Armond White
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Tori and Lokita (2022) |
Yes, the film is heartrending, but no more so than a progressive’s version of Bambi. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 31, 2023
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The Spirit of '45 (2013) |
Loach reduces his protest cinema to cheap nostalgia. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 30, 2023
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John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) |
Chapter 4 is a triumph of consistent style -- a rare distinction among blockbusters usually dependent on conventional, imitative effects. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 24, 2023
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Full River Red (2023) |
Not only is Full River Red the clearest adversarial statement to ever come out of China, it’s also -- startlingly -- the first movie of 2023 with great feeling in it. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 22, 2023
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65 (2023) |
65 might be the first film ever based on a movie poster. Its unoriginality and witlessness follow the blatancy of most contemporary content. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 17, 2023
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The Whale (2022) |
Aronofsky uses The Whale for easy, unsightly, virtue-signaling. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (2023) |
Rock’s slap-back at Smith revives the insecurity and evident immaturity that characterized their altercation. (Both men misbehaved.) Selective Outrage provides no helpful insight into the temperamental differences that erupted at last year’s Oscars. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Creed III (2023) |
Imprisoned by industry formula, Jordan cannot rise above its patronizing clichés. - National Review
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) |
Rivette’s dry approach to improvisation and fantasy negates the kind of joy that his collaborators Labourier and Berto mean to have. - CityArts
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| Posted Mar 01, 2023
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Marlowe (2022) |
This isn’t disrespect so much as a leveling. Marlowe is Jordan’s look at cultural cynicism, linking Joyce to Chandler and to the many Dr. Faustuses of Hollywood itself. - National Review
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) |
Last Dance goes narrowly and cynically into post-indie, corporate Hollywood clichés. Soderbergh’s desperation shows a filmmaker who recycles a formula and, like a tired stripper lacking conviction, repeats the old motions. - National Review
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Full Time (2021) |
There’s no grandstanding in Calamy’s Julie or in writer-director Éric Gravel’s presentation of her responsible resourcefulness... Julie’s authenticity avoids social correctness; she achieves plain, recognizable motherhood. - National Review
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| Posted Feb 10, 2023
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Saint Omer (2022) |
Saint Omer becomes a high-brow tearjerker. No man born of woman can resist this snake oil. - National Review
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| Posted Jan 20, 2023
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Bones and All (2022) |
They’re second-generation lost romantics, ruined liberals. Guadagnino’s allegory details the self-destruction at the heart of teens’ untutored idealism. - National Review
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| Posted Jan 13, 2023
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Babylon (2022) |
Wunderkind Chazelle seriously needs artistic supervision. Babylon is the first Millennial film so misguided that it seems hell-bent on destroying itself. - National Review
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| Posted Jan 13, 2023
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
The Way of Water is predicated on an escapist mindset that prevents moviegoers from thinking (or expressing dissatisfaction). When a film like this is sold for its 3D, 48-frames-per-second High Dynamic Range teachnology, protect your credit card. - National Review
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| Posted Jan 05, 2023
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Dead for a Dollar (2022) |
Dead for a Dollar distills Western mythology to its fabled essence. The morality of Borlund’s life-or-death decisions is movie history that ironically echoes modern America. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 30, 2022
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Decision to Leave (2022) |
This is one of the year’s most dismaying and repellent movies. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 29, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
The director doesn’t do much to relieve misery or our current existential crisis. That’s why The Banshees of Inisherin feels like both an X-ray of contemporary malaise and a betrayal of Irish romance. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 28, 2022
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Devotion (2022) |
Devotion -- despite that title -- does not offer [Top Gun] Maverick’s patriotic uplift. It’s stuck between uncovering Brown’s victimization and deflating American valor. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 14, 2022
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Empire of Light (2022) |
The problem is Mendes’s inherent shallowness -- he’s the British Mike Nichols. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 13, 2022
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EO (2022) |
EO shows us that film culture is going through a jaded second childhood. - National Review
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| Posted Dec 06, 2022
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Sidney (2022) |
He’s memorialized as an artist-activist and significant only for that. The doc is angled toward how Oprah wants us to see Poitier and herself. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 23, 2022
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She Said (2022) |
What a freakishly long, humorless, and bizarre movie. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 19, 2022
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The Fabelmans (2022) |
The Fabelmans seems to hedge its dramatic risks, as if muting the heartache and thousand natural shocks that marriage and adulthood are heir to, then trading that guilty consciousness for facile teasing about Spielberg’s career and professional legend. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 17, 2022
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) |
Has any other social group ever had its history diminished to comic-book trivia and then encouraged to take that insult as a compliment? - National Review
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| Posted Nov 11, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
When Cate Blanchett, the phoniest actress since Meryl Steep, teams up with Field in his latest film, Tár, the result is a histrionic wingding. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 10, 2022
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Raymond & Ray (2022) |
Raymond & Ray restores the adventure of self-revelation that movies have forsaken for politicized virtue-signaling. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 04, 2022
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Peaceful (2021) |
Emmanuelle Bercot dramatizes the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief in the emotionally full drama Peaceful. - National Review
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| Posted Nov 02, 2022
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Armageddon Time (2022) |
This is poisoned nostalgia, Gray’s semi-autobiographical apology tour, part of liberal Hollywood’s progressive project that would have Americans remake themselves by condemning their past. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 28, 2022
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Triangle of Sadness (2022) |
Östlund bungles the political, spiritual, and moral lessons of such classics about chaos as Luis Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, and Godard’s Weekend. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 26, 2022
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Black Adam (2022) |
We now know so much about the behind-the-scenes content-making and celebrity that Black Adam’s attempt to exploit the political moment and audience taste is insultingly obvious. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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My Son Hunter (2022) |
Make no mistake, McAleer is polemical, but My Son Hunter doesn’t condemn Hunter Biden so much as understand him and the nature of his offense -- thus demonstrating the ultimate form of journalistic scruples. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 19, 2022
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Personality Crisis: One Night Only (2022) |
Personality Crisis is fascinating for how Johansen, as a songwriter, puts life and showbiz struggle in his own bridge-and-tunnel vernacular: “It all comes down to melody.” - National Review
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| Posted Oct 14, 2022
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Amsterdam (2022) |
Despite Russell’s being our cleverest satirist, Amsterdam succumbs to the worst ideas now afflicting our nation. Wonderfully humane as it is, Amsterdam can’t surmount the prevailing sense of failure. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 10, 2022
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Blonde (2022) |
[Andrew Dominik] overinflates his subject as if he never met an actual person. Ignoring how Monroe calculated her career and contrived the unique acting style that mesmerized the world, he resorts to the visual equivalent of psychobabble. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Bros (2022) |
Bros pretends to satirize Bobby’s fear of commitment, but the contempt Eichner showed to his on-the-street video victims has not been transformed into charm. - National Review
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| Posted Sep 30, 2022
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Don't Worry Darling (2022) |
Don’t Worry Darling is a shoppers’ paradise for filmgoers indifferent to current crises and clueless about bygone social standards. - National Review
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| Posted Sep 28, 2022
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The Woman King (2022) |
Maybe Prince-Bythewood has tapped into something that the two lousy Wonder Woman movies missed, but whatever it is, it isn’t excitement. Her battle scenes are haphazard, with poor continuity. - National Review
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| Posted Sep 23, 2022
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Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) |
Too bad Miller traded his gift for modern fantasy for pseudo-historical fantasy. - National Review
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| Posted Sep 07, 2022
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Peter von Kant (2022) |
Ozon pays tribute to how Fassbinder fearlessly risked film-culture esteem. Watching Peter von Kant is an entirely new experience. - National Review
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| Posted Sep 02, 2022
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Funny Pages (2022) |
The movie is literally ugly, yet not entirely dismissible. It is saved by Kline’s cruel, funny alertness to something that’s gone wrong in American society among those dissatisfied by pursuit of the dream. - National Review
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| Posted Aug 31, 2022
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La Guerre Est Finie (1966) |
The examination of the moral cost of Diego’s personal and political choices makes La guerre est finie a truly great movie. - National Review
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| Posted Aug 26, 2022
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Sharp Stick (2022) |
Viewing pornography as “a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” Dunham takes issue with disingenuous junk like Euphoria that promotes degradation. - National Review
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| Posted Aug 18, 2022
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My Donkey, My Lover & I (2020) |
It’s a vintage Disney fairy tale made real. That’s when you know that Vignal has interpreted the dream roots of contemporary anxiousness -- lost innocence and wonder. - National Review
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| Posted Jul 27, 2022
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Nope (2022) |
Nope’s junk pile of references combines movie and TV lore to no particular effect. - National Review
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| Posted Jul 22, 2022
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Marx Can Wait (2021) |
Religion stays with Bellocchio, as does imagination and ingenuity, which makes Marx Can Wait an extraordinary document of the moral evolution of an artist and his family. - National Review
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| Posted Jul 15, 2022
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We (2021) |
Diop needs more than shallow social impressions to enlist us in her cynicism. - National Review
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| Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Ambulance (2022) |
Never mundane, [Michael Bay] expands on the lamest of all action genres, the bank heist, to find the form’s sensual, kinetic potential. Everyday dazzle. - National Review
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| Posted Jul 01, 2022
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Elvis (2022) |
This shameless cultural jumble might make some kind of crazy sense for anyone who still thinks Presley the figurehead of pop vulgarity. That position has many successors, and Luhrmann is one of them. - National Review
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| Posted Jun 24, 2022
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