Armond White
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | National Review, NPR's Fresh Air, New York Press, Out Magazine, CityArts, First Things |
| Critics' Group: | New York Film Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Online |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 38% | Nine (2009) |
While Fellini pondered the possibilities of sin and redemption, Nine 's all-singing, all-dancing, all-laughing remake proffers a mindless celebration of capital S (as in silly ) sin.‐ First Things
Read More | Posted Aug 3, 2018
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| No Score Yet | Raging Sun, Raging Sky (2008) |
Emphasising erotic candour and emotional extravagance, Hernandez's camera's dreamlike mobility gives visceral excitement to the spiritual yearnings of love-struck, sexually anxious young men‐ Sight and Sound
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2018
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| 51% | Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) |
Fact is: This movie's white-liberal patronizing barely suppresses its loathing and repulsion for a figure it pretends to idolize.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2018
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| 51% | Equalizer 2 (2018) |
Denzel Washington's The Equalizer 2, a pointlessly violent sequel to his pointlessly brutal 2014 box-office success, confirms the pointlessly dangerous black-male stereotype that sells.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2018
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| 98% | Eighth Grade (2018) |
It's indie-movie self-pity, served-up with obvious, preening social criticism. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2018
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| 46% | Skyscraper (2018) |
Skyscraper can't be called "escapism" - that word implies leaving some state of reality and consciousness whereas Skyscraper requires a willing immersion into nonsense.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2018
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| 62% | Uncle Drew (2018) |
"Uncle Drew confirms the urban legend that the best stand-up comedy, face-to-face drama, and spontaneously creative choreography can be found on city basketball courts."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 17, 2018
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| 75% | The Misandrists (2018) |
LaBruce cuts through the pretense of recent mainstream-movie sexuality.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 3, 2018
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| 94% | Incredibles 2 (2018) |
"The comic-book nature of their social outlawry reduces Zack Snyder's profound issues of faith and the supernatural into the typical Marvel mess of jokey, anti-mythological ultra-cynicism."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 68% | Ocean's 8 (2018) |
"Ocean's 8 normalizes crime as a method of selfish achievement, characteristic of American venality."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 100% | Les Parents Terribles (The Storm Within) (1948) |
"This Oedipal farce, perched on the edge of surrealist poetry, might be the most sophisticated sit-com ever."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 71% | Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) |
"It flatters Millennial audiences, who are largely unschooled in the literary-cinematic history of chivalry, to romanticize their own self-gratifying assumption of virtue-signaling."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 93% | First Reformed (2018) |
"Schrader still doesn't know how to make movies that express belief in a cause, or naturalism, or anything else."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 50% | Ray Meets Helen (2018) |
"Ray Meets Helen is political in the sense that matters most. It goes beneath the surface of its characters' differences to show what they have in common - what makes them soul mates."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 49% | Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) |
"The moral of 1993's Jurassic Park ("Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should") bounces back in our faces with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
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| 83% | The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) |
Whiteside is not a pious gay hero. Rather his uncanny gift for throwing shade and reading the obtuse may be the secret to his eternal charm.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
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| 89% | The Member of the Wedding (1952) |
The Member of the Wedding is a lyrical experience; you have to feel its rhythm and emotion, not just the literal meaning of its language.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
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| 72% | Double Lover (L'amant double) (2018) |
[T]he first good movie of 2018. . .the purely cinematic pantomime of person-to-person intimacy is a memorably powerful exploration of the intricacy of trust, and that's the film's political trump card.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2018
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| 60% | The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) (2018) |
[T]his movie is more focused. . .with none of that trashy, distracting Hollywood romanticism. . .The Young Karl Marx is the real Reds. . .and rebellion is the film's real romance. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2018
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| 95% | The Green Fog (2018) |
Maddin's film obscures Hudson's triumph and sympathy. This is partly related to movies now being overwhelmed by the frowsy standards of television and Internet culture.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Feb 20, 2018
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| 97% | Black Panther (2018) |
Black Panther turns racial politics into what Malcolm X called "politricks" . . . The media's enthusiasm for this bland action flick is maddening. The problem isn't one particular movie, but the celebration of the illusion of "progress."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2018
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| 24% | The 15:17 to Paris (2018) |
The 15:17 to Paris [is] more than the typical docu-drama and confirms director Clint Eastwood's canny political instinct and his artistic daring.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2018
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| 72% | Hostiles (2018) |
The new western Hostiles was crowded out of the Oscar circle, yet it typifies the hostility that has befallen American genre films.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2018
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| 83% | Dream Boat (2017) |
Rather than simply celebrate queer highlife, this abstract view (coordinating the blue sky, sea, tanned bodies and aerial perspectives) dares us to reflect and intellectualize.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 100% | Rebels on Pointe (2017) |
