X" fails.

But back to the Malcolm X review. The second paragraph being, "Sellout is too common a word for an outrage of this shame and magnitude..." White's rationale for the self-serving label is circularly constructed upon an artifice of mind-readng: Later, "Black artists whose work gets too far away from their personal thoughts and habits risk devaluing the very experience that inspire them." How does White know what Lee's personal thoughts are (I don't believe the two of them even ever met), let alone what his "experience" was? White's argument, again another insulting declamation, is basically saying, "Someone's thoughts should be X. Y is bad. If the thoughts are not X, they are Y. The thoughts are bad because they are bad." Circular.

White also assumes that Lee was in on, or controlled, the marketing element for the film that led to the production of the "X" cap. What if (and I don't know if Lee was involved with the production of the cap or approved of the idea) Lee disapproved of the idea? He then, as White argues, automatically "voided the meaning of the sign"? (White doesn't bother to tell us what the meaning is). "Lee, too, wears a cap rather than feeling Malcolm X's spirit." White (who is black), through this statement, comes perilously close to calling Lee a racist. Not out of bounds, necessarily, but he should offer more than reductionism and circular reasoning to mount the charge, no?

There's more ad hominem stuff, in a review that takes up 4 pages in a book that is as long as, but two inches shorter than, a standard-size piece of paper:

"Malcolm X is contradicted by Lee's contradictory hipness.... He's willing to exploit the political ideas that came out of years of sufering ad many struggling, hopeful generatins for his own aggrandizement." More mind-reading and name-calling, as the comment is not fleshed out.

White also offers up what he believes to be cognitive axioms that are nothing more than additional criticisms: "Despite the political awareness Malcolm X preached, Lee makes no single statement or incident dramatically potent-or personal. This implies that Malcolm X's axioms are mere slogans to Lee." Implies??

And more, all in the form of texture-less and contextual-less statements: "Lee plays a pitiful game of misinterpreting Hollywood's white liberal past as if it were all lies. This narrowness contradicts his stated respect for Malcolm X's evolution from hate to love."

And there's more of the same. A lot more. And as you said in a review, Roger, "It all adds up to a whole lot less."

One of your readers, for this blog entry, brought up the Valachi Papers/Godfather "opinion/fact" comment you once made. White thinks his opinions - cheap personal attacks that are not reasoned through, that are not governed by a consistent or indeed any intellectual standard - ARE facts, and he damns Lee with those facts in a way that any reasonable person would find to constitute a barrage of insults, all coming from someone who "knows" what is authentic and what is not. It is in the end not White's idiosyncracy, contrarian impulses, or "hard to swallow" assertions that to me, make White on some level repellent: it is his belief that his assertions are fact, and that his insults and hate are therefore not attacks but "truths." There are enough people who claim to have a monopoly on "truth" in this country (and who have, through this claim, made others suffer in ways both subtle and gross; we don't need another one.

Ebert: Very well reasoned. How could anyone look at "Malcolm X" and write, "Sellout is too common a word for an outrage of this shame and magnitude..." ? God.

High intelligence is not enough, if you are dishonest, duplicitous, and full of double standards. Armond White started off as an interesting provocateur, but over the years he's devolved into a silly, self-important, solipsistic bore. His contrarianism has become reflexive, and it isn't even for the sake of worthy movies that need his help. His most fanatical raves aren't for under-the-radar indies, or poorly distributed foreign language films, they're for INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL and TRANSPORTER 3. That's what irks: unlike some contrarians, he doesn't even use his reviews as a forum to help the small, obscure, overlooked gems that really need his help. Rather, he takes down one mainstream blockbuster solely for the purposes of propping up some other pet favorite blockbuster, one which invariably contains the exact same flaws and formulaic qualities he finds in the movies he excoriates! His tastes are completely arbitrary, completely down to personal prejudice, and rarely reflect anything actually present or absent onscreen.

This is from a review on rottentomatoes:

"According to the Los Angeles Times, Blomkamp worried that by delving too deep into social commentary, "the film would become too serious and oppressive and that it 'wouldn't be entertaining on a popcorn level.' "

This was basically my feeling. You have this great premise that's politically and racially charged, but the film just doesn't do very much with it. I think this is intentional, but it really disappointed me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

It was Ebert’s career choice and preference to reduce film discussion to the fumbling of thumbs

Is this where you got smacked, Rodge? Cheesum Crackers, what is Rex Reed going to think of what I wrote about him, "still battering his tiny fists against the barrel chested Goliath of bad taste"? Say I were anybody to pay attention to. Were I that, couldn't I look forward to an equally amused snipe in return? Should Charlie McCarthy and W.C. Fields have respected each other's feelings more than they did?

Maybe it's 'cuz I grew up with all boys, but I find this sort of thing as entertaining as Mister Murky Subterranean Intelligence obviously does, and I rather like getting smacked back in that boyish way myself, so long as my hands aren't tied by the LEFTIST NANNY CONSPIRACY TO CASTRATE THE LEFT-BRAIN OF THE PLANET. Kidding, but partly.

You know you're giving this Armond White dude a boost here. The consciousness inherent in his writing says he understands that "he knows his and his know him" where an audience is concerned and they'll gravitate to his columns from here as regulars. I'm contemplating being that myself. Still spending time reading his stuff today.

I'm sure he forgave you and anybody else for getting famous before first making his quips then getting serious about how he views your place in the critic's world -- a standard fashion of essaying and speaking. What you've created is an excellent intellectual ballgame and it's spread worldwide. There's more involved than movies alone.

STILL saying this guy's not a troll. Too deep for that. He's an artist of the Van Gogh variety, despised aloud for all the "right" reasons by those hoping to pander to intellectual teenagers. Say, that's kind of a "contrarian" statement right there, ain't it? "Iconoclast" is the word. This guy's an iconoclast, sort of a freeway sniper for sufficient cause. Okay with me.

When you can't say freely what you feel freely, you start kicking in your sleep and then you start shooting. Jefferson and Adams and the lot knew that. So does White I dare say.

"Del Toro's monster movie routines lack the freshness of hearing The Ting Tings vivify the crisis of identity that Hellboy bungles."

This is how Captain Beefheart might have put it if he ever planned to make a pointed joke. I thought the movie was three main concepts slammed together impatiently because the glue hadn't worked and the budget was running out. I hope my viewpoint doesn't also piss Andrew Garbage Miller, or Garbage Andrew Miller, or Andrew Miller Garbage off. He seems... troubled... by sentences he refuses to understand.

Couple years back one of Catt's movie-edit pals was talking about "Pan's Labyrinth." She thought we should see it but she couldn't say why, and the doubt in her voice was sincere.

"Well... I watched it..." she said, the ellipses audible. So we watched it too.

When it was over I turned to Catt and said "Well... we watched it..."

Mind you I don't mean to defend Armond White either. He doesn't need defending, he needs played with. This is educational.

I STRONGLY recommend that you read many of White's full reviews, to get a grasp of exactly how problematic his reviews can be.

One of his worst tendencies is the resort to diatribes akin to online bullies ("e-thugs"), with a seeming the need to completely denigrate and express utter hatred for anything he doesn't like (essentially the "If I don't like it, it must be stupid and should die" mentality you'll see from the worst crazed fanboys). Sure, he writes better and expresses insults and disdain with long sentences, but in the end the degree of venom he hurls not just at films he dislikes but at the filmmakers -- and indeed anyone who dares actually like the film -- is exactly like those 14 pages of comments by the people who hate him.

Another of his more bizarre tendencies is how he can become seemingly enraged if he perceives some sort of liberalism or progressive attitude/messaging at play in a film. Likewise, he will sink into some pretty off-the-wall rants about decline of culture (typically with a dose of "the liberals are causing it!!" madness tossed in for good measure) that he feels are "promoted" by some films. That these rants can utterly contradict his expressed enthusiasm for even more violent, negative, dark, etc films seems not to matter to him. And it's also true that at other times, there seems to be a hint of false progressive attitude that creeps into some of his reviews -- usually, though, when he is mercilessly bashing a film that seems to look at social issues with any sort of progressive/liberal influence and White is actually making snide use of his own pseudo-liberal attack on the film. So those cases seem rather transparently intellectually dishonest, in my opinion.

