Anthony Lane and "Watchmen": Where are the lolz?

Max's Journal, March 18th, 2009


John looked at Aussie Watchmen review already, emerged unscathed. Anthony Lane's review must be tackled, could kill millions with crap writing. Lane worst reviewer so far, eyes already bleed. But even in the face of armageddon, a free blog headed up by 20 year olds must still comment on horrible writing. Hurm.

(Spoilers ahoy. I'm not even kidding)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/03/09/090309crci_cinema_lane

"The world of the graphic novel is a curious one. For every masterwork, such as “Persepolis” or “Maus,” there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks."

Lane wants you to know that if you like comics that aren't real world memoirs, you are a pervert.

Also, you worship fish gods, apparently.

"Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match."

Lane really hates people who like comics.

"The bad news about “Watchmen” is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation."

What do these people think they're making, a multimillion dollar adaptation of a critically acclaimed novel?!

"... must we have “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” in the background? How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice? And was Dylan happy to lend his name to a project from which all tenderness has been excised, and which prefers to paint mankind as a bevy of brutes?"

Because, as we all know, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" was about a Victorian era picnic and not massive social upheaval.

"As far as superheroes go, two’s company but three or more is a drag, with no single character likely to secure our attention: just ask the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four, or the half-dozen Watchmen we get here."

I don't get this. Does he not like any ensemble cast superhero movies or does he just not like ensemble casts? "12 Angry Men a snore!, should've just followed that one really racist guy".

"There is Dan (Patrick Wilson), better known as Nite Owl, who keeps his old superhero outfit, rubbery and sharp-eared, locked away in his basement, presumably for fear of being sued for plagiarism by Bruce Wayne."


He's of course referencing the scene in The Dark Knight where Batman can't have sex without his mask on.

"There is the Comedian, real name Eddie Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whose tragic end, early in the film, we are invited to mourn, but who gets his revenge by popping up in innumerable flashbacks."

Lane makes a good point here. The movie would've been alot better if we had no idea who The Comedian was and why his death was important.

"There is Laurie, who goes by the sobriquet of Silk Spectre, as if hoping to become a top-class shampoo"

Zing!

"Then there is Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), who likes to be called Ozymandias. Goode played Charles Ryder in last year’s “Brideshead Revisited,” and I fear that, even as Ozymandias murders millions from his Antarctic lair, which he does at the climax of “Watchmen,” Goode’s floppy blond locks and swallowed consonants remain those of a young gadabout who might, at worst, twist the leg off his Teddy bear."

Anthony Lane expected more menace from the character who murdered millions of people. Maybe they should've given him a knife or something. A really big knife. Also, fuck you for putting a massive spoiler nonchalantly in the middle of your review, you gadabout.

"Last and hugest is Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), who is buff, buck naked, and blue, like a porn star left overnight in a meat locker."

Anthony Lane, you have a dark side to you that, frankly, terrifies me.

"I felt sorry for Crudup, a thoughtful actor forced to spout gibberish about the meaning of time and, much worse, to have that lovely shy smile of his wiped by special effects."

Anthony Lane may in fact secretly run a Billy Crudup fan site (mostly fan fiction, some photoshops).

"Dr. Manhattan is central to Moore’s chronological conceit, which is that President Nixon (Robert Wisden), having used our blue friend to annihilate the Vietcong, wins the Vietnam War and, by 1985—the era in which the bulk of the tale takes place—is somehow serving a third term."

If only there had been something to tell the audience why this had happened. Like a newspaper or tv screen.

"“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along."

I'm not sure how Lane figures Watchmen is a political satire, but ok. And man, he really hates comic book nerds, huh? I'm beginning to wonder if he was beaten with rolled up issues of Amazing Spider-Man when he was a kid.

"The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon. The result is perfectly calibrated for its target group: nobody over twenty-five could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under eighteen should be allowed to witness it. You want to see Rorschach swing a meat cleaver repeatedly into the skull of a pedophile, and two dogs wrestle over the leg bone of his young victim? Go ahead. You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore’s book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is Snyder’s own embroidery."

Lane loses me completely at this point. Can he honestly not understand that people aren't always supposed to "take joy" from movies? Did he think that when Spielberg decided to make "Schindler's List" , he was marketing it exclusively to anti-semites? None of the violence in this movie is really glamorized and any notion that the movie thinks violence is cool is pretty firmly dispelled by the film's end.

"You want to hear Moore’s attempt at urban jeremiad? “This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard; either way, it makes it directly into the movie, as one of Rorschach’s voice-overs. (And still the adaptation won’t be slavish enough for some.)"

Thats funny, because entire review strikes me as someone trying much, much too hard.

"Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like"

Anthony Lane, who writes for The New Yorker, is going to tell you about real suffering, kids.

"they are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race—a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity—to be bothered with lesser plights. "

Yeah, what about the DOLPHINS, Zach Snyder?!

"In the end, with a gaping pit where New York used to be, most of the surviving Watchmen agree that the loss of the Eastern Seaboard was a small price to pay for global peace."

I like how Lane just glosses over one of the most important and complex moments in the entire film with a "welp, I guess they're ok with people DYING". Oh, and I'm pretty sure a large chunk of Manhattan doesn't make up the entire Eastern Seaboard.

"Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?"

Anthony Lane is an incoherent blowhard who thinks "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" is the pinacle of comic film adaptations and eagerly awaits the upcoming "Marmaduke" motion picture. Also, you don't get to ask where the comedy went when you work for a magazine that routinely puts out historically unfunny comic strips every month.

-Max

An Australian Treat: Watchmen

Since I'm spending a semester in Australia, I might as well review some Australian critics. So here we have a man named Stan James.

In reading this review, I was lead to believe that James was not to familiar with Watchmen, or if he was, he grossly misinterpreted the story.

Alan Moore's landmark graphic novel hits the screen running flat out and delivers whopping serves on many fronts.

I'm not exactly sure what "running flat out" and "whopping serves" means for this movie. They sound like sports metaphors, but they could also be Australian colloquialisms for "was intense" and "has cool moments."

Narrated by raspy-voiced Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) he tells us its an alternate 1985.

For some reason I had a lot of trouble with this sentence and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I mean besides the fact that Rorschach doesn't narrate the movie any more than Dr. Manhattan does. We are just treated to his thoughts from his journal. And he also does not tell us it is an alternate 1985. That would've just been weird. "October 12, 1985...well, a parallel 1985."

But this sentence just did not sound right. And I realized that it is grammatically incorrect. The first part of the sentence is referring to Watchmen as a whole, and the second part is just referring to Rorschach. Unless Rorschach is narrated by Rorschach. Then it makes sense.

Using a series of flashbacks, director Zack Snyder propels the story and gives a history of [the Watchmen's] pasts.

Ignoring the redundancy of what a flashback is, the flashbacks are not Snyder's choice. They were originally in Moore's novel. This is one of the reasons I believe James is not familiar with Watchmen. Also, this is the only sentence about flashbacks. I'd allow this comment if James showed how using the flashbacks would have been a good stylistic choice, as if no flashbacks would be found if someone else directed the movie.