... the personal stories of individual dancers-all cute, compelling-traps the film between trendy identity politics and giving queer cultural innovation the honor it deserves.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| No Score Yet | Mike's Murder (1984) |
Much more than just a mystery movie, these male-female conflicts make Mike's Murder an all-American sexual thriller.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 84% | Darkest Hour (2017) |
Darkest Hour initiates a genuine, modern approach to political heroism and the Western sagacity that is out of favor. . .[It] is not jingoism; it is a politically aware, reflective performance.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 56% | The Greatest Showman (2017) |
Screenwriter Bill Condon. . .turns the showman's innovations in advertising and public manipulation into models of humanitarianism. This is showbiz demagoguery.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 82% | Molly's Game (2018) |
Molly's Game is a movie for those suckers who really do believe we are experiencing "the golden age of television."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 50% | Downsizing (2017) |
[Downsizing is director Alexander] Payne's ultimate revenge on American film tradition. His inability to imagine an original story - to move an audience's basic aspirations without guilt - is another sign of decadence.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 91% | Phantom Thread (2018) |
Phantom Thread is a revisionist genre film. Set in the 1950s, it not only reworks fashion flicks from Lucy Gallant to Funny Face (the complementary confluence of two industries) but perverts their female-objectifying iconography.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 87% | The Post (2018) |
The Post is a snootily white-collar movie faking common-man virtues. . .[it] validates the slippery slope that brought us to today's shameless media partisanship.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 92% | The Shape of Water (2017) |
This mash-up of alien and immigrant hardship, in which lonely Elisa finds sexual release with a sea creature, is pervy, ridiculous, and humorless. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 91% | Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) |
The new, machine-tooled The Last Jedi is sufficiently busy (action scenes occurring every ten minutes) to make you grateful that it is, at least, agreeably paced, even if it isn't really about anything.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 91% | The Disaster Artist (2017) |
A satirical look at bad filmmaking that is itself bad filmmaking. . .Wiseau and Sestero are both pitied and ridiculed. . .The Disaster Artist is being bizarrely acclaimed, proof that the idea of art has died in Hollywood.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 90% | I, Tonya (2018) |
There hasn't been a piece of warped Americana this ugly since the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans. Harding's humanity means less to the filmmakers than does the possibility of her guilt. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2018
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| 52% | England Is Mine (2017) |
This film is strangely celibate, a tribute that stays out of the way of Morrissey's own charisma and self-mythologizing.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2017
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| 90% | I, Tonya (2018) |
Every risible moment exposes the filmmaker's class, race and gender contempt-it's camp on ice and the farthest thing from the gay sensibility that contemporary Hollywood sorely lacks.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2017
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| 95% | Call Me by Your Name (2018) |
Compared with. . .any number of films dealing with down-to-earth sexual feelings that go wild. . .Call Me By Your Name is trite. . .Few recent films have so bluntly proclaimed moral pessimism.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2017
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| 96% | Mudbound (2017) |
Mudbound typifies a new kind of unpleasant entertainment based on social-justice homilies. . .But Mudbound becomes tiresome from its opening scene. . .[It] lacks the authenticity and justification of genuine folk art.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2017
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| 40% | Justice League (2017) |
Justice League. . . [is] one of those wondrous Zack Snyder extravaganzas that fulfill the aesthetic potential of comic-book graphics and achieves essential cinema kinetics.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2017
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| 57% | Murder On The Orient Express (2017) |
[The film's] message, a condensation of post-election, globalist cynicism, comes across loud and clear in Branagh's showboating direction (pointless, zooming imagery shot in 65mm) and his dull show-offing in the role of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2017
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| 92% | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
McDonagh uses advertising as a metaphor for aggravated communication, as apparent in our media and social relations, but, regrettably, it's also a foreigner's careless simplification of America's current unease. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2017
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| 99% | God's Own Country (2017) |
Finally, a movie that sets Brokeback Mountain straight.‐ Out Magazine
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2017
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| 99% | Lady Bird (2017) |
Lady Bird is a sensible tribute to the spirit of Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson. . .The film's conflicts are surprisingly touching.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2017
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| 57% | LBJ (2017) |
LBJ isn't a satire like Oliver Stone's serious lampoon of a political scion. It's something less - and weirder. . .This third-rate but expedient film regrets the decency we've lost and that Reiner is nostalgic for.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2017
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| 87% | Novitiate (2017) |
Novitiate is a scandalous, shameless anti-Catholic freak show.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2017
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| 98% | BPM (Beats Per Minute) (120 battements par minute) (2017) |
BPM is a near-great film about hope and suffering that gives sex its proper rank in the scale of human relations.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2017
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| 84% | The Square (2017) |
The Square is probably the film of the year - though that's not necessarily a good thing.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2017
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| 93% | The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017) |
[U]nbearable to watch. . .There is no plot here, to speak of, just an indulgent display of each male's obnoxious behavior, separated into pseudo-literary chapters.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2017
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