Armond White's The Better-Than List for 2013

[drizzle]

Excellent hate read:

See the year’s best films, reject the overrated

The false politics of film culture 2013 (films exploiting race, class, sexual politics) paralleled the continued diminishment of cinephilia that has subordinated movies to TV, shifting cinema from a popular art form into political soccer games for media’s power elite. Lots of good film but also lots of not-so-hidden-agendas without depth, imagination or feeling. Values from the humanities persist yet struggle for attention over narcissism, nihilism, greed and retrograde esthetics. Only adventurous moviegoers saw the best films, everyone else saw hype. After a year of gross offenses and deep beauty, the Better-Than List knows the difference.



The We and the I> Short Term 12

Michel Gondry’s inventory of basic youth experience (a bildungsroman on wheels) cut through Destin Cretton’s patronizing, maudlin sociology. Gondry’s nearly miraculous feat, as good-natured as it was sensitive and inventive, may be the best film ever made about America by a non-American. A triumph of universality, plus the most profound, insightful, democratic title in years.

Man of Steel > Gravity

Zack Snyder’s powerful visionary re-imagining of the spiritual potential in comix trounces Alfonso Cuaron’s second-rate Kubrick-DePalma rip-off.

Pain & Gain > The Wolf of Wall Street

Michael Bay satirizes American ambition in imagery so bright and exhilarating it exposes the core of spiritual dislocation and rot that Scorsese turns into another self-pleased, overlong gangster epic.

Yossi > Blue is the Warmest Color

Eytan Fox updates Mann’s Death in Venice to L’chaim in Israel; his radiant view of gay humanity rejects Abdellatif Kechiche’s smutty girl-on-girl ode to lovelessness.

Caught in the Web> A Touch of Sin

Chen Kaige’s digital-era farce interwove love stories at cross-purposes with technology while Jia Zhangke smirkingly celebrated China’s moral decline.

The Grandmaster > The Great Gatsby

Wong Kar Wai investigates Chinese spiritual identity through an exquisite, romantic martial arts history but Baz Luhrmann’s latest mess got everything about sex, America, cinema (and F. Scott Fitzgerald) wrong.

Byzantium > Her

Neil Jordan’s ultimate pop-genre revue chose life, unleashing the power of femininity upon its restrictions in British literary and social tradition while Spike Jones dehumanized femininity–and love–as a po-mo joke.

Bullet to the Head > Mud

Walter Hill’s dynamic comeback further analyzed masculinity but in fresh New Millennium context while Jeff Nichols fell further back with ersatz corn-pone juvenilia, the year’s sorriest American movie.

American Hustle > August: Osage Country, The Place Beyond the Pines

David O. Russell’s acting class throwdown shows America to itself as a 70s costume party more exuberant and perceptive than dysfunctional clichés from derivative Broadway product and uninspired Sundance-indie formula made only to collect prizes.

42 > 12 Years a Slave, Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Brian Helgeland interlaced two sides (Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey) of America’s civil rights revolution, making the familiar intense, warm and radiant as Myth. Race-hustler Steve McQueen overplayed the guilt card and Lee Daniels mortgaged his pride in lieu of skill.

Our Nixon > Stories We Tell

Penny Lane’s remarkable act of documentary compassion (using home-movie proof that Watergate was the result of people as human as us) was deliberately misread as more character assassination while Sarah Polley egotistically exploited trite family history.

The Gardener > The Act of Killing

Moshen Makhamalbaf’s brilliant father-to-son survey of belief systems linked by Love contrasts Joshua Oppenheimer’s repugnant, fraudulent vaudeville about Indonesia’s death squads–smart-ass political porn.

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet > Computer Chess

Alain Resnais’ continually astonishing, estheticized exploration of memory and emotion hits a new theatrical-cinema-dream peak that embarrasses Andrew Bujalski’s intentional (yet unintentionally crude) denial of cinema as an esthetic pleasure.

New Slaves > Inside Llewyn Davis

Kanye West’s one-man cinema revival (music video as drive-in movie) was attached to musical/cultural innovation while the Coen Brothers’ Dylanology retreated into hoary yuppie nostalgia. Punk vs. The Establishment.

Bad Grandpa > Nebraska

Same premise, different result. Jackass auteur Jeff Tremaine’s road movie found common, if derisive humanity while Alexander Payne merely derided unsophisticated Middle Americans on his road to Hatersville.

Camille Claudel 1915, Hannah Arendt, Byzantium, Mental, American Hustle > Blue Jasmine

Binoche, Sukowa, Arterton, Adams, Lawrence, Collette gave a year of revelatory female performances through inspired auteurs, all ignored for Cate Blanchett’s dreadful, facetious embodiment of another foul Woody Allen conceit. The problem with contemporary film culture–in skirt

[drizzle]

btw, to make this even more fun he might get expelled from the NY critics association for allegedly heckling Steve Mcqueen at an awards dinner

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/n ... -expulsion

[PopeyeJones]

I know he's just trolling, but seriously, Pain & Gain > Wolf of Wall St.

[intuition]

42 really fucking sucked. pretty much all i have to chime in.

[Jayou Ayen]

Mondo is an incredible troll, we must thank Ithekkkle for making us aware of this legendary figure.
For me, his rave review of that Sandler movie where he plays a brother & his sister is his finest work.
But he also does the occasional hip hop review, which are just as comical.
Considering that he belittles nearly every black film maker with accusations of having a hip hop mentality, I find it mad ironic that he now champions Kanye West.

http://cityarts.info/2013/07/16/speaking-swaghili/

http://cityarts.info/2013/08/27/from-ghetto-to-gallery/



39

[Req]

Man of Steel > Gravity

Zack Snyder’s powerful visionary re-imagining of the spiritual potential in comix trounces Alfonso Cuaron’s second-rate Kubrick-DePalma rip-off.

yeah we're done here

[Spartan]

Bad Grandpa > Nebraska

Same premise, different result. Jackass auteur Jeff Tremaine’s road movie found common, if derisive humanity while Alexander Payne merely derided unsophisticated Middle Americans on his road to Hatersville.

[Tommy Bunz]

Talentless hack whose famous for giving terrible opinions and not for actually being a good writer or critic.
I wish his name would never be posted here again.

[samdoom]

what a douche, even for a "critic"

[Blockhead]

I know he's just trolling, but seriously, Pain & Gain > Wolf of Wall St.

You don't really believe that, right?
Even if you have issues with Wolf of wall street, Pain and gain was pretttttty fucking wack.

[PopeyeJones]

I know he's just trolling, but seriously, Pain & Gain > Wolf of Wall St.

You don't really believe that, right?
Even if you have issues with Wolf of wall street, Pain and gain was pretttttty fucking wack.

Nah, I seriously thought Pain & Gain was really entertaining. It's a 90s style action blockbuster made on a shoestring budget and was basically ignored because nobody knows what to do with movies like that anymore. If it had come out in '95 it would have been fine, not great (just because there were so many similar things that were competing with it), but in 2013 that shit practically stands alone for doing a super hero free action/comedy/romance catch-all popcorn flick. And on top of that it was a black comedy, which is practically impossible to get made these days too (has there been a wide-release one since Step Brothers?).

Basically think of it the same way I think of Argo, which also would have just been pretty good 15 years ago when there was a $50 mil quality drama/thriller coming out every weekend, but is fucking Oscar worthy these days because studios abandoned those movies.

Fuck White and fuck the rest of the list (although comparing Bad Grandpa to Nebraska is fucking hilarious), but Pain & Gain was good, man. Am I the only one?!?!?!

[Blockhead]

I thought pain and gain, though it had some great moments, was pretty boring overall and coulda been about 45 minutes shorter. Where as , even though WofWS was longer, i was entertained the entire time.
That said, I'm really game for anything The Rock acts in, in general.

[drizzle]

I liked Pain & Gain a lot, haven't seen WWS yet so not sure how that compares.

[Tweak Da Leak]

Armond White the god.

[Tweak Da Leak]

Wolf of Wallstreet gets the gas face

LOL at a kanye west video being better than the shit from the bottom of either Coen Bros shoe.

[alpha]

I really can't get past how much more of a meathead walhberg was in that than normal. And kill Rebel Wilson now, that stupid fat unfunny British ho.

[drizzle]

I really can't get past how much more of a meathead walhberg was in that than normal.

well that's kinda the point of the exercise

i'm intrigued by Popeye's idea of p&g being a 90s movie at heart. I don't completely agree with it (see below) but there is def something to it. there IS something in the movie reminiscent of the quirky 90s indy crime thrillers, spliced with Bay's relatively 'smaller' but already garish style pre-BB2

p&g feels more cynical and jaded than anything from the 90s though. 90s movies seem weirdly innocent by comparison, there's genuine wide-eyed excitement at the idea of putting crazy shit on screen. in p&g Bay is grilling body parts as a minor aside, barely raising an eyebrow to it like it's a totally routine thing to do in any movie.

[alpha]

I knew as soon as I saw your post that was what you'd say. I'll just leave it at I didn't like it as much as you guys

[Cash Rulz]

Talentless hack whose famous for giving terrible opinions and not for actually being a good writer or critic.
I wish his name would never be posted here again.

So there is actually a genre for this that I am not tapping into....

[PopeyeJones]

p&g being a 90s movie at heart. I don't completely agree with it (see below) but there is def something to it. there IS something in the movie reminiscent of the quirky 90s indy crime thrillers, spliced with Bay's relatively 'smaller' but already garish style pre-BB2

p&g feels more cynical and jaded than anything from the 90s though. 90s movies seem weirdly innocent by comparison, there's genuine wide-eyed excitement at the idea of putting crazy shit on screen. in p&g Bay is grilling body parts as a minor aside, barely raising an eyebrow to it like it's a totally routine thing to do in any movie.

Hadn't really thought it through, but you're nailing everything I liked about it so much. It's that it's a niche black comedy with all the trappings and presentation of an old, would-be blockbuster. And yeah, it wears its cynicism on its sleeve. Something about watching a faux-blockbuster only to realize that there's literally nobody to really root for was just hilarious to me.

[drizzle]

^^ cheers

Back on topic, BOOOOOTEEEEDDDD

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/01/13/a ... y-critics/