At this point, I realized that this sentence makes up the whole paragraph. Then I realized that every paragraph is one sentence long in this review. Then I realized that was the case for every article in this newspaper. Is this true of all newspaper articles, or is just an Australian thing?

Adrien Veidt (Matthew Goode) is the world's fastest man and filthy rich, having licensed his identity; Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) is a look-alike Batman and gadget expert; and Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman) had superpowers passed on by her mother.

Hahaha, I missed this the first time, and even as I was writing this quote I thought I had mistyped, but no. Veidt is the world's "fastest" man, apparently. In the movie, they make many references to him being the world's smartest man, but never the fastest. The only times that he can be misconstrued as fast are when he is having a fight scene. But all fight scenes use that Snyder-flair of slow-then-fast motion, so this does not apply only to Veidt. But I guess it would explain how he is able to dodge a lot of things.

I don't even know what "look-alike Batman" means. They both have nifty gadgets and their costumes are based on creatures of the night, but Nite Owl never struck me as a Batman reference. Dreiberg is a little too nerdy for Batman.

And finally, none of the Watchmen have superpowers, save for Dr. Manhattan. Everyone is just a costumed vigilante. Silk Spectre's mantel was handed down by her mother, but unless Laurie also has the power of looking terrible in age make-up, no superpowers were passed down.

Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, what were his powers again?

...regenerative superpowers and the ability to see the future.

That's a little simple for a man who has been blessed with THE POWERS OF A GOD.

(Also, as a nitpick, he could only see his own future.)

It's mighty spectacular, gets out of control now and then, but its dark edges grip and the energy and colour of its characters give it plenty of superhero grunt.

Stan James liked the movie and is trying to persuade those unfamiliar with the original story to come see it. He knows what his audience likes. Grippy dark edges and superhero grunt. Looking down the page, I notice that all movie reviews are written by him. This will be a fun semester.

Amy Nicholson... The Problem is You

For the second entry in a row, we're gonna play my favorite game: Completely Unfounded Political Message Extrapolation! Except this time, we're gonna confront something an awful lot of people are saying about Slumdog Millionaire. And it's not actually a political message, but it's close enough.

I didn't like Slumdog as much as most other people, but I certainly liked it a lot better than Amy Nicholson,, who we last found gushing over Bride Wars.

Heavy Slumdog spoilers are abound.

John Carpenter, the first grand prize millionaire of the USA’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire was showered with (momentary) fame. In Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan’s noisy fictional drama, India’s parallel 20-million rupee winner Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) was tortured for the implausibility of being a bottom caste brain when his superiors bottomed out at 60K.

This is a noisy intro, but whatever. Ha, dude's name was John Carpenter. More like Big Trouble in Little Millionaire!

Complicating things, Jamal isn’t particularly bright—a credibility deficit screenwriter Simon Beaufoy overcomes by showing precisely which traumatic events etched random facts about movies, religion, and British geography into his mind--

Yes. I'm certain Beaufoy's train of thought was this exactly: "Ah jeez, I really wanna make a story about a slumdog who wins the millionaire game, but how do I do it?? I know! I'll think of the actual premise of the movie!" Yes, it's the premise of the movie, and you're gonna call it a copout. If there's any point to the fact that he does so well, it's simply to show the dichotomy between tuition and experience. It's one of the central themes of the movie. Because it's the premise. Of the movie. Well, half the premise, anyway.

coincidentally, in the chronological order game show host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) will later ask him as questions.

GET OVER IT. Everyone who dislikes the film has used this argument. There has to come a point when you're watching the movie and you realize that the Indian Regis is an evil and cunning villain. It's at this point where you also realize that you're not really supposed to take this movie so seriously. It's a fable. It's a fairy tale set against a modern backdrop. It's not supposed to be believable, just like Cinderella isn't supposed to be believable.

There's also the fact that there were like four or five questions he either didn't know or he used his cleverness to figure out. Jerk.

In these scenes (for which child actors Tanay Chheda and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar play the younger and youngest Jamals), MIA’s “Paper Planes” blasts, adopting the credibility of desperate, money-hungry street living it didn’t get when layered over Seth Rogen toking up in Pineapple Express.

Oh jesus, come on. What?
1. "Paper Planes" never played in Pineapple Express. It was only used in the trailer.
2. Who the fuck cares about the song's credibility? Review the movie you're reviewing.
3. Why is 16% of your review about an MIA song?

This should be a furious story about strata; instead it tries to sell us a bogus romance between Jamal and his childhood love (Freida Pinto), now the mistress of the gangster who employs his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal). When they kiss at the ending, we roll our eyes—that’s not going to solve the problems that now infuriate us. Why, when Boyle has for half a film been such a devastating purveyor of social class suffering, would he turn as glossy as a Disney cartoon?

GAAAAAAAH.

What the hell was with the ending of Cinderella? All that happened was she got to live happily ever after… but there were no new laws passed about stepmother meanness! Nothing!

Amy, and everyone else who argues with this argument, stop it. It's a movie about a guy who faces insurmountable odds to be with the woman he loves. That's his one goal, throughout the entire movie. It's a love story. Remember love stories? And how they're allowed to exist? Bride Wars is somehow plausible, but this… this is an outrage! What should Danny Boyle have done? Change the script so Jamal and Latika become king and queen of India and bring fairness and prosperity to all the land? He actually could've done that, and you still would've hated it, because it's unrealistic enough as it is. We don't roll our eyes, because it DID solve the problem—Jamal and Latika were in love but could not be together. They eventually got together. Along the way, bad things happen, and in the end, Jamal finds a way to overcome the bad things that happen to him, because of his love for Latika and the fact that "it was written," and, you know, everything else about the movie.

This is a real problem in criticism, I think. Critics who just want the movie to be something that's the complete opposite of what the movie is. Slumdog Millionaire is a fairy tale romance set against a violent backdrop. Like Romeo and fucking Juliet. A critic worth their salt would be able to judge it for what it is, and how successful it is at achieving what it sets out to achieve. A bad critic would look at it and say YOU KNOW, I REEEEEALLY WISH IT WAS ABOUT SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT or IT REALLY DIDN'T MAKE ME LAUGH ENOUGH or WHAT WAS WITH THE STRANGE LACK OF TALKING ANIMALS? Amy Nicholson, you are a purveyor of this awfulness, and it's a problem that now infuriates me. Prepare to be solved.

Jeremy Heilman, the Problem is You

I'm normally not gonna piss on a critic for disagreeing with the crowd; after all, a lot of those movies with RT scores in the 90s were hyped into the heavens, and critics are often hype's loudest victims. And of course, you always have your critics like Armond White, who disagrees because it's probably his fetish or something (known to scream "I'M NOT HAVING SEX WITH YOU" during sex), but that's a different story.

In this entry, I'm gonna piss on Jeremy Heilman for disagreeing. He gave The Incredibles (97%), a 15/100, which, according to his his RT profile is the second-worst score he's ever given a film (out of 746 reviews). This normally wouldn't be SUCH a cause for concern—I'm not gonna yell at any of the other six critics who gave it bad reviews—but 15/100? For The Incredibles? A Pixar film? For kids? 15? Yeah, there's no way he disliked the movie THAT much, which leaves only one possible explanation: COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED POLITICAL MESSAGE EXTRAPOLATION! I love this game!