When White goes off into these sorts of extremely negative, usually hateful critiques, he often will simply stop even talking about the film itself and get lost amid his broader strongly-worded complaints about this or that segment of society and/or liberalism and/or decline of conservative social values. Once he thinks he's detected some secret underlying liberal or progressive attitude within a film, he'll often just quickly dispense with the film review itself in a paragraph or two, and spend the rest of the time reviewing his hate of the liberal sentiment he thinks he's uncovered.

So it can be hard to trust his reviews, needless to say. Does he dislike a film based on its actual merits as a film, or due to his perception of a political ideology in the filmmakers which White cannot stand? In this way, then, such reviews can be the equivalent of those 14 pages of comments by folks who haven't seen the film yet. Except that White is a professional reviewer, so his reviews are cloaked in assumptions of a more honest, albeit subjective, reviewing.

Also, regarding Blomkamp's comments that the film isn't a direct message/metaphor, posted by someone else above: "District 9" is in fact based on his earlier short film "Alive in Joburg", where the direct references to Apartheid (the film actually takes place under Apartheid) and the connection between prejudicial treatment of aliens is literally transposed directly atop the same sort of prejudice and treatment of black South Africans. That first film was much less "ambiguous" in the underlying themes and messages (to whatever extent anyone thinks "District 9" has such ambiguity).

So sure, this is definitely a sci-fi film, and I do think that the final 30 minutes or so of the film unfortunately did sort of descend into more typical action-adventure shoot-em-up fare (complete with the big robot reminiscent of a Transformer) where the political context and messaging seemed to get pretty muddled and ultimately lost (not to mention some rather contradictory plot elements that really didn't make much sense in the broader story). But I think it's a mistake to take too seriously any claims -- including those of the filmmaker -- that there was no underlying theme and context directly related to and commenting on Apartheid and the modern-day echos of that terrible system.

I tend to read many reviews for each film I'm interested in showing at the small film festival that I run. I'm hard pressed to recall ever running into an Armond White review. Bizarre I know, but true.

Having now seen a number of his reviews and tables of his 'good' and 'bad' films I can unequivocally say I would have quickly decided he would not be a critic I would trust or even be interested in consulting further. Not only does he agree 50% of the time with Rotten Tomatoes (a horridly low percentage) but he also seems to avidly dislike many critical favourites while going ga-ga over many critical bombs. Thus his actual agreement with the critics I trust and respect, like Roger, is likely to be in the 70% range.

Furthermore, as commenters point out, his logic is so inconsistent from film to film that it seems that each review he writes is unlikely to agree with even 50% of his own past reviews on films with similar themes.

Armond White wasn't on my radar screen prior to Roger's two recent blogs and his blip has quickly disappeared from my screen.

If davecat is right, Armond should be writing for Mad Magazine.

In my opinion he comes across as very angry and condescending

Okay, one more comment. I'm wondering if you're aware of Mr. White's own assessment of you and "At the Movies", both of which (you in general and "At the Movies") with helping destroy the profession of movie critics by dumbing it down and using it as a vehicle to gain fame. He says: "Not thought. Not feeling. Not experience. Not education."

This isn't to say that his rather long and rude bashing of you, your show, and your abilities should itself be a criteria in assessing whether his review of "District 9" or his other reviews, personality, etc are worthwhile, or whether it should influence your own willingness to defend him against uninformed attacks by people who do indeed just appear angry that he ruined a perfect rating for a film they wanted to see. BUT... the guy can be a major jerk, and seems to be incapable of just disagreeing without having to express disdain and obnoxious personal attacks.

There are indeed times when I agree with White -- his sentiments regarding the amazing "Shotgun Stories", for example. But I recognize him as the bully he is, and his own resort to personal attacks, degraded discourse, and intellectually dishonest critiques -- all of which he of course has no tolerance for in others -- make it impossible for me to really defend him when he becomes the victim of the same sort of criticism and personal attacks that he has made a career of promoting.

If you go around being mean and lack civility, amid frequently bashing films not based on their merits but rather out of ulterior motives, and seem far too frequently to rely on factual inaccuracies about the films you relentlessly insult, then eventually some equally uncivil folks will come around to get rude back in your face. That's the inevitable fate of bullies, and they tend to deserve one another.

Ebert: I loved "Shotgun Stories." We showed it at Ebertfest. He was right about that one.

roger,

i may have missed something, but it seems you're taking back your support based on an unrelated issue. regardless of what his other reviews may include or how misguided they may be, all that should matter in this case is his review for this particular film. if a chef makes dinners that are junk 99% of the time, but one time he hits gold, i can't discount that one stellar dish in the shadow of the other 99. either the review deserves defense or it does not. you shouldn't change your opinion or defense because many of his other reviews are off base.

Ebert: True enough. I wrote: "My defense of his specific review of "District 9" still stands." ˜

however, i may have missed something.

But why do you people need Armond White to conform to critical consensus? The problem with most reviewers is that they the majority essentially say the same thing, and arrive at the same opinions (probably in some cases, for fear of backlash.) So what's the point of reading all 300 of their reviews, or even employing them all? White provides a different perspective, and thoughtful analysis, which is what makes film discussion interesting. It's a sign of insecurity (and worse) to demand totems of truth based on popular consensus to what's good and what's bad.

I became interested in film criticism watching Ebert's show when I was nine. I also love reading Armond White. White is correct that criticism has deteriorated with the internet, and its bullying toward any sign of fresh thought.

There's a fine line between being a brilliant iconoclast and becoming the comic shop proprietor from The Simpsons. Does Mr White see his reviews as definitive pronouncements on the quality of a film, as a necessary cross-examination of accepted attitudes, or as a chance to prove that he is smarter/more perverse than anyone who ever walked into a cinema?

Looking at Wes Lawson's extraordinary link, I'm sitting somewhere between theories two and three. I've enjoyed films that some critics have excoriated (and vice versa) yet I can see exactly why they would have that view. But why any film lover of any sense would say that "The Flight of the Red Balloon" or "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" were bad films, I can't for the life of me imagine. I suppose I should read his reviews and find out.

Frankly Mr Ebert, I'm still getting over my recent discovery of the glowing reviews you gave to the first two Harry Potter films. I'd sooner do without eyes than sit through those dreary bits of hackwork again. Thank God we can never agree with any one person all the time.

Here a Spanish vision of the trouble: Pauline Kael was a great reviewer for saying loud and clever that Trash could be fun and could be great. She praised DePalma, Spielberg's Indy & temple of Doom, she looked with great wit at Gremlins.... He broke a way of understanding art, usually high, and make it popular and simple. Armond White is Paulette in a sense that he wants us to break with pop culture and to appreciate honest and bravery in movies. He is great when he thinks about Pop Culture and its significance, but it can be obscure or too much for an everyday reader. He is funny.

But my favourite critics are others. I appreciate James Agee's prose in cinema and its clarity. He was the first one. But Manny Farber, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Serge Dáney....This are great reviewers, with lots of culture, brave moral statements and lots of cult reading. Sensitive people. White is just a sometimes brilliant student of Kael, but it's not David Foster Wallace nor Roland Barthes.

Great film reviewing is another thing.

Ok, I'm probably spending way too much time on the topic of Armond White, but I hadn't actually looked at the chart of "good/bad films" that is linked until now. I actually feel that while White does make negative comments about the "bad" films and say positive things about the "good" films - that the chart is a bit reductive and unfair to White - since the chart is leaving out alot of films that White does champion (like You, the Living for example) that are quite worthy & not necessarily being written about by other critics. Additionally, he does write quite perceptively about older filmmakers like Godard, Demy, Borzage, and Peckinpah. He's also quite good when discussing the work of Spielberg (even if he goes overboard in his effusiveness), De Palma, Altman, Demme, Bertolucci, Wong Kar Wai, Wes Anderson, Stephen Chow, and the Coens (all filmmakers he admires). And if you examine the films that White genuinely thinks are great - I think you'd find that most intelligent movie lovers would agree with that list.

And even when he's poking holes in those "bad" films that alot of people think are good - he often brings up valid points that are worth examining - even if he's sometimes being obnoxious and petty about it. Yes, he has his gaps - he can never see the good in the films of Cronenberg, Eastwood, Van Sant after My Own Private Idaho, Soderbergh after Out of Sight, Ridley Scott (aside from Blade Runner), Ang Lee, or Woody Allen. But let's face it - we all have our blind spots and prejudices. He's just alot more extreme and in the open about them.

And the list of films on the chart that he supposedly thinks are "good" isn't exactly accurate. He doesn't necessarily say those films are "good." For example, White wrote that all the Terminator films are junk - but that Salvation brought some more humanity to the story with the Sam Worthington character. He wasn't exactly praising the film. I think he's being unfair to the first two James Cameron films - but he's right about Sam Worthington being the best thing in Salvation (which was a ponderous bore).

Also, one of the commenters accused White of homophobia in his review of Van Sant's Paranoid Park. White isn't a homophobe, he's actually gay himself. He's just extra critical of gay cinema. I disagree with his assessment of Paranoid Park (and of Van Sant), but he has a right to his opinion.

Yes, it's hard to believe that any one could defend Norbit or Little Man. But White is absolutely right for example when he says Steven Spielberg should study the kinetic sequences in Transporter 3 - because they were executed with more wit and panache than the last Indiana Jones movie (in my opinion - not White's - he loved the last Indy).

I think you can at least sense a deep love of cinema (perhaps expressed with bitter disappointment/contempt for modern audiences/critics/and some filmmakers) in White's writing. Something that I find completely absent for example in the writing of The New Yorker's Anthony Lane - who strikes me as a complete snark who finds movies as a medium to be beneath contempt. Sure, he's a good writer and finds clever ways to disparage the movies he reviews with bon mots. But you can also sense he doesn't give a rat's ass about movies deep down. And that makes him completely worthless to me as a critic since I can never learn anything from someone who feels that way.

Roger: while we're on the topic of critics, I'm wondering which critics today you read and admire. Alot of the giants (Kael, Agee, Bazin, Farber) have left us - some of those decades ago I know. Jonathan Rosenbaum retired from the Reader but still has his blog. J Hoberman seems to write less frequently for the Voice. Matt Zoller Seitz thankfully has reappeared as a critic on IFC.com and other places. CinemaScope and Film Comment still publish intelligent criticism.

I promise this is the last comment I'll make on the topic of Armond White. I do think it's kind of sad that one single negative review of a scifi action film is causing this discussion about film criticism. Why aren't we arguing about Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (which I know you hated, Roger - btw so did Armond - but I personally loved it & a few other critics did too) for example? There have to be more interesting films worthy of this kind of discussion.

Ebert: David Bordwell.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/

The world needs trolls, especially eloquent trolls

Ebert wrote to Daniel Lebovic:

"Very well reasoned. How could anyone look at 'Malcolm X' and write, 'Sellout is too common a word for an outrage of this shame and magnitude...' ? God."

Okay okay, Roger, yeah... I'm sure we're all upset about White's dislike of Spike Lee.

But can we at least be thankful that White is a Charles Burnett apologist? Now there's a master filmmaker EVERYBODY can agree on.

Roger,

Like most, I think that Armond White is a poor excuse for a critic and while taste certainly is a major element in that assessment, I still think it's a mistake to pinpoint just a handful of movies.

I respect the heck out of you as a critic, but when I read your 1/2 star review of Limits of Control, I shook my head in disbelief. And your enthusiasm for such transparently ludicrous (in my opinion) films as Crash and Babel often leaves me flummoxed.

But aside from being a good writer and having knowledge of film culture and history, I think the most important quality for a film critic is generosity. I don't mean in terms of giving high star ratings, but approaching films with the understanding that it is YOUR job as a critic to meet the film on its own terms, not for the film to conform to your personal biases. It's this generosity of spirit and curiosity that you and many good critics have in spades, and which Mr. White all but completely lacks.

He has a handful of fixed ideas about cinema (chief among them his hatred of something called "hipsterism" which I think is something he hallucinated), and films either meet them or they don't. If they don't they are not merely bad movies but examples of everything that is wrong with modern culture and every one who appreciates such films must be a fool or imbecile. He shows no interest in trying to understand anything that doesn't fit into this narrow zone, nor does he even acknowledge the possibility of any counter arguments. He is not on a voyage of discovery, as I think any good critic should be, but on a mission to enforce his own rigid law.

He also goes out of his way to make the most outlandish comparisons he can ("G.I. Joe" to "Histoire(s) du cinema", "Transformers 2" to "Made in USA") in what I think is an obvious effort to foster the image of Armond White as a privileged interpreter, a man who sees in ways that no one else can see. If he had clearer vision, maybe he'd be justified, but he wears blinders. He does not make arguments, he issues edicts. And that just isn't good criticism.

Why do people get so up in arms over someone else's opinion? Do they feel like it degrades their own? So what if he didn't like it? I hate Citizen Kane, but does that stop hundreds of thousands of people who claim it to be one of the greatest movies ever made? These people complaining about Mr. White's review, in my opinion, actually shoot themselves in the foot. To be so angry with him is to give him all the power. If they ignored what he wrote, and all joined in together about how awesome it was, his voice would have probably been drowned out. But I don't think the fanboys (zealots) are ever going to figure that one out.

Props for using "WTF", by the way. Completely unexpected. I Had to reread a few times just to make sure you weren't quoting someone else. (Were you?)

-Phil

Ebert: Several others, I believe.

I'm appalled that you would withdraw your overall defense of Armond White as a thoughtful, engaged critic, and even more appalled that you would do so based on a highly selective internet link of "Movies He Liked" and "Movies He Didn't Like". First of all, a list tells you very little - the key question isn't what he liked but why he liked it and how he defends his opinions. For instance, you gave an over-the-top good review to Forrest Gump, which many critics consider unforgivably bad, and an over-the-top bad review to A Taste of Cherry, which many critics consider one of the definitive films of the 1990s. Should I conclude that you are a "troll," as you so ungenerously put it? Well, no. What matters is how you defend your opinions, and the thought that you put into them. Trust me, I could put together a list of films you liked and films you didn't like over your 40 years in the business that would cast you as way outside the critical mainstream. But to what end? Shouldn't we be happy to have critics who delight in puncturing the conventional wisdom, and who are able to do so with real knowledge about the history of cinema? Or, to put it another way, if someone is intelligent, knowledgeable, and interested in what makes films work, can they really be a "troll"? As you often remind your readers re:film, it's not what critics say (thumbs up, thumbs down) but how they say it that makes them worth reading.

I have no particular brief for Armond White. Like everyone else, I think he is often wrong. I think that - like Pauline Kael - he is too eager to offer over-intellectualized justifications for under-intellectualized films (movies, as Pauline insisted on calling them). But he is a serious critic, one of a dying breed, and he is particularly good at cutting through the groupthink that lauds half-baked Hollywood confections like WALL-E, Knocked Up, and There Will Be Blood, to cite just three of the movies on that list that I think he gets exactly right.

Your original instinct was correct, and it is disappointing to see you backtrack on it. Armond White, whatever his flaws, is a serious critic, and I'll take him when he's wrong over a thousand thoughtless fanboys when they're right.

Ebert: I agree with you that the list is reductive and simplistic.

Well well well, I was waiting for someone to tip his hand on the true nature of the race issue regarding Armond White. How could I have missed this one:

Bobby "...In May, I discovered him thanks to his bad review of "Up", and have since been starting an online petition to get him fired for several reasons. Mainly, he's racist."

---Against whites, as we see, quoting just ONE maddening source of Bobby's pious outrage:

"Most critics don’t 'get' Tyler Perry basically because most critics are whites who are not only clueless about Perry’s African-American culture, but unsympathetic to his particular expression."

How dare an American black man accuse most white movie critics of not knowing jack about American black culture! They've watched movies, haven't they?! And Bobby's been to Africa!! Sorry Armond, but Bobby's been to Africa: your pink slip is on the way.

I conjecture the other of the "several reasons" have to do with Bobby and his friends not liking the way White wrecks all the fun they had watching a movie. Let's not just get his ass fahred, let's lynch 'im! Yay-yuh!

Been reading White's reviews, just skipped over to his review of "Up" to see what has raised this one-man electronic lynch mob Bobby's hackles so high. Reading now.

Well, anybody who quotes Al Capp is mighty white with me. "Up" boring and oversentimentalized? Sure I can see that. Too cute? Check. Formulaic? Check. Ripping off and dumbing down "the Red Balloon?" Check. All systems go. We have lift-off for Bobby's new career, getting a critic with twice his IQ fired for the good of humanity.

You know how I always meet these unusual people, Rodge. 7 or 8 years ago I got a call from Robert Abkean, ex-PM of Congo/Brazzaville. Could he reprint my article about an African religious leader for "every church in the Congo"? He knew and loved the guy. Sure, I said, go ahead. These days you can see a version of it as a feature on the Angolan Tourist Bureau website. Otherwise it's still circulating around the 'net somewhere.

No idea what the African churches did with it or if Abkean met a bullet before it got to the presses, but I do know the NoI wanted in on it. That's how I got to talk to Louis Farrakhan's MD a day or two before Farrakhan's kid got shot. I'm not the only one who meets unusual people: my white bank officer grew up next door to Farrakhan, "the nicest kid in the world." Born Muslims think the NoI is a racist organization, I'm told -- by a black Muslim who also told me Islamics hide their liquor just like anybody else does.

I wasn't in Africa myself. I declined the invitations. I had enough Angolans and Congolese hanging around my apartment to last me a good while. They were hoping to Christianize the United States, finally. Nyah nyah.

They weren't real interested in catfish, chitlins, or even Langston Hughes, Bobby. In fact they were as remote from American blacks as Borat is (which White also hated).

And I kinda think that my American black pals give me a little insight into what it's like to be an American black. Sure, lotsa stories, I produced hiphop for awhile, after years of lots of other intimate associations since I was a kid anyhow. Like sitting with the Moores watching the televised activities on the Washington Mall while MLK Jr. gave his famous speech.

So when m'boy AW says most white movie critics don't know jack about American blacks, I say "word."

Know whut else, Bobby? My great great great grandaddy and his brother fought in the Revolutionary war so that even vinegary little lynch-mentalities like yours could say anything you want to at meetings in your crisp white sheets with the narrow little eye-slits and slittier little minds. Hang by your thumbs and write if you get work.

And I think there's a good reason lots of American blacks think their white brethren are crazy.

As Mammy Yokum would say, "I has spokin."

Ebert: I know when I reviewed my first Tyler Perry, I had not the slightest idea of who Madea was.

Speaking of District 9, the review of which I just finished up at the link, I was wondering if you might be able to elaborate on one of your criticisms of the film -

"No attempt is made to resolve the situation, and if that’s a happy ending, I’ve seen happier."

Hmmm.

Through inextensive research (25 minutes) on Armond White's reviews, and what people say about them and him, I'm ready to work with a good softwarist to make an A.W. Review-Writing Engine. Roughly, the approach will be to fill a cabinet with axes to grind, mostly of the us vs. THEM variety; randomly employ the "Say, That Reminds Me" ploy, pulling some tangent-to-a-tangent reference out of the software's library/tuchis; keep the Belittle/Exalt ratio around 28.4; and conclude with some implied variant of He Stuck In His Thumb/And Pulled Out Some Scum/And Said What A Good Boy Am I.

I think it's reasonable to say that White is justified in being critical of certain films and going against the mainstream. The problem is that he seems to love idiotic films and despises movies that are almost praised unanimously. Take a look at this list:

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1897/armondwhiteisntinsane.jpg

Based on this list I can’t see how he can be called a legitimate film critic. I mean, critics are supposed to have a strong sense of what’s good so they can then go and tell us to watch movies or avoid them.

Personally, I think he writes the way he does knowing that his opinions will provoke a strong reaction from the community. He spews hateful crap knowing that genre fans will log on and post comments, thereby driving up Web traffic and advertising dollars for the New York Press.

He should really be labeled as an entertainer instead of a reviewer because he is “performing” for an audience instead of providing an objective evaluation of movies and their merit.

"If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn't." But you just demonstrated in your post that that isn't so. If you don't know the stories, you may sense that the art symbolizes something but not know what. If you don't have a context for understanding something, it isn't the art's fault.

That said, I got the racism theme from the trailer right away. Apartheid specifically didn't come to mind, but I caught the more universal idea. It was fantastic to hear an alien say, "We just want to go home."

As an aspiring journalist and one day perhaps a film critic myself, it baffles me to see someone such as White who appears to be more focused upon personal gain and notoriety than what his career truly details; to tell the reader of why a movie was bad in due juxtaposition with what could have been redeeming, or why it succeeded, yet allowing them to form their own opinion in the end (a precautionary note, to say). To put say it simpler: Inform the reader, do not dictate to them what is appropriate for them to watch. White is far too condescending, and for that I am surprised he has a loyal fan-base (then again all good shepherds have a flock of mindless sheep to attend to). He would rather tell his readers flat-out that a movie was bad and if you don't agree with him then you are inferior and lack all comprehension as to what cinema truly is. Last time I check "There Will Be Blood" was a shining example of true cinema. "Transformers 2", however, was a joke even amongst the ranks of mindless summer blockbusters (yet, he gave the marvel a dud review and the turd a shining medal). It's one of the reasons I have always respected your reviews, Mr. Ebert. You do not dictate to me what movies I should or should not be watching; whatever you say, whether redeeming or damning, you still ask me the reader to go out and form my own opinion.

Woah, I've seen the film now.

I think White has a chip on his shoulder and wishes to hold films accountable for things their makers do not intend. I suppose it's valid to point out disturbing overtones of racism, complacency or any general exhibition of bad faith a filmmaker may insert into a film subconsciously or even just lazily, but if you're going to do that, you'd better be consistent and thorough. There's not just a nasty edge to White's reviews, there's a capriciousness that suggests the issues are his, not the films.

District 9's setting is highly relevant aesthetically, but politically it's a red herring. Under apartheid it was the immigrants on top and the indigenous majority disenfranchised. Blomkamp's from Jo'burg, so why shouldn't he set his movie there? I mean, I never assumed John Waters was just mocking Baltimore squares in his films.

To me the prawns of D9 look like more the Jews of Warsaw – patronised, persecuted, ghetto-ised, yet feared for their impenetrable, potent culture. Van der Merwe is a kind of Wermacht foot soldier who develops a conscience, a bozo Schindler.

Quibbling about politics misses the point of an entertaining film that stays with you long after the last gun shot, a film that mashes up ideas and imagery you've seen before and makes something wholly original out of them.

There are worse things than being intellectually juvenile Armond. Pretentious for instance.

Being an avid filmgoer, I frequent RottenTomatoes.com, AICN, NYTimes.com, and your website to see what the prevailing wisdom is on my favorite films, whether I agree with the critical analyses on a given film or not. One thing I try not to do is: 1) read fanboy talkbacks in particular, and 2) get riled up if I disagree with a critic. I read your opinions on film (or other critics) because I hope to learn more about film, to read something that provokes my thoughts in order that I gain a deeper appreciation of a film, or to simply be entertained. I am not familiar with A.White or his unfortunate taste in certain films, but it seems his job is to be a provacateur or a foil, and so what? AICN has any number of angry-mob talkbackers ready to throw the proverbial wrench into some fanboy's feel-good machine. If you feel really good about something, anything, chances are there is someone on the net who is ready to stuff a sock in it. I am not defending A.White, but who cares what the man has to say? Looking at his list of "good movies" does more to discredit him in my view than anything else, so I will continue to ignore his little pearls of wisdom from here on.

