By Armond White Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse isn’t funny at all but it sure is laughable. A Hungarian farmer with a bum arm Ohlsdorfer (Janos Derzi) lives in a drab, yet limitless cabin with his morose spinster daughter (Erika Bok) who boils potatoes which go half-eaten. This goes on …
By Armond White “Ever hear of Plato’s allegory of the cave?,” one teenager asks another in Chronicle. This philosophy quiz was unexpected in the midst of a thrill ride movie but Chronicle is so surprisingly interesting, I wondered if its makers ever saw The Conformist (1971) where Bernardo Bertolucci visualized …
By Armond White George Lucas’ sales tactics for Red Tails, his $93 million production about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American pilots in the armed forces, make a bigger bang than the film itself. On the publicity rounds, Lucas talked about the dearth of movies with African American heroes, …
By Armond White for CityArts Light Bulb Virtuosity–the quality that lit up the best of arts culture during 2012–turns out to be the quality least appreciated in this transitional period for technology, economics and politics. It’s ironic that artists like Steven Spielberg, Kanye West, Jay Z and Picasso (revived at …
By Armond White Movie-watching can never be same after the double header of Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, his first animated film, and his live-action War Horse. Each film upgrades the way our imaginations construct the world, the way we see ourselves in the digital age. All art devotes …
Dolly and Latifah Reclaim Glee By Armond White Todd Graff’s Joyful Noise tells the story of a Pacashau, Ga., church choir entering a gospel music competition against better-financed groups. It’s an underdog fable that neatly parallels Graff’s own career since directing his 2001 debut film Camp, the underappreciated–yet secretly influential–pop …
The 2011 Better-Than List for CityArts: Armond White looks back at the best movies that surpass and defy the year’s worst. By Armond White We’ve reached the point where movies are less popular than other forms of pop culture yet remain compelling–as much for what they recall about the humanities …
Brian DePalma’s 1996 Mission Impossible was a cartoon even though he didn’t direct it like one. The sheer, exhilarating pleasure of Mission Impossible IV (officially subtitled Ghost Protocol) comes from star-producer Tom Cruise’s ingenious decision to cast animation master Brad Bird. This is easily Bird best film since The Iron …
By Armond White You can’t get you mind off Lady Gaga while watching David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Gaga, the ubiquitous pop star summoned up by the same self-loathing zeitgeist that popularized the Stieg Larsson crime novels as well as their Swedish TV-movie franchise, bears an uncanny …
The Sitter Remakes the 80s By Armond White The Sitter confirms director David Gordon Green’s unexpected yet healthy career turn. His 2000 debut George Washington (NYFCC Best First Film prizewinner) about the out-of-reach desires of black and white kids in the modern impoverished South, introduced a sweet yet somber regional …