It's been a long time
since I wrote about movie reviewers (I'm not seeing very many films in theaters anymore, not paying that much attention to cinema, and therefore not doing advance-scouting via reviews.), but since
Ebert's Journal post today took on that topic, I got curious enough to do some reading on the issue.
Ebert's post (on his blog, not his movie review site) is about Armond White, the film critic for the indie paper, the New York Press. The subject was White's (who is black) negative review of the new film
District 9, which has received fairly unanimous critical acclaim. As Ebert relates, at the time White's review went up, District 9 had a 100% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, out of 49 reviews. As his was the first negative review posted, it attracted a lot of attention. Furthermore, White is alleged to have a long history of disliking almost every movie other critics (and fans) do like, and of frequently giving perversely high scores to fairly rotten films. His detractors, of which there are hundreds in the RT comments on his review, accuse him of being a contrarian simply for the sake of being a contrarian. And as the thumbnail to the side shows, they might have a point.
Ebert's journal post was a defense of White, and especially of his right to be outrageous and overly-literary in his reviews. I would certainly support the first right, and I can't really argue against the second either. But, as Voltaire is credited
to have famously alluded, one can hold those views while still thinking that Armond White has horrible taste in films. (Which I'll say of anyone who hated
Wall-E and
Up.) Or that he's fundamentally dishonest in his reviews; that he chooses to dislike movies simply because he knows they'll be crowd pleasing and popular. (At least he says he dislikes them; perhaps he is just a provocateur?)
I can't judge the man's mind or heart. I can hardly judge his reviews, since I was not aware of him before today. However, since I just took the time to read a few, I do have some opinion. And I'm afraid to say that it more or less jibes with the vast majority. He writes scattered, faux-literary, allusion-filled, largely useless reviews that are comprised primarily of disparaging references to other popular films. That last aspect is what makes me suspicious of his motives, since he seems to go out of his way to revisit his disdain for other well-regarded films. A quote from his thumbs-up review of
G.I. Joe, for instance.
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.
RT critical mass for those four films: GI Joe,
40%. Iron Man,
93%. Star Trek,
95%. Harry Potter 6,
83%.
Ebert points out that his overall agree/disagree with the RT "Tomatometer" is 50%. I don't see any way to view all RT critics sorted by their tomatometer percentage, but I'd think that disagreeing with what everyone else thinks half the time is fairly high. Just to quickly survey a few other critics. Ebert, who liked District 9, is at
77%. More relevantly, out of the 74 (so far) reviews of District 9, there are 5 negative scores. One by Armond White. The other four are by critics with a
66%,
78%,
74%, and
70% agreement with the Tomatometer. So it's fair to say that White's 50% makes him a contrarian even amongst contrarians.
In fact, that tendency is probably what's spurred most of the revilement the RT readers seem to feel for White. That he reliably hates the most liked movies. Aside from the aforementioned Iron Man, Star Trek, and Harry Potter 6, here's a quick listing of other recent films (
White has 290 reviews ranked on RT) that earned at least 85% on the tomatometer, that White wrote negatively of. Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, 500 Days of Summer, Tony Manero, Up, Hearts and Minds, Hunger, Gamorrah, The Wrestler, Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, There Will Be Blood, Sweeney Todd, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Zodiac, Gone Baby Gone, Michael Clayton, Eastern Promises, 3:10 to Yuma, and Knocked Up. He did agree with the critical consensus on a fair number of other 85+ percent movies, but those were almost invariably obscure, artsy, indie type films.
This, more than anything else, makes me suspect his honesty. That he generally agrees with other critics on most great films that are well outside the mainstream, but somehow happens to dislike almost every well-reviewed mainstream film. Furthermore, he does like quite a few big budget crap-fests, and that last seems an intentional stick in the eye to the masses. "Not only do I hate the action films you people think are good, but I like the ones that suck. Take that!"
Update: Malaya pointed out to me that Ebert has
updated his post, and that after viewing some more of White's reviews, deems him a "troll."
Labels: movies
