Author Archive

The Bone Collector, Sleepy Hollow

Written by Armond White on November 23, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Separate and Unequal Face it: Movie culture has split in two–films now appeal to either the dumb or the deluded. While critics labor under the fantasy that there is an audience for intelligent, sometimes serious movies, along comes a Titanic, a Blair Witch Project and more recently The Bone Collector and Double Jeopardy, proving that
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Rosetta, The Silence, Dogma & Iranian Film

Written by Armond White on November 16, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Symphonies For the Bedeviled Rosetta ends with a pulsating life signal, just like Majid Majidi’s recent New York Film Festival offering Color of Heaven. But unlike that Iranian film, the effect is not treacly. Everything the directing-writing team Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne do in this, their second dramatic feature, is brusque, clean, invigorating. Their rigorous
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Herzog’s Best Fiend

Written by Armond White on November 9, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

American Movie directed by Chris Smith Gods and Monstrosities "I am clinically sane," Werner Herzog insists in one of the clashes he had over a decade-long working relationship with the late actor Klaus Kinski. In his documentary-memorial My Best Fiend, Herzog reviews that battle of egomaniacs with dignified candor. Speaking in English over the original
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Being John Malkovich

Written by Armond White on November 2, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Wishing on A Star Years of following music video did not prepare me for Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich. Music video skeptics might easily have predicted Fight Club, a flashy, incoherent extravaganza–cuz that’s all most videos come down to. But Jonze’s feature film debut makes him Hollywood’s unpredictable Spike. While most critics use the term
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Reiner vs. Kubrick

Written by Armond White on October 26, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Reiner v. Kubrick Eyes Wide Shut is the movie that most embarrasses film critics this year. It not only cost a leading daily reviewer her job (if you listen to the right inside dope) but hardly anyone who reviewed it got it right–not even the blurb whores. That’s mostly because our hype crisis has made
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Boys Don’t Cry, Pola X

Written by Armond White on October 19, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Pola X directed by Leos Carax Raging Bulldykes Teena Brandon’s deception starts with a haircut. A gay male friend clips her tresses down to a rakish scruff worn handsomely by actress Hilary Swank. It highlights her delicate features and sharp cheeks. "If you were a boy I’d fuck you," says the guy with the scissors.
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Julien Donkey-Boy

Written by Armond White on October 12, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Beau Travail directed by Claire Denis Ready, Set, Cinema Three Kings should have opened the New York Film Festival as a gateway to the extraordinary fall movie season. This satire about America’s 1991 Gulf War against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein that killed hundreds of thousands of people and won the closed hearts and narrow minds of
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Mumford

Written by Armond White on October 5, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Only Disconnect American Beauty is a swindle that exposes the naivete of the critics who praise it, the people who fall for it. In return, they get the smug comfort of satisfying cynical views of suburbia, teenagers, wives, husbands, business, homosexuality, technology, violence–the all-American cliches. Superior movies such as the new satirical Breakfast of Champions
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Gregg Araki’s Splendor

Written by Armond White on September 21, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

In the Grass "In his heart you know he’s gay." That thought came after seeing Gregg Araki’s Splendor, a "heterosexual" romantic comedy with bisexual allure. Showing off a triangulated love affair involving a woman and two men, Araki photographs the men so erotically that masculine charms outweigh the plot’s deliberately, deceptively feminine emphasis. A young
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Stop Making Sense

Written by Armond White on September 14, 1999. Posted in Arts & Film, Posts

Sense & Sensitivity David Byrne must have secretly smiled when critics snobbishly praised the big white suit he dons in the second half of Stop Making Sense as a nod to either Joseph Beuys or to Noh theater. Taking large, awkward steps like a funky automaton, the thin, brainy man inside the boxy material was
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