Also, District 9 is now at 88% on RottenTomatoes, so enough with the perfect ratings crap. Good films should be about more than just achieving a perfect percentage, a record-breaking gross, or the most Oscars. I was fortunate enough to see District 9 on Friday with my two sons and my wife (who agreed to go, despite science fiction being one of her least favorite genres). We emerged feeling rather giddy about the film, because it felt like we had finally seen a first-rate intelligent pop-science fiction film...really the first one this year (Moon was excellent, but it was cerebral, whereas this film was more visceral). My children understood the parallels between the story and the actual history of South Africa, and I think this only served to deepen their appreciation for the film, even if the film devolved into more of a sci-fi buddy/action pic. Having read your opinion, or that of Harry Knowles or AO Scott (etc, etc) gives me additional food for thought about it, and whether I agree with your opinions or not, they are important in that they all made me think about the film differently. In the end, I will still regard this film as one of the best of the year. No small achievement for a first-time director with a paltry budget.

Not liking Tyler Perry doesn't make you racist. I'm black and none of my black friends can stand Tyler Perry's films or "black films" in general. I don't spend all day needling my friends at the local barbershop before singing gospel in the church choir all the while dealing with the antics of my crazy black matriarch grandma. Nor did I grow up in the projects where you either played ball or sold crack.

How about "black films" where the characters just happen to be black without being overtly about "black culture" or "thug life".

Ebert: You may enjoy Spike Lee's film of the rock concert "Passing Strange," about just such truths. It will bne available via Video on demand starting August 29. I'll have a review on the site.

Armond White is most commonly attacked for being a contrarian but I can't see how this is deliberate. Doesn't he see the same movies at the same screenings with other critics? His contrary reviews don't come out weeks later when he's had time to dismiss the majority opinion. I know that White is a Pauline Kael fanboy and Kael was also a contrarian but in White's case he can't be doing it just to set people off. Which he does.

As for Kael, she often dismissed other reviewers and their opinions openly in print before launching into her support or pan of a film.. Famously, she made a case in defense of Bonnie and Clyde when most critics had buried it, and is often credited for saving that film. Interestingly, only a year later, when speaking at a university (the audio clip is available on line), and after Bonnie and Clyde had become a blockbuster (thanks to her New Yorker review) she then takes issue with its success, saying it wasn't that good. This is the kind of contrary and seemingly arbitrary opinion that White is often accused of.

But is White intentionally going against the grain like Kael did? I'm not sure.

Ebert: Did Kael herself "intentionally" go against the grain?

Well, I don't know who Mr. White is and it really does not matter. I read reviews to get a sense of a film before I commit to watch it. I read Roger Ebert because my experience over the years has been that his reviews give me the clearest picture of what to expect from a film.

I hate wasting my life with fast food and mass produced films. To my mind, the movies I like best work on multiple levels, make me think, challenge my assumptions about life and give me a perspective on whatever the subject is that is different from my own blinkered vision or perhaps just gladden my heart.

There has been a lot of negative reaction to the movie District 9 due to racial stereotypes that I needed to put my perception into it. Oh and I have seen the movie.

First off I think Armond White’s review (http://www.nypress.com/article-20206-from-mothership-to-bullship.html) is way off base. This movie was not a vehicle to further racial stereotypes of Africans or African Americans. It was an indictment on humanity: humans will immediately jump to aggression when confronted with someone new, and when they feel the new group is soundly conquered or poses no threat, humans will exploit every perceived useful bit of culture or technology they can, while systematically stripping the group of any dignity and telling them it’s for their own good. The movie was not a dismissal of apartheid, rather it showed we will repeat a bad history, even when the consequences of that bad history are still smacking us in the face (the White establishment did to the aliens what they once did to the African, yet no one seemed to care or notice).

This movie was not about South Africa, Africans, Nigerians, or Whites and their interactions with each other. The reason this movie was set in South Africa is because the writer/director is from South Africa, a person who is more in tuned with the racial politics in that area and I am sure those politics are dramatically and distinctly different than the politics surrounding racial issues in the United States. I am sure if you transplanted the setting to any area of the world, you could find mirror images to fit all of the roles and all the roles could be occupied by every race and ethnicity.

I would love to hear reviews from someone, white or black, from South Africa.

One detail that is getting lost in this discussion is that Armond White really loves film, and often his contrarian reviews serve the useful purpose of bringing an unheralded film to the public's attention at the same time they tear down films he sees as overpraised frauds (again, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly). I credit White with introducing me to to the Mexican film Broken Sky, a challenging and beautiful work that I didn't read about anywhere else. No offense, Roger, but you never reviewed it, and you weren't alone. And to my mind, that is one of the most valuable tasks a critic can perform.

His taste is quirky, his politics are quirky, and he has an acerbic style that is designed to ruffle feathers and disturb the complacent. But there is no reason - none - to think that he does this to draw attention to himself, as opposed to expressing deeply-held beliefs. And I think it speaks poorly for many people writing on this site that they respond to his thoughtful provocations not with thoughtful disagreement, but with apoplexy, infuriated that someone would dare to hold opinions that don't conform to any easy orthodoxy. Their response to opinions they disagree with is to impugn the sincerity of those opinions - he doesn't really mean it, he just wants attention, etc. That is how powerful the desire for conformity is.

Armond White is not a fool like Jeffrey Lyons or Gene Shalit or a thousand other "celebrity" critics (I don't mean you, Roger, you're a gem). He is not a fanboy who sees movies as just another vehicle (alongside video games, comic books, etc.) to see their adolescent fantasies enacted. He is not a "highbrow" who dismisses Spielberg and Tyler Perry as unworthy of the mantle of art. Thus he is hard to slot, and that makes his opinions challenging, and that makes people mad.

Armond White is - to my mind - often deeply wrong. But I always appreciate his challenges to the conventional wisdom. And I would never get angry at someone because they dared to hold an unfashionable opinion, and my first instinct wouldn't be to attack their motives. The intellectual hothouse of film criticism is capacious; there is space to let a thousand flowers bloom.

Just because somebody is a cinephile, or is well-versed in the history of cinema, is no guarantee that they've got good taste in movies.

I absolutely love film reviewers who are also social critics.

Armond White, I have only read a one hand fingers count of his reviews really, and I haven't really gotten a sense he loves movies. Now, Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central is among my most revered. You (Roger) and he are the only two I read most passionately (A.O Scott hangs around on the periphery once in awhile). I agree with Walter about 92% and you about 97%. Walter Chaw is "brutal" when popular movies don't meet his muster. When you both are at the top of your games, I relish both your insights (both of your reviews play over and over in my mind for weeks.)

Movie/films matters, even when many people say the just want to be entertained. When "Transformers 2..." is the runaway box office champion of the summer, and the early reports say that back to school shopping is down (in the same economy), it says something about us.... What? Our best film critics could provide a clue, even as lone voices, sometimes. Keep on keeping on Mr. Roger Ebert, in defense of Armond White or not ;)

Ebert: I also like Walter Chaw. That's a good site.

Don't you think it's insulting to say that most viewers will watch this just because "aliens get blowed up real good" and because "it's us against them"? Not everyone wants to see this movie because "we all hate outsiders". I want to see it because, for once, humans are depicted as they usually are: intolerant.

I noticed that in many of the comments (I'm about halfway through, boy this is huge...) defending Armond White a reason that is stated for reading his reviews is inexplicably: "he bashed a movie that I hated as well". Seems odd to me as that is exactly the problem with those RT posters. My personal feelings concerning White: he is completely useless to me as a film critic. This is because firstly our tastes seem incompatible a large amount of the time, I don't always understand the arguments he puts forward in support of his views and most importantly reading his writings means opening up at least three tabs for Google to try and figure what in the world a complete off-the-wall aside to something else meant. I don't have time for that. The critics I read are Roger Ebert, James Berardinelli and Peter Travers. This is because I enjoy reading their criticisms regardless of their opinion. Roger, you're probably my favourite because I prefer your writing style the most, followed by that of Mr. Berardinelli. For Mr. Travers its just that some of his reviews are written in such a passionate tone with fun off the cuff remarks (which make sense in context and doesn't have you scrambling for a search engine)and really weirdly funny similes.

Ebert: "In print you try to leave out cliches, and on TV you use them.... Well-written, complex prose resists broadcast (not audiobooks, which are another matter), Nobody can hear the punctuation, or understand an ambiguous word, or deal with long sentences. I've not infrequently written newspaper sentences of 50 or even 75 words, and I breeze through Henry James with pleasure. But try that on TV. You have to say it directly and clearly, and use efficient adjectives. Yes, and sometimes cliches you would never use in print."

What about Deadwood?

I have to pretty strongly disagree with the few folks here saying they are unhappy, appalled, etc that you "withdrew" your defense of White. Firstly, they of course miss the point that you did not withdraw your defense of his review for "District 9", but rather that you made that defense before you knew more about the man and his methods and criteria for judging film etc.

Do people think that you should not change your mind about something after you've gathered more information (again, noting that in fact you didn't change your mind about the main point, his review of this particular film)? And isn't "appalled" a bit of hyperbole, the very sort White tends to grab for in expressing himself?

It's possible to hear someone's initial views on a subject and think they seem to passionately believe what they are saying, and to defend their viewpoint. And then later, you may discover upon further review that the person seems predisposed to overstatement, extremely rude and insulting remarks about not only the subject at hand but toward anyone who might hold the opposing view, and that what you initially thought was heartfelt expression of thoughtful and deep analysis is merely shallow negativity that comes at the film from the entirely wrong perspective. Suddenly you may find yourself asking questions about his true motivation and your sense of whether he might've been disingenuous in those strongly worded criticisms that reached into history to make claims of racism and myopic world views in the film.

Now, you didn't in fact come to those types of conclusions, but my point is that one certainly could after a look at White's tendencies in his reviews. And in this particular case, I found several of his specific harsh comments and accusations to be far off-base -- he does rather clearly criticize the film for not examining nuances of specific historical events under Apartheid, for not utilizing certain of those examples within the film's plot, and other such complaints about this sci-fi metaphor not being more historically rooted and not demonstrating and analyzing specific events from (for example) the 1970s that he personally feels should've been part of the plot and themes.

Well, are those really very valid criticisms of the film? That it didn't select the aspects of history that he feels are most important? It's not actually about those particular aspects of history, and I suspect that had the film included them White would have mocked it for putting too fine a point on the metaphor and for being "preachy" and not embracing its own pop-culture outlandish concept enough. In the end, his criticisms of this sort are more appropriate for analyzing and critiquing a documentary about Apartheid history, than as reasons to very harshly pan a film about aliens that uses Apartheid as framework on which to build its story.

So I think in fact that you would've been quite justified if you had come back and said "I retract my defense not just of White himself, but of his actual review of this film. I don't trust his motives, I think there's reason to believe much of what he writes is disingenuous, and his specific criticisms of this film are based less on the film itself than on his assertions of historical elements he personally thinks were important that should've been in the film. Overall, I feel that I may have misjudged him and his review. The 14 pages of comments from people who haven't even seen the film and who are attacking White is still rather silly, but on the other hand perhaps most of them are familiar with his methods and style, and perhaps they found his historical arguments severely lacking -- which would be a legitimate beef with the review and one that a reader could reach without seeing the film, in fact."

You didn't retract your defense of his review, but you could have and I hope that eventually you do. But either way, it's certainly not "appalling" either way, and a retraction would be quite understandable.

Roger,
I'm glad you looked a little deeper and see Armond White for what he clearly is: a contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Not only that but his writing is predictable and one not mainly consisting of the following words: hipster, nihilistic, bourgie (no joke), media elite, mumblecore, etc. He holds paticular disdain for anything made by hipsters or that doesn't have a clear "good overcomes evil" message. Of course this also flies in the face of his love Wes Anderson: THE hipster of hipster film. One might say then, "see that shows he's open minded" but such isn't the case. It only shows he is inconsistent and, at worst, purposely deceptive. Another issue of White is the utter contempt he has towards some film and the dismissive language he uses. 500 Days of Summer is no gem. I could see giving it a middling review but outright hating it? It was purely pleasant if nothing else. White instead attacks it for being about white, middle class hipsters with nary a care in the world and not being indicative of the reality of most people. Firstly, it was written and directed by white, middle class guys who were coming at the film from that vantage point. The problem is White out of hand dismisses that anyone coming from that background, even if being honest about their experiences, has anything worthwhile to say. But then we have his defense of Bay. I'm sorry, but how can Bay not fall into the category of elite when a first time, no name director working mostly outside of the studio system can? I agree with White on some points. I found Slumdog to be pandering at best and outright racist at worst. But in a review I would never have come at that with the language White uses. A site I enjoy, whose reviewers are rarely as enthusiastic as mainstream critics, is slantmagazine.com. Maybe it's just because I often agree with them. They have a great grasp of film history, good writing style and best of all you get reviews of literally everything that is out in all theaters no matter how small. Of course, one of their critics always defends DePalma even when it is indefensable. That's just the nature of people I guess. I'm sorry, but nobody will ever convince me that Femme Fatale was a good movie.

If White thinks that critics who don't like Tyler Perry movies are people who are clueless and unsympathetic to "Perry's Culture" then we can assume that Armond White is clueless and unsympathetic in each of his negative reviews for films from Iran, or Japan, or France, or about anyone who comes from a different background than he does.

This is besides the point, but I feel betrayed by the hype of "Up." It opened up Cannes, Roger glorified it, I told my parents to see it before I got to see it and my mother said "I would never mention this to him, but your father cried during it."

The film unfolded beautifully, the story of a crotchety old man and a boyscout, taking off to see the world together. But then, talking dogs and flying space machines, and a gigantic bird hamming it up, a fight to the death... "Up" started off as a moving and honest story about human life, and turned into a typical computer animated 'animal' movie. It was better than many other talking animal movies, but not the masterpiece it had the potential to be.

*I just finished typing this, and read White's review before sending. We had the same thoughts about the animal mechanics. He is intelligent. But I enjoyed the sentimentality in the opening scenes.

......Famously, she made a case in defense of Bonnie and Clyde when most critics had buried it, and is often credited for saving that film. Interestingly, only a year later, when speaking at a university (the audio clip is available on line), and after Bonnie and Clyde had become a blockbuster (thanks to her New Yorker review) she then takes issue with its success, saying it wasn't that good.

I always thought it was Roger who was the sole champion of Bonnie and Clyde upon it's initial release. The only critic from a major publication to give the film a rave review: "Perhaps the definitive film of the 1960's"....is my memory off?

Ebert: You're right, but I don't know when Pauline's original review appeared. I think my "definitive film of the 1960's" was correct. It was essentially the first American New Wave film, and prepared the way for a decade of directors.

Paul Karn: I suppose you think Ann Coulter and Stephen Colbert are trolls too, eh Roger?

Ebert: Of course they are. Colbert knows it.

Is Colbert a troll or does he play one on TV?

You better get ready for Primetime, sir. Word is Colbert likes to challenge his critics in a cartoony "This means WAR!" kind of a way.

Just imagining that possible interview makes me smile.

Mr. Ebert,
I agree with your original defense of Mr. White's criticism simply because it struck me as being particularly necessary. Many of the initial comments that were posted in reaction to his review were unbelievably racist and/or generally incredibly crude ad hominem attacks. No matter how insane a review might be (and I can't say anything about his take on District 9 since I haven't seen it yet), that sort of hateful language has no place in a civilized society. I know a few people have mentioned that here, and the RT page has been cleaned up since, but I think people should keep in mind the character and tone of the attacks he was under. This wasn't a case of people calling him a bad critic or even a troll, but full-on hate speech.
As for your retraction, I can't quite agree with you that he's a troll. Like you said in your first post, it's clear that he knows his movies and is an intelligent guy. He's not a moron. To be a troll in my book, he would have be disingenuous or write reviews just to swim against the tide. After reading a number of his review, I think he does generally seem to believe what he writes and even seems to be more consistent than he's been given credit for. As a few people have mentioned, he sees things through a very personal sociological/political/ideological lens. I personally think that There Will Be Blood was one of the best movies of the decade, and disagree with his review, but I think he was coming from a genuine and interesting angle. A perfect example, for me, of his strengths as a critic is in his review of George Washington (which, by the way, is certainly in the critical mainstream).
http://www.nypress.com/article-2688-george-washington-is-a-great-great-film.html
Of course, for every review like this, there are ten more that are baffling to me, and his style is condescending, more-than-occasionally offensive, and generally off-putting. He might seem insufferable, self-aggrandizing, and I certainly can't defend his method of criticism, but I think there is a method to his madness, and he has shown enough for me to keep out of the "troll" category.

A curious note about trying to explain White's 'good movie' choices; a number of them involve either Luc Besson or his protegee Jason Statham.

Which is fine; what makes you suspect that White might have lost his critical integrity when it comes to Besson is when you catch him attacking gangster flick 'Revolver' as a "Guy Ritchie" movie
http://www.nypress.com/article-17882-artsy-assassins.html
and then praising it as a Besson one.
http://www.nypress.com/article-19329-we-need-new-heroes-taken.html

Ebert: That's rather revealing.

Speaking of film critics debating each other, I'm delighted to see that Michael Phillips will be back on television, with A.O. Scott to boot. I read this news on your website, which was a pretty magnanimous gesture, considering how your tenure with Disney seemed to end. I hope this isn't the end of your return to television in some capacity (you earlier mentioned a program involving you, Phillips, Roeper, Lemire and the thumbs).

The more GOOD film criticism on television, the better. Either way, I look forward to watching "At the Movies" again in the fall.

Tom Dark,

"How dare an American black man accuse most white movie critics of not knowing jack about American black culture!"

I don't buy it.

Do you think that Roger Ebert falls into the category of uneducated on African-American culture? Not a chance. In Roger's one star review of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," he wrote "I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot."

Is it essential to have "lived the culture"-whatever culture that may be- in order to "get it" on a film critiquing level? That is patronizing. Good film critics, many of whom have given Tyler Perry movies bad reviews, may not understand everything about a culture, but know a bad movie when they see one.

Armond White accused Henry Louis Gates Jr. of "playing the race card" and I accuse his film critics against Tyler Perry statement of doing the same.

I don't know if it's a fair comparison, being less familiar with White's body of work than everyone else here, but I'm really reminded of Atlanta's David T. Lindsay, a staunch libertarian for whom certain stereotypes of "liberalism" in film are a constant pet peeve and often completely alter what he takes away from otherwise well-made films. Whatever else might be said about him, he's a real character, as we say. I offer the link for reference purposes only :)

http://www.stompandstammer.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=6&id=71&Itemid=54

I'm praying that White tries to test Ebert. Like Vincent Gallo and Rob Schneider, I'm betting that Ebert will close this one out with deftly written, one-line knockout blow in the vein of "I may or may not be fat, but you will always be the director of the Brown Bunny" or "In my official capacity as Pulitzer Prize winner, your movie sucks."

I read some of Mr. White's stuff, cold. He's GOT to be kidding. Right? He really can't be serious. If he is serious, it is a total waste of mental acumen, and sadly, if he does attack Ebert, the guy might defy insult, since he does such an excellent job of making himself look like a buffoon.

The simple truth is this - anyone who goes against the grain as consistently and vehemently as this guy is not a critic, nor is he smarter than anyone, nor is he a rebel. I doubt he's even a troll.

Someone should break into this guy's house and see what's actually in his DVD rack. If Norbit is actually in there, I'll eat my hat.

I think Armond White is brilliant, in a way. He has recognized what political talk show hosts have known for some time -- people love watching or reading things about which they feel passionately, either positively or negatively. Whether angrily screaming radical political positions or consistently bashing well-received films, contrarianism is a short-cut to popularity in today's culture. I have no doubt that Armond's reviews drive enormous amounts of traffic to the New York Press web site (as well as to comment sections of sites like RottenTomatoes).

Heidi and Spencer Pratt seemed to have this phenomenon nailed down. We all hated them, and we all continued to watch their antics precisely because we all hated them. They grew rich because of our hatred.

I honestly wonder if Armond White realizes this and conciously decided to take this route, knowing quite well that his voice would probably be lost among a sea of lesser critics if he did not. Or could it be that a man who seems so knowledgeable and passionate about cinema just has terrible taste in films?

I haven't really read anything by Armond White, but it seems most everyone [here, at least] is saying he's a troll. But maybe he is a sentimental trollist. Maybe he is an acute and impeccable equall troll troller. And maybe, in addition, he does this to exponentially maximize trolling worldwide by atrolling maximumly, which not only brings himself the publicitous noticification, but also bemagnetizes trolls from all spectrums (him being a dilligent study of what attracts trolls), not because he is a sadomasochistic troll fetisher (although I'm not saying he isn't: like I said, I haven't read him...but probably couldn't surmise/presume even if I did), but just because of the reason I mentioned earlier: the publicity.

Ebert: And his followers are Trollians? Just askin'.

I used to take the stance that Armond White just had very unusual opinions. I've changed that stance recently, not in light of his usual disagreement with the Tomatometer, but in light of the fact that the evidence just points toward him making all this stuff up. He always makes sure to insult movies lots of people love in his reviews, he writes in a very high-and-mighty way, he uses Tomatometer agreement as a platform to rail against movies other than the one he's reviewing, he's the only critic (I know of) who's started offering "better alternatives" to the year's overrated films, and he has a tendency to betray filmmakers he used to praise when it's convenient for being contrarian.
I'm not really bothered by him, because I realize that they're just movies. I'm just saying it's probably best to take the things he says with a grain of salt.

What annoys me about Mr. White is he does not review movies; he rates them based upon pre-determined criteria that he has established. Anyone who reads his reviews regularly could, with almost 100% accuracy, state well in advance whether his review will be Fresh or Rotten. For instance, if it's a movie from Pixar, it's automatically Rotten. If one of the leading actors is black, the movie is automatically Fresh. I thought a critic was supposed to look at a movie from all angles before rendering a verdict, as opposed to writing reviews based solely on apparent grudges against a studio, director or actors cast.

Overtly politcal interpretations of apolitical films is kind of outdated, it reminds me of when most criticism was filtered through a Freudian lense.

All this talk about Armond White, and I never even heard of him before this blog. Roger, is he worth taking a look at?

i don't know armond seems to me like a guy who likes his movies shallow with a lot of explosions not trying to push any agenda. he seems to me the type of guy who goes to the movies not to be moved or preached to but to be entertained. i know people like that. when he finds an action movie that seems to be preachy he tears it apart.

different tastes

A sound defense, but sadly your admission, your preface before detailing this defense, largely sums up my opinion, the man is a troll. He seems to sit and wait for the opinion of most when judging major films and going in the opposite direction, he justified a positive review for Transformers 2 for the exact reason he rejected Star Trek.

There is literally no difference in his sentiments between the two, and that says to me, he is simply a troll, and I don't respect him. You, I can respect, because when you like something it has no bearing on how popular it is on a movie-to-movie basis, but when someone appears to purposely be deciding their review based on the approval of others, it is incredibly discouraging.

Roger!

It is so obvious. Armond White skillfully employs an old exercise well known to many high school "forensics" students. The teacher asks the students to pick a debate topic on which they have a strong opinion. After all the debates matchups are arranged, the students are told that they must argue in favor of the viewpoint *opposite* of their own, and as passionately and articulately as they are able.

My forensics club advisor loved to do this as an exercise to help us broaden our minds and thought processes. Mr. White has simply made a career out of it. And why? First of all, it is often an enjoyable intellectual challenge. It can promote eloquence, because the arguments must be so deliberatley thought out and worded, without instinctual raw emotion.

But I suspect that when Mr. White discovered he can also reeeallly piss people off, it gave him a little thrill. So he kept it up. I truly believe that Armond White most often sincerely believes the opposite of his critiques.

He's much more than a simple troll. He's a masterful one.

Ebert: And his followers are Trollians? Just askin'.

Yes. If he is a troll fetishist, then there might be orgy potential. If he is just your average troll, then he might be king of the trolls, working pro bono and all. If he is just making money from the publicity, the trollians will be lurking, creeping, and then brandishing their knives, post screeching them on his open windows taunting him as they salivate in the flickering lightning. Then they will have at it with their light sabers out in the rain.

One word: irony.

The name "Armond White" sounded so familiar after I read and posted in your journal, and I couldn't help but muse for this past weekend while I was away with my family.

Just now, I was going through my blog and found a little entry about my excitement and anticipation for "The Dark Knight." Back then I was still a regular at Rotten Tomatoes, and I copied-pasted a quote from none other than Armond White:

"The generation of consumers who swallow this pessimistic sentiment can’t see past the product to its debased morality. Instead, their excitement about The Dark Knight’s dread (that teenage thrall with subversion) inspires their fealty to product."

I wrote that Mr. White's writing style "reflects a disconnect from his readers, a pretentious elitism that spews 'I'm smarter and more right than you are because I have a better grasp of vocabulary so if you disagree with me you probably don't understand the beauty of diction.'"

Ironic, especially when I look back at my earlier comment. Go figure eh?

I don't know a whole lot about White, but my guess is that he's not so much a troll as a contrarian with ax to grind, and perhaps a bully. I just had the good fortune to watch "Hobson's Choice" tonight -- a wonderful film that shouldn't be missed. You'd think it was directed by Preston Sturges rather than David Lean, and the three lead performances (Laughton, Mills, de Banzie) are a delight to watch.

The notes for the Criterion edition are by none other than Armond White, and I'd say if he has the good sense to appreciate, and promote, a film like "Hobson's Choice" he can't be all bad.

I generally have respect for the critics at Slant Magazine, and (at least for a look at one person's opinion) here's what Jeremiah Kipp had to say about him:

Even Armond White's most strident supporters (myself included) have moments where they feel his weekly reviews in the New York Press feel like the ravings of some kind of mean-spirited crackpot, but his elegant and eloquent article in the accompanying booklet serves as a reminder of why he's one of the most important critics we have. With enormous sensitivity, White interprets Lean's film through the clashing types of the British class system, but also highlights the "polished gleam" of the images. The title of his essay, "Custom-Made," views Lean's work not as muscular cinema, but a handcrafted house filled with ruggedly believable characters. His description of Laughton as an "existential acrobat" is a wonderfully precise and accurate one.

Me: "How dare an American black man accuse most white movie critics of not knowing jack about American black culture!"

Pete: I don't buy it.

---K. You're aware I'm referring to an accusation by Bobby that White is an anti-white "racist" because of his remark on critiques on Tyler Perry's film, right? That Bobby came to this because White, born into black culture -- and his writing says he's steeped in it, while being admirably knowledgeable of white literary and film culture a the same time -- so that he fairly accused "most white critics of knowing nothing about black culture" in the context of his own review, yes?

---So, are you buying the idea that any white critic is on an equal footing in judging black culture in films with a critic who grew up black and steeped in it, including intellectual traditions of his peers? Your remark below says you are. I'm not buying that.

Do you think that Roger Ebert falls into the category of uneducated on African-American culture? Not a chance. In Roger's one star review of "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," he wrote "I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot."

---Go ask him -- be sure you've read Roger's remark about Tyler Perry's film in my post -- and his previous one where he said White may well have been right in his review. While you're at it re-read my sardonicism that "after all, they've seen movies, right?" You'd've saved me the trouble of this curlicued reply.

Is it essential to have "lived the culture"-whatever culture that may be- in order to "get it" on a film critiquing level?

---for those whose tastes insist on realism, yes.

---(Maybe even for "Norbit," which I watched last night. If a thing is "funny 'cuz it's true," it may be funnier for an American black for reasons that wouldn't occur to a white. My black friends hardly ever roared at my jokes, and I didn't roar at theirs. I'm smart enough to realize it wasn't my Superior White Humor after all, any more than reasons for my underappreciation of German comedies.)

That is patronizing.

---You should look up the word "patronizing."

Good film critics, many of whom have given Tyler Perry movies bad reviews, may not understand everything about a culture, but know a bad movie when they see one.

---Real good critics know when a big 'splosion blows up real good, too! They don't have to know no ratio of toilet paper to no charge to know a blowed-up-good scene then when they see one, nuther. But other films may contain subtleties, and 80 million Germans OR critics could be wrong about something. History is littered with that, as well as popular scoffers for whom the unpopularity of an idea is synonymous with "bad" in their dictionaries.

---Roger admires MOBY DICK. Me too. 5 readings in life so far. Nobody else did until Melville had been dead for over 30 years. They didn't get it. All his other books were 'bout whales blowin' up real good, in 19th C terms, and they made him money. How cum this'n weren't? I'm not saying Armond White is another Melville, but I am saying he's doing his best to see into things as deeply in his own fashion -- and his newfound critics here, having scanned a few bits if any, thinking he's playing some kind of scam to get popular with his big words and "contrarian" game, aren't all that literate. For instance, I'll be he didn't grease Roger's palm to show up here.

Armond White accused Henry Louis Gates Jr. of "playing the race card" and I accuse his film-critics-against-Tyler-Perry statement of doing the same.

---I fixed your statement for clarity. I also think your accusation is as bumptious as Bobby's.

---Strange thing, the Gates issue. I wrote a cop author about it -- a white cop who spent 20 years on the Oakland beat, where I also lived. He wrote a tale of a standoff between the police and a black man trying to break into his own shop in the wee hours of the morning. He never told the police that it was his own shop he'd gotten locked out of. Instead, he wound up in an absurd standoff in which he shot an officer and wound up getting wounded. THEN he told them it was his own shop! (The book is BEATCOP, Jack Lundquist; you can prob'ly find it on the 'net)

---Sounded like a longstanding racial paranoid fiasco to me, and a serious one. Sounded also like what happened with Gates with less serious consequences. Sounded to me and a bunch of beat cops like our president was "playing the race card." I haven't read White's opinion on the matter, but I can make an educated guess that yours isn't formed of any "lived-the-culture" experience whatsoever and his is. Think I'll go look for it. You can go back to gathering your life experience from believing movies.

Okay, Peter Fawthrop, here's what White wrote:

"Fools will accept District 9 for fantasy, yet its use of parable and symbolism also evoke the almost total misunderstanding that surrounds the circumstance of racial confusion and frustration recently seen when Harvard University tycoon Henry Louis Gates Jr. played the race card against a white Cambridge cop. Opening so soon after that event—and adding to its unending media distortion—District 9 confirms that few media makers know how to perceive history, race and class relations."

And here's Gates playing the race card:

JULY 23--Here are the police reports detailing the confrontation last week between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cambridge cops, who were condemned last night by President Barack Obama for acting "stupidly" in arresting the African-American scholar. Cops responded to Gates's house after neighbor Lucia Whalen reported spotting "two black males with backpacks" trying to gain entry to the home (Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, and his driver were contending with a stuck front door). The Cambridge Police Department reports, authored by Sergeant James Crowley and Officer James Figueroa, quote an incensed Gates yelling, "This is what happens to black men in America!," and, when asked by Crowley to speak with him outside the residence, Gates replied, "ya, I'll speak with your mama outside." A disorderly conduct rap was filed against Gates, but quickly dropped by prosecutors. Gates is reportedly considering legal action against the Cambridge police. (3 pages)

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html

Your "accusation" against White wasn't even based on any facts, let alone experience. Sounds typical of racism as I know it. Case closed.

I’m a little concern to see how many people have come out defending Armond White, claiming that this is a huge fuss over nothing. On the contrary, this debate is vital and topical for any lover of film and film journalism. This isn’t a fight over District 9 or one man’s opinion about any single movie. This isn’t about “fanboys” or comic book movies or the expectation that all critics should agree on any particular topic. The reason why Armond has become the most controversial critic on Rotten Tomatoes is because his motivations are being called into question. Hidden deep within the now 27 pages of angry posts is an examination of Mr. White’s integrity.

When it comes to anything other than smaller “art house” movies, Armond seems predisposed to take whatever position will upset the largest number o