Pixar, the golden boy animators of the moment, return this season with The Incredibles, another entry in their series of dubious crowd-pleasers.

If by "of the moment" you mean "from their first feature film to the present, and then probably for at least the next ten years," then yeah, they're pretty fucking golden. But the point is, Jeremy Heilman doesn't like Pixar, and he understands that it's a good decision to admit bias as quickly as possible.

It follows the tired formula as their past films. To follow up their tales of domesticated fish, domesticated monsters, domesticated insects, and domesticated toys, they now present domesticated superheroes.

It would've been really, really awesome if A Bug's Life was just about normal, non-domesticated insects. And if Finding Nemo was a $150 million CGI nature documentary about fish. Or if Toy Story was just two hours of lifeless dolls.

I really hope Jeremy Heilman never has kids, because those will be the saddest children in America.

The plot this time out is as conventional as in any of the past Pixar films, borrowing liberally from the Spy Kids franchise, Alan Moore’s “Watchmen” comics, and James Cameron’s far superior True Lies.

Spy Kids: Really? You can steal plot from Spy Kids?
Watchmen: There are certainly similarities, yes, but I'm pretty sure the fact that The Incredibles is a KID-FRIENDLY CARTOON makes that point moot. Does anyone honestly expect a Pixar-produced superhero movie to not wear its influences on its sleeve?
True Lies: "Daddy, why is the girl naked and dancing? I'm scared!"
"Jesus, you kids have NO TASTE."

It has to be said that CGI spectacle is less the order of the day here than it has been in past Pixar films (Thankfully. After a while comes the realization that real water is more impressive to watch than any that is fabricated.).

They wanted to make a movie about fish. They make cartoons. I'm sorry there was water in it and I'm sorry they tried to make it look good.

Additionally, the voice acting is more restrained than the non-stop yelling that has marred several of the studio’s past efforts

Hey, does anyone else remember how nothing about this is true?

At first, while watching The Incredibles, I was frustrated by its seemingly shortsighted lack of superheroes outside of its American borders.

Alternate review: You know what really pisses me off about Toy Story? It was COMPLETELY oblivious to the Armenian Genocide.

You are watching a PG-rated comedic action movie about a family of superheroes. This is not a thought that is supposed to cross your mind. And just because it did cross your mind, it doesn't make you any more socially aware. You're actually actively looking for these things in a children's action movie. This isn't like Armond White being lazy and judging a film's sociopolitical message on the one or two scenes he decided to watch… Jeremy Heilman is going to deconstruct the shit out of every scene in The Incredibles, and he's going to make you sad.

Only as the film developed, did the omission reveal itself as an intentional one. Director Brad Bird, whose Cold War-era Iron Giant was carried a very political message of anti-violence is clearly aiming this film at an Americentric, post-9/11 world.

CLEARLY.

This is the part where I piss on Jeremy for disagreeing with the crowd, because I'm pretty sure he's the only one who believes this, and the only one naïve enough to believe everyone else is gonna get the "message." He's going to spend the rest of the review lampooning a movie for delivering a message that was received by no one but him. And I'm gonna get angry about it.

Strong, irresponsible imagery evokes the horrors of those attacks repeatedly. There are sequences showing a mother shielding her children from pillars of fire from above and exploding plane debris. There’s an extended shot of a plane flying into the southern tip of Manhattan island. There’s the constant reminder that the events in the film are about to end fifteen years of peace.

Jeremy, MOVIES HAVE PLANES IN THEM. Especially action movies, which involve a lot of explosions and traveling! Dude honestly takes out two scenes with planes and decides that they evoke 9/11 "repeatedly."

Oh, sorry, that's not all the evidence for this controversial case: the events of the film end fifteen years of peace! You know the best way to make a movie that ISN'T secretly about 9/11? Make absolutely certain it begins in the middle of a war, and not in the beginning. And make sure there aren't any peaces that last 15 years, because even though there was only 12 years between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, you're dumb and Jeremy hates you.

And then he rants for a paragraph about how it's too violent, which culminates with this buffoonery:

At first glance, you might wonder why The Incredibles was an animated film at all , but that’s probably because its carnage and insane politics wouldn’t be comic in live action.

No, you big dummy. No one ever wondered that. No one except you, and I'm not sure you're saying you wondered it at all, so I don't know why you brought it up. No one ever thought, "why isn't this Pixar movie live-action?" Because people know that Pixar makes animated films. That is the only reason it's animated. If it weren't animated, it wouldn't exist, because it was created by Pixar and unless 1906 ever gets made, they only make animated movies.

But yes, the "carnage" probably would've been harder to swallow in live action. I would love to hear your thoughts on Looney Tunes.

How the actions of the Parr family are supposed to translate into commentary on the post-9/11 world that The Incredibles invokes is beyond me.

What!? You're actually saying that you don't know how the main focus of the film conforms to the complete mess of a "commentary" you pulled out of your ass? YOU DON'T SAY

Its attempts to be politically relevant are hopelessly muddled at best and offensive at worst.

God, I cannot believe the fact that Toy Story, a movie about the Armenian Genocide, completely left out any allusion to the Adana Massacre of 1909. Its attempts to be politically relevant are hopelessly muddled at best and offensive at worst.

Bird’s sloppy obliviousness to the imagery that he employs is worse than outright propaganda,

Now this is just silly. Are you implying that the director and writer of the film inserted all of this 9/11 stuff without knowing it? You're saying that even the guy who wrote the film was unaware of the political message the film was "clearly" trying to convey? You do know Brad Bird actually wrote the film, right? And that it wasn't farted out by the government? I'll assume you know this. I have to assume that, by this point, you're starting to get it… you're the only one who read the film this way. The problem is you.

Since there’s not much indication that the slightly fascist family is being satirized, and since it’s too much a crowd-pleaser to be critical of the violent payoff that it delivers, it’s tough not to take its apparent message seriously.

It's actually quite easy, Jeremy. Incredibly, incredibly easy.

Hey friends!

Long time no etc

So remember like a month ago when we ribbed on Thom Fowler's review of Monsters, Inc.? Well, the guy was cool enough to respond to a few jerks making fun of something he wrote like ten years ago. I didn't think anything like that would happen until we were internet-famous! Here's what he wrote:

"I'm honored to have been your premier target.

I was amused by your close reading and careful deconstruction of my comments on Monsters, Inc.

I'm surprised you took the time.

My favorite quote from your manifesto:

"We also like to make fun of things."

I'm still alive.

And I look forward to attending more of your literary barbecues.

You might be catching on if you keep reading. (!: the most pointlessly overused punctuation mark in the field of film marketing.)

"How to Write A Seven-Paragraph Review for Dimwits and Numbnuts"

Exactly.

Re: Auschwitz - I had to at least give the reader /something/ to really think about. The Monster culture tortured and exploited humans and potentially exterminated them. Two of their members suddenly have pathos for the "other." And thus you have the emotional impetus for the way the plot unravels.

Of course, if Boo had actually been afraid of Sulley, she would not have implicated herself so naturally into an emotional landscape which she did, in fact, share with Sulley and Mike. They discovered a shared meaning-making process which enabled a different kind of relationship to emerge - one based on empathy, rather than disassociation.

But who cares about all that stuff. It's MONSTERS and CUTENESS!

Small Soldiers is another "kid's movie" that is essentially a morality tale with similar themes of a fear-based response manifesting as violence at odds with a love-based response manifesting as care and empathy.

Anyway. Thanks!"


Thanks for the clarifications, Thom! (and also for not hating us!) Very awesome.


Anyway, we're sorry for the lack of updates (I AM, ANYWAY). We've all been incredibly busy or just lazy. But I promise that starting tomorrow, we'll go back to updating 5 times a minute.

I've already figured out Armond White

And it didn't take much!

In our initial coverage of Mr. White, we discovered a film critic (sorry… movie critic) who was equal parts contrarian and confounding. The guy clearly likes to go against the grain, in hating every movie critics like and liking 20% of the movies every critic hates. Through it all, he makes sure that every movie is interpreted socially and politically, often coming up with the most bizarre analyses possible. It really made me wonder, just what the bazooka actually goes on inside his head as he watches these films? How does he watch Blades of Glory and conclude--with a completely straight face--that it's a gay rights film?

Well, I've figured it out. It's a bit rough, but here's the formula so far:

1. Before the film starts, Armond inserts ear plugs and applies a blindfold.
2. At an entirely random moment in the film, and often in an act of sexual passion (extrapolation – ed.), he tears off the blindfold and rips out the plugs.
3. He exposes himself to one scene.
4. He reapplies the blindfold and ear plugs.
5. He repeats this maybe once or twice more throughout.
6. For the remainder of the film, he works on filling in the blanks. He starts with the basic facts, making up characters and plot as he goes along. More impressively, though, he derives from these few scenes the socio-political message of the film and decides that it is the only possible interpretation there is.
7. He asks himself whether or not he agrees with this message.
-a. If he agrees, he gives the film a good review.
-b. If he disagrees, he gives the film a bad review.
-c. If he agrees but the film doesn't make him leave with a smile, he gives it a bad review anyway.
8. He gets referred to as "the conscience of American film critics" in his Wikipedia page.

As I said, it's rough. I don't know for sure whether the blindfold/ear plugs is right; he might have headphones or just fall asleep easily.

So what's to thank for this cultural breakthrough? None other than Darren Aronofsky's glorious film, The Wrestler.

Positive reviews: 172
Negative reviews: 3, if you actually count Armond White.

In order to prevent myself from hyperventilating or injuring myself in the forthcoming coverage of Armond's review, I've decided to join The No-Cussing Club. All untoward cuss words will be replaced by NCC-approved replacements. Warning: might induce giggling!

As a middle-aged, small-time wrestler living in a New Jersey trailer, Rourke’s Randy “Ram Jam” Robinson,

Welp, strawberry milkshakes, there it is! That was my clue! Randy "Ram Jam" Robinson. From this point forward, Armond will only refer to the main character of the film, whose various names are spoken countless times throughout, as Ram Jam.

Ram Jam.

That was not his nickname, you fettuccine-roll. He goes by "Randy," or "Robin," or "The Ram." "Ram Jam" is the name of his signature wrestling move. No one in the film ever refers to him as "Ram Jam." "Ram Jam" is the most spelunking horrible nickname a person could ever have.

This wouldn't be such a huge deal if the film didn't make such a big deal about his name. Alas, we now know one of the few scenes Armond was paying attention to: Randy was in a wrestling match, about to execute his move, and the crowd is shouting the words "Ram Jam." This is the only sassafrassing time the term is spoken throughout the entire film. Armond White, you are a complete, total cumquat.

Remember, this is a guy who said "I am not the least bit interested in reading the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. There, I’ve said it." Armond White does not know the name of the main character of the film he's reviewing. There, I've said it.

Jason Statham voiced more eloquent regret in Death Race; Ram Jam just wants pity.

I'm not going to even going to respond to that first clause. That would be a low blow.

To the second statement though, I have this to say: SO JEK PORKINS WHAT?

Is this seriously a criticism? I'll play along and pretend that "Ram Jam" does indeed only want pity. So what? Is a character not allowed to want pity? Is a protagonist only allowed to be as noble and admirable as can be? Has Armond White ever heard of moral ambiguity? Has he ever liked a film that urges the viewer to root for an imperfect character? No?

Worst of all, Ram Jam confesses in an old amusement park where he and daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) go to reminisce about the good ol’ days. It’s lousy irony because nothing about The Wrestler is amusing.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Good to know he woke up during this stretch of film, for just long enough to think up a lame quip. Also, it wasn't an amusement park, it was Asbury Park. Still holds, though, because nothing about The Wrestler is asbury.

Full of self-inflicted lacerations and injections, Ram Jam is his own voodoo doll. Everything he does is an act of masochistic penance—very strange in an anti-spiritual movie.When his stripper girlfriend Cassidy (a superbly buck-naked Marisa Tomei) recommends he watch The Passion of the Christ, it’s another lead-pipe irony.

And this is the social commentary. It's "anti-religious." Because… lol u got punked, he's not gonna say why! That's all he says about the subject of religion. Ironic, seeing as he only mentions it in a sentence in which he admits it doesn't work. It's kind of like saying, "It's strange that Home Alone's plot involves a child being home alone, when it's clearly a movie about togetherness and unity. I am not going to tell you why." Or, "it's strange how Hitler killed all those Jews, when Hitler actually liked all those Jews." (we totally have enough of an audience for a running joke!).

I saw The Wrestler today with John!, and in terms of interpretation, we both agreed that it's very easy to read the film as religious parable. We also agreed that there is no way in spatula that this film can be construed as anti-religious.

You know, I think these replacement cusses might actually work. That "spatula" was really forced. I have no desire to scream at Armond anymore… I just wanna cry.

Ram Jam responds, “Tuff, dude,”

No, he doesn't, and if he did, how would you know that he spelled it "tuff," you bunkum.

Sanctimony like this appeals primarily to cynics who scoff at Mel Gibson’s sincerity yet cheer Aronofsky’s repulsive, violent nihilism.

I would like anyone who reads this to tell me exactly how The Wrestler could possibly be seen as nihilistic, because I just don't see it. And if you can answer that, tell me what makes The Dark Knight nihilistic, and then tell me about every other movie Armond White hates because he thinks they're "nihilistic." Is it because "violence"? Apparently Armond fell asleep right before Cassidy starts comparing The Ram Jamming Jammer to Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Because that's what happens. In the movie.

The message that life is hell is a pseudo-intellectual’s version of professional wrestling bunkum.

Hey, Armond's a member too!

People too smart to appreciate the fun and insight of the wrestling comedy Ready to Rumble lap up the irony that Ram Jam is ready to die.

Because I know you were curious: Ready to Rumble has an RT score of 24%. This is what the video cover looks like:



At least Lance Bass looks somewhat happy.

Rourke’s too good for this crap

According to Wikipedia, Armond White is such an amazing critic that he's allowed to say this.

And please, Armond, replace that "c***" with a "flapjack" like the book tells you.

Forget The Wrestler’s hype; it’s worth remembering Rourke’s finest performance and best film,Walter Hill’s 1989 Johnny Handsome.

Yes, this film was only enjoyed by one person.

Ram Jam is a distorted white working-class stereotype, but Aronofsky can’t tell courage from vainglory, foolhardiness from sacrifice.

ahahahaha I was gonna make a joke about Armond's faulty space key, but apparently "vainglory" is actually a word. This is the guy who just called everyone who didn't like Ready to Rumble "too smart."

Final thought, Armond?

Shame on Bruce Springsteen for contributing a self-pitying title song to Aronofsky’s indie artsiness.

Leave Bruce out of this, you applesauce-fucker.

Kevin Carr on "Bride Wars":

Its strange that the first movie on the blog to get two different posts devoted to it would be Bride Wars of all things, but there you go. Kevin Carr really, really hates weddings and is going to tell you how he feels no matter how many times you ask him politely to stop.

http://www.7mpictures.com/inside/reviews/bridewars_review.htm

"There were two thoughts that came to mind as I walked out of the screening of 'Bride Wars.'"

Tell us, Kevin!

The first was, 'That wasn’t so bad for a January release.” The second was, “God, I’m glad I have three boys and no girls.'"

"heh wimmen ami rite?"

"My first reaction, about how the movie’s not bad for a January release, is actually a compliment."

Thank you for reminding me of this, Kevin. I prefer to print out the movie reviews I read in invisible ink (lest the freemasons discover them) and the first few sentences had faded away, so repeating that last sentence was a life-saver.

"Normally, January is the dumping ground for Hollywood. Amid a flurry of limited release award films, we are besieged with an onslaught of terrible movies that couldn’t make it in a tent-pole release season (like the summer or holidays) and have no chance of winning awards. Case in point, last year’s January slate gave us 'One Missed Call,' 'Mad Money,' 'Untraceable,' 'Meet the Spartans', “First Sunday' and Uwe Boll’s crapsterpiece 'In the Name of the King.' (Sure, 'Cloverfield' and 'Rambo' also came out last January, but those were exceptions.)"

January is filled with lots of crap to mediocre movies, except when it isn't. Got it.

Also, "crapsterpiece" lol.


"For the most part, though, 'Bride Wars' is cute, friendly and funny more times than not. The story follows Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) as best friends who have had a lifelong dream of a June wedding at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. When they each get engaged at the same time, they try to book the Plaza, only to find out they get double-booked on the same day. Neither wants to give up 'the happiest day of their life,' and they become bitter enemies to have the better wedding."

I'm not going to lie, I'm beginning to hate Kevin just because he puts so many goddamn quotation marks in his review. Speaking of bitter..


"That last part explains my second thought, the one about only having boys as my kids. I hope to God that I never have to deal with the insanity of flushing money down a toilet for an extravagant wedding."

"heh heh heh"

And again, Kevin, I appreciate your explanation of the order of your points, you went above and beyond, friend.

"(Does that make me bitter? Sure, but even when I was getting married, I could not ignore what a rip-off the entire wedding industry is. Sue me... I’m a dude.)"

I'm just going to go ahead and assume Kevin is divorced.

"There’s a myth in modern society that every girl must look forward to her wedding, and it is embodied by the characters of Liv and Emma. However, the reality is that most weddings are fraught with grief, angst, bickering and needless stress."

Kevin, I must confess that I don't think you know what a myth is. I'm pretty sure most "girls" (or, if you prefer, "dames") atleast look forward to their wedding. Consider this myth busted.

"And you pay through the nose for all this. Multiple times in the film, weddings are referred to as 'the happiest day' of the girls’ lives. Doesn’t this imply that it’s all downhill from their."

Kevin's wedding hit his wallet so hard that TO THIS DAY he can't afford a word processing program with a proper spellcheck tool.

" And let’s not forget that the wedding myth only boosts spoiled girls’ egos by making everything about them."

Man, this just keeps going, huh?

"Sure, this is the opinion of a guy, but I’ve been through a wedding and watched many a friend also get married. I consider myself an expert."

I'm pretty sure no one in the history of ever has ever written this much about hating weddings.

"Okay, I’ll step off my soap box now."

Thank god.

"Like many films I’ve seen over the years, the strongest parts of 'Bride Wars' rests on the shoulders of the supporting cast rather than the stars."

"In this paper, I hope to examine how the supporting cast of 'Bride Wars' follows Joseph Campbell's path of the mythic hero. The charact-"

"Don’t get me wrong... Hudson and Hathaway hold their own in the film. They’re both pleasant to look at, and they do a fine job acting."

"..But mostly it was their boobs"

"But the funniest characters are found in the supporting cast. Kristen Johnston is hilarious as Emma’s cantankerous friend from work, and June Diane Raphael plays a bit part as a bride on the way to divorce that steals all of the scenes she’s in."

I dunno Kevin, I don't think they could be as funny as your descriptions.

"I know a lot of the sympathy I could feel for the characters is lost on me because I have a Y chromosome..."

ugggghhh.

"...but I can understand and empathize with the female condition."

"...but watch out when their 'Aunt Flo' visits hehhehhehheh"

"Liv and Emma are overly focused on a wedding as a dream, and they are quite shallow in the beginning, but this does serve the comedy to a degree."

hahaha silly fuckin' bitches.

"Even though it has its flaws, 'Bride Wars' is far superior to last January’s wedding flick '27 Dresses' and last summer’s counter-programming 'Made of Honor.' You could do worse in Hollywood’s dumping ground."

Tune in next time for Kevin Carr's thoughts on his "honey" "moon" in Las Vegas ("more like 'LOST WAGES!') and, space permitting, his thoughts on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Game Time: What Movie Led to This Tangent? End of '08 Wrap Up

Victoria Alexander doesn't have to follow what us mere mortals consider to be "logic." Therefore, she feels a stream-of-consciousness approach is the best when it comes to movie reviews. The goal is to try to guess what movie she was reviewing when she made the following...um...observations.

1) In "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" David Thelis plays an SS officer but does not speak with a German accent. No one in HBO's terrific mini-series "Rome" spoke with Italian accents. We only like English accents, not Russian (Sean Connery in "The Hunt for Red October" and Harrison Ford in "K-19: The Widowmaker" tried) or ethnic accents (except Borat).

2) My friend's passion is raising rare animals, having recently brought a new species of pony to Brazil. His newest additions are a baby lama and two emus. My friend and his wife also own part of the rain forest adjoining their property. They have an array of rare birds, including a very rare Arara azul de Lear. Around only 450 still live in the wild and some in captivity. A Brazilian government official comes every six months to check on the bird's care. Trust me, these animals have a full-time staff catering to their every whim. As soon as my husband says "yes", Remi's paperwork will be submitted and he will be mine.

3) I have an altar to my favorite Brazilian orisha, Exú. Yes, I give tribute to Exú with money, whiskey and cigars. But there is nothing like an offering of one's own blood.

4) Is being alive just not good enough? As a society we are all unhappy because we realize that Donald Trump is not our father, we are not special, our sex lives suck, and we have not been chosen to star in our very own reality show. We have to work for a living.

5) A friend's wife of 10 years got addicted to one of those online fantasy worlds. She spent days online in a fantasy world. She had a fancy name and had her very own kingdom. She ran off with a 16-year-old boy in her fantasy kingdom. In love, she brought him from Kansas to California. My friend met him. He had wild red hair, acne, and lived with his parents. My friend got divorced.

1) This one seems easy enough. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," right? Nope, she's actually discussing Tom Cruise's lack of a German accent in "Valkyrie." But I can see how you made your mistake.

2) I'll give you a hint: "Remi" is the name of her imaginary dog. What dog movie recently came out? "Marley and Me!" I'll have to see it to look for llamas, emus, and rare, exotic birds.

3) The key word here (as is often the case in Victoria's life) is "blood." It could either be "Let the Right One In" or "Twilight" then. Well, which one is darker and involves making bloody sacrifices? The correct answer is "Twilight."

4) Victoria's getting existential now. She's come to terms with the pointless unhappiness of life. This self-reflection can only come after a viewing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

5) The answer to this one is kind of easy ("Role Models" which involves Not-McLovin's heavy involvement in Live Action Role Playing). I just love the little tale she tells about her friend's wife. Especially the fact that after being married for ten years, the wife brought this kid halfway across the country "in love." But the best part is the ambiguous ending. Did the friend choose to divorce his wife for meeting this 16-year-old, or did the wife divorce him because he stood in the way of her love? Find out in Victoria's upcoming review for "Inkheart."

She said the same thing about Larry Clark's "Kids"

Our dear, dear Lisa on "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas":

Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is 8 years old in 1940s Berlin when his daddy (David Thewlis) moves Mama (Vera Farmiga) and the kids closer to work. Small detail: Dad is a Nazi officer who runs a concentration camp. Gaping at a strange nearby ''farm,'' the inquisitive lad befriends a boy on the other side of the barbed wire who is much like Bruno — except, you know, Jewish and slated for extinction. As a Holocaust-for-kids fable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is an appalling, jaw-dropping movie that will cause serious nightmares. D–

This is the entire review. Of course, Entertainment Weekly is still a circulating magazine and they only have so much room for reviews... but when they come this small, there really shouldn't be much room to mess up. Right?

If you scroll down a bit on the page, you'll find this credit information that Lisa apparently wasn't aware of when she wrote about this "Holocaust-for-kids fable":



Two inches of magazine space, ruined!

Amy Nicholson on "Bride Wars"

Let's get right into it:

Leave it to two men—director Gary Winick and screenwriter Greg DePaul—to make the most empathetic and sincere female-helmed romantic comedy I’ve seen in years.

Everyone, please store this away in your "statements that will be proven utterly pointless by the end of the paragraph" folder.

(Chick filmmakers still nattering on about bridezillas and Manolos need to take a stilleto heel to their laptops—yeah, I’m looking at you 27 Dresses.)

So, I'll admit to having never seen "Bride Wars," and to never planning on seeing "Bride Wars" in my life. But I have seen the trailer. And unless this is one of those trailers that screws the whole movie up in an attempt to reach the romantic comedy demographic (when in reality it's a movie about a little girl dying), I'm confident in saying that this movie is exactly what you're saying it isn't, Amy. Isn't this, like, the movie version of the reality show "Bridezillas"? What the hell happens in this movie that effectively cancels out every single scene in the trailer?

For legitimacy's sake, here's part of the professionally-written, unbelievably-encyclopedic synopsis from the movie's Wikipedia page:

"Now, at age 26, they're both about to get married; they're about to realize their dreams; and they're about to live happily ever after. Or maybe not. When a clerical error causes a clash in wedding dates--they're now to be married on the same date!--Liv, Emma and their lifelong friendship are put to the ultimate test. Liv, a successful lawyer who is used to getting what she wants, including the perfect job and the perfect man, won't settle for anything less than the perfect wedding she has dreamed of for years. Emma, a schoolteacher who has always been good at taking care of others, but not so much in looking after herself, discovers her inner Bridezilla and comes out swinging when her own dream wedding is imperiled. Now, the two best friends who'd do anything for each other find themselves in a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners struggle that threatens to erupt into all-out war."

Even Wikipedia, mankind's ultimate purveyor of truth and reliability, includes the word "Bridezilla."

How the hell did the lifespan of the word "Bridezilla" last more than a few seconds in what I assume was the mind of a nine year-old boy?


Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson play childhood best friends passive Emma and bossy Liv who get upended when their weddings are scheduled for the same day. The shocker isn’t just that their chemistry is legitimate, but that they’re real, dimensional humans, not wedding-obsessed fembots.

"Dimensional." They are "dimensional" human beings. Meaning, they consist of one or more dimensions. She doesn't specify exactly how many dimensions, so they may be extremely offensive, one-dimensional caricatures.

She also could've written, "I found that the characters in Bride Wars were not only real people that I've met in real life, but they are also sided."

Or, "The characters contain one or more characteristics that make them characters."

Or, per Max's suggestion, "Time and space are mere playthings for the characters of Bride Wars."

And that's just one word!

The thing is—and I know this because I've both watched a trailer and read a Wikipedia entry—they are wedding-obsessed fembots. The fact that they are wedding-obsessed fembots is the driving force of the plot. They each want to have the perfect wedding, and they spend what I guess is the majority of the film sabotaging their best-friendship because they are wedding-obsessed fembots.

IT'S CALLED "BRIDE WARS" YOU DUMB SHIT

In contrast, it feels almost perversely deliberate that their grooms-to-be, Brian Fletcher and Chris Pratt, are interchangable [sic] bros with buff shoulders, blank faces, and expensive button up shirts.

This does not help your argument in any way.

Co-written by comediennes Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael,

So long, relevance of the first sentence of the review!

This makes it so the first sentence is basically like saying, "Leave it to Hitler's dogs to know when to commit suicide!" Also I just decided that Fire Lisa Schwarzbaum will employ Godwin's Law in every entry.

the script is more in tune with the hows and whys of their escalating outrage then the next pratfall; it’s about the Cold War of misunderstandings.

Yes, but is this because it was written by a man or because it was written by two women?

Come 2010, I might not remember Bride Wars, but it’s a damned decent start to the year.

you are like hitler

The Gospel According to:Halyna Barannik (About a Boy)

One particular sub-section of film criticism I've always been fascinated by is critics who write for Christian groups/magazines/etc and I hope to do an ongoing series on some of the terrible reviewers that can be found therein. While I personally don't need a film and its characters match up to my own moral standards, I can understand on some level why people would. I recently stumbled upon the website Christian Spotlight on The Movies, which gives a pretty mixed bag of reviews. They mostly range from the mildly-amusing-and-kinda crazy-but-not-crazy-enough-to-warrant-a-post-on-FLS to a few reviews that are actually very intelligent, well researched and enlightening, specifically Michael Karounos' very impressive review of A Scanner Darkly(http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2006/ascannerdarkly2006.html).

But, then, as if nature saw Karounos' reviews and said "I must correct this", the world birthed critic Halyna Barannik, whose name I have to believe is an anagram of some kind, and man does she take the cake.

I've read through only a handful of Barannik's reviews, but the one that is miles away my favorite is her review of 2002's About a Boy.

http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2002/aboutaboy.html

“About A Boy” is a movie about Willy (Hugh Grant)..."

At no point in About a Boy is Grant's character ever referred to as "Willy", the character is always called Will. This is a minor point, but it's an incredibly weird and distracting thing to put in a review and I get the impression that her high school American history teacher probably reacted similarly when she would refer to the murderer of Abraham Lincoln as "Johnny Wilkes Booth" .

"...a bloke..."

WHAT????

"...(British for 'guy')..."

Ohhhh, thank god we cleared that up. Talk about confusing!

"He is an odd man, charming and witty and somewhat self-effacing, but without any moral scruples at all. Pushing 40, he looks to women for fun only, with no intention of ever marrying. He targets single mothers because they might be easy prey."

For the most part, there's nothing really wrong with this paragraph, though I like that a guy who isn't married, isn't interested in being married and who sleeps around alot strikes Halyna (Who will be henceforth referred to as "Hally", in part because this is easier to write repeatedly, but mostly because it just sounds much less retarded than her full name) as a novelty.

"Along the way he meets Marcus, the son of a depressive/suicidal mother, played deftly by Toni Colette (The Sixth Sense). The boy finds some kind of comfort in visiting Willy, a father figure to whom he has taken a strong liking. At first resistant to the companionship of a child, Will adjusts to Marcus, as the boy, vulnerable and lonely, grows on him and taps into his deeply buried conscience."

Hey, this is actually pretty decent. You know, maybe I was wron-

"...But the theme of a helpful friendship that stimulates deeper feelings in a guy who has always been unabashedly shallow is somehow muddied by other thematic elements, like the bullies at Marcus' school who are inordinately cruel and cutting (are all the British kids like this?)..."

Hahaha what the hell. I'm not even sure where to start with what's insane about this sentence. Theres the idea that a movie having more than one main plotline "muddies" (that is not a word?) things, of course, but then you have Hally completely blindsided by adolescent kids in a movie being mean, which certainly doesn't happen in AMERICA, thank god. I think I was way off in my earlier notion that Hally went to public school, this is the writing of someone who received their formal education in their garage (lest she be exposed to sinful lies of the "theory" of Evolution and that despicable Andrew Carnegie).

"Although I found myself rooting for Will to become a better person, and at the end he seems to have found a sense of responsibility, the many themes made the movie a little too dense, too crowded, and that insufferable British mumbling of words that make you want to ask your neighbor “what did he say?” didn't help."

Hally's problems with the film, in a nutshell:

*There was too much going on.

*There was too much going on.

*As usual, British people were talking like British people. *eyeroll emoticon*

That last part made me smile because she's not just criticizing a movie, she's criticizing an entire people. Part of me gives her credit for having the kind of balls to just casually drop that in there, but another, saner part of me feels that Hally thinks Brits talk the way they do just to annoy people.

"This movie will appeal to movie afficianados..."

Godless liberals.

"...and to those who find Hugh Grant “cute"..."

Homos.

"...which he is, in a snotty and roguish kind of way."

Hally is doing a bad job of covering up her crush on Hugh Grant.

Alternate unused adjectives: Rude, Scoundrally, Piratey, Han Soloish, Nerf-Herded, Millenium Falconesque.

"In terms of Christian values, Marcus and his love for his mother soften the worldly quirkiness of this movie, but at the end, even Marcus becomes worldly, emulating the very bullies who have hurt him so much."

Having been born, raised and educated in a small garage, Hally fears and mistrusts anything foreign, deeming these things "worldly". This includes caesar salad dressing, IKEA furniture, Greek people and National Geographic (see also: "Snotty").

Also, Hally perceiving Marcus growing out of his shell and gaining some confidence at the end of the movie as some kind of Michael Corleone-like downer ending = lols.

"All in all, an enjoyable film, but not exceptional by any means. This latest of Hugh Grant's films has been overall well-reviewed by critics, but my eager anticipation was in the end disappointed."

All in all, Halyna Barannik is a crazy lady with a horrible name who probably celebrated her completion of this review by taking the family out to Bob Evans and eyeing the Korean couple the table over suspiciously.

Armond White Hates You

Apparently, I should know a lot more about Armond White than I do. According to his Wikipedia entry, he is the most controversial, published, prolific, amazing, debonair film critic of all time. That entry was written by Armond White because Armond White is the only person that doesn't hate Armond White. Coincidentally, Armond White is also the only thing Armond White doesn't hate.

When I first started to read some of his blurbs on RT, I almost wanted to conclude that he was just a contrarian who "wants attention," which is a quote I've lifted from every single Rotten Tomatoes user ever. That'd be wrong though; Armond White doesn't want your attention, he wants to hurt your feelings (unless you're Steven Spielberg). Armond is the real-life version of Anton Ego, a cartoon caricature from a movie about a cooking rat, and a stereotype I didn't know existed in film criticism anymore. I'd say the average mainstream moviegoer often agrees with the view that film critics hate all the films the masses love and vice versa. Armond White, in all his postmodern glory, flips this on its head: he hates everything that movie critics love (as well as audiences) and, very rarely, vice versa.

Armond White says things like this:
As for the “art” of criticism: No amount of fancy wordplay can excuse the destructive effect of praising offal like Before Sunset. (That’s not a personal attack, it’s a defense against the injury of bad criticism and poor taste.) I don’t read criticism for style (or jokes). I want information, erudition, judgment, and good taste. Too many snake-hipped word-slingers don’t know what they’re talking about—especially in this era of bloggers and pundits. That’s why a hack like Michael Mann gets canonized while a sterling pro and politically aware artist such as Walter Hill is marginalized. Let me be more blunt: I am not the least bit interested in reading the opinions of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. There, I’ve said it.

Holy crap, really? This kind of talk still exists in film criticism? I really had no idea. And the fact that he hates blogs makes this feel like we're aping Fire Joe Morgan even more. Also, I seriously had to argue with myself over whether or not I should end every paragraph in this entry with "There, I've said it."

I've said it before: we're not here to judge opinion. Anyone has a right to like or dislike any film for whatever perfectly subjective reason. But I do have a problem with critics who are contrarian for the sake of it, jerkoffs like White who actually think their opinion is worth something when it's so obviously stuck in the critical context of whatever film they're shitting on. When it comes down it, this guy might be the Skip Bayless of film criticism, except, you know, no one takes Skip Bayless as anything more than the punchline of ESPN2. Then again, Skip doesn't try to convince us that he "knows what he's talking about." Armond believes that he is the authority. Wow, I honestly never thought that I'd be writing these things here, and this is only my third post! I sound like everyone I've ever met who hates critics.

Anyway, here's a list of movies that Armond White has given a negative review to, and keep in mind that when I say "negative" I mean "he absolutely hated these movies." They were all released in 2008 and had Rotten Tomatoes scores above 90%:

The Wrestler (98%)
The Class (97%)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (97%)
The Dark Knight (94%)
Iron Man (93%)
Slumdog Millionaire (94%)
Milk (93%)
Encounters at the End of the World (93%)
A Christmas Tale (90%)

And here are some more movies that he didn't personally review for NYPress, but going from what he wrote in the article I'm about to look at, we also know he hated:

Man On Wire (ONE HUNDRED PERCENT AFTER 136 REVIEWS)
Let the Right One In (97%)
WALL-E (96%)
Frost/Nixon (91%)

On the other hand, he liked "Happy Go Lucky"! "And Rachel Getting Married"! I think that covers every single 90%+ movie of the year. 2007 looks very similar, but we won't go into that.

So what are some of the reasons Armond White might hate a movie? These:

1. If he left the theater feeling like this: ='(. He doesn't like movies that are depressing, or glib, or cynical. It seems that he doesn't like movies that don't carry a positive message throughout. It's probably the only thing that saves him from being a complete caricature of a film critic—but it's also incredibly weird and shows that, although he's apparently a master of film discourse, his mind is closed to a vast expanse of movies.

2. Politics! I'm not entirely certain exactly what politics we're talking about here… he seems to hate them all. But no matter what, he can't seem to get through a film without placing it in a political context and judging it from that vantage point.

3. Class! If a movie tries to be good while simultaneously being set in a low-class environment with poor characters, the only reason critics and audiences would love it is because they're all upper/upper-middle class white people who are overloaded with guilt. Thus, there is no conceivable way for the film to be good. Movies are not allowed to be made about people who are poor.

Coincidentally, there's already a blog out there, called Armond Dangerous that already aims to criticize his reviews in similar fashion. Unfortunately, it hasn't been updated since March 2007, but... it's (admittedly) fortunate for us that we're able to pick up the mantle. It was a fantastic blog, though, and I wish I didn't just discover it a few hours ago.

I've gone almost two pages in MSWord without actually getting to any review, so I'll probably keep it short (this turned out to be a lie - ed.). You should know this: when you're in the business of being the Incredibly Annoying Contrarian Stereotype, it's important that all contrarian reviews include potshots at other, well-received films*. So, in what I expect is in typical White fashion, the guy doesn't write a "Best Of 2008" list, he writes a "Better-Than List," in which he only praises his favorite movies by comparing them to all the movies he hated that everyone else loved. That's so Armond!

Most of these high-profile films insult one’s intelligence, while the year’s best movies vanish from the marketplace for lack of critical support.

Yes, lack of critical support is what's really killed these movies. Unlike "Man On Wire," the best-reviewed film of the year and possibly ever, which easily broke the revenue record of "Titanic" in a month flat.

This tragedy is exemplified by the scary acclaim for the year’s worst: The atrocious Slumdog Millionaire and Pixar’s hideous Wall-E, the buzz-kill movie of all time. Trust no critic who endorses them.

Seriously? Buzz-kill? WALL-E? How can this guy actually consider himself a snob? Does he think this is how book critics think about novels? Like, fuck Grapes of Wrath cause it's about the depression (and poor people, and there are politics somewhere)? Regardless of the context—WALL-E is the most smile-inducing film I've ever seen—these are the kinds of statements that would be made by a critic whose main goal is to warn the mainstream public about movies that might make their kids sad. That isn't the M.O. (wall-e joke lol) of critics who actually take the art seriously. What the hell, Army? (going to call you Army from now on)

Also, Armond White seriously believes that Armond White is the only critic you should trust.

Happy Go Lucky BETTER THAN 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days Mike Leigh devises a thoroughly humane heroine (Sally Hawkins) whose anti-capitalist faith (deeper than bourgeois “feminism”) upbraids the pity-party of two abortionhorny Romanian co-eds.

Likes: communism (liberal?)
Dislikes: "feminism" (conservative? "conservative"?)
Dislikes: Abortions? (conservative?)
Likes: creating words like "abortionhorny" (I hate you)

True or False: "abortionhorny" is the pinnacle of "fancy wordplay."
True or False: "abortionhorny" is the nadir of "fancy wordplay."

I haven't seen either of these movies, but uh oh, here he goes again, hating on a movie for being about something sad. ='( I love how he juxtaposes a movie that is apparently the most depressing chunk of celluloid you'll ever see with a movie about a girl who's just too darn happy. You really like making this easy, Ary.

The Witnesses, Jump the Broom BETTER THAN Milk Andre Téchiné’s AIDS history joined Ian-Patrik Polk’s gay-marriage rom-com to show how sexual politics enhance our lives. These films rendered silly the hindsight celebration of an ambitious pol—and the Prop. 8 protests that misread Gus Van Sant’s opportunism.

This is great because of "Gus Van Sant's opportunism." Are there actually people out there who think the movie was an attempt (from the very beginning), to exploit the result of Prop. 8? Does Armond actually believe that Gus Van Sant set out to make a movie for this purpose? Like Gus said to himself, "I've GOT to make this movie, because it'll invariably be released two days after people vote on an election measure I don't know about yet because this movie was written long before all that happened!" Does he actually think that a director decides when his or her movie is released? I thought you knew what you were talking about! There, I've said it!

Rachel Getting Married BETTER THAN Frozen River Jonathan Demme rehearses multi-culti heaven rather than condescend to hard-luck working-class women.

See rule #3.

Transporter 3 BETTER THAN The Dark Knight Olivier Megaton, Jason Statham and Luc Besson reinvent the action movie as kinetic art, but impressionable teenagers mistook Chris Nolan’s nihilistic graphic novel for kool fun.

Oh yeah, he really loved "Transporter 3." Cool, I guess. Whatever.

But the important thing is that Armond White thinks that a film that has grossed about a billion dollars worldwide has done so because of impressionable teenagers… who wrongfully had fun watching it. I'm imagining him walking into a packed movie theater, glaring at the audience and screaming "Stop having fun! This movie has a message of nihilism! STOP HAVING KOOL FUN"

CJ7 BETTER THAN Wall-E Stephen Chow endowed a poor kid’s action figure with numinous potential (a tribute to the still-extraordinary E.T.), while Pixar twisted its standard formula into ugly, end-ofhistory cynicism.

Blah blah blah cynicism. I guess he was also angry at the "liberal" "message" (dear piss christ it was a movie about robots falling in love) so put another tally next to Hates Liberals.

Shotgun Stories BETTER THAN The Wrestler Jeff Nichols’ moving Red State family feud tragedy was ignored by Blue State critics who prefer white-trash WWF stereotypes to encourage their sense of class superiority.

ahahaha people like the wrestler because of "class superiority"

oh lord

that's exactly it

I guess Armo was expressing sympathy for the lower class by writing "WWF" instead of "WWE"? How masochistic is he? He knows he's high class, so he absolutely refuses to enjoy any movie that doesn't seem perfectly tailored to him.

This makes me sad inside.

My Blueberry Nights BