...so take it as a good indication that this is a film of quality. White is notorious for doing this, and his opinions, while valid, are odd to say the least (he calls 'Bringing Out The Dead' Scorsese's last decent film and thinks he's miscast Leo everyone time he's used him). His review can be found here, and if you're curious why so many people are confused by White's reviews, here's the Rotten Tomatoes archive, where he's panned films like The White Ribbon, Up in the Air, Precious, The Messenger, Invictus, The Road, Avatar, and The Wrestler, to name a few.-Thoughts on Armond White and/or Shutter Island?
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He's a film critic that fascinates me like no other...
ReplyDeleteWell I'll agree with him on Precious and Invictus
ReplyDeleteGood, now I'm even more excited to see this movie.
ReplyDelete-Robbie
I read his reviews and archived work. All I can say about this guy is that he does for shock value. I can't really understand how can you take someone serious when they call "Bandslam" the best movie of the summer, and "GI Joe" a missunderstood movie that tackles pop culture perfectly. He knows how to milk this things, and when you can't appretiat movie such as Inglorious Basterds, D9, or even Up in the Air, you need to go look for another profession.
ReplyDeleteMatt- I agree with him on both, though I gave both of them 3 stars, they each have worsened in my eyes in retrospect.
ReplyDeleteRobbie- I'm less excited about Shutter Island than most, but yes, this is a seal of approval for me, in a way...
ReplyDeleteGil- I think shock value is part of it for sure. I think that a critic is entitled to feel however they want about a film (or else I'd likely be out of a job for my 3 and a half star review of The Time Traveler's Wife and my would be 2 star review of A Serious Man), but yes, it does seem that White at least partially decides on his reviews ahead of time, in an effort to be unique. He's perfectly within his rights, but it's just important to have that in the back of your head when reading his reviews. That being said, I often like to see what he says about movies, but I don't take him too seriously, like I do with Roger Ebert and James Berardanelli, to name a couple critics I admire (not counting my co-writers here and obviously discounting myself)...
ReplyDeleteI've been reading reviews and it looks like he's not the only one. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 64%, but I'm still excited.
ReplyDeleteThis is true. It seems to be coming in as a solid work but "minor" Scorsese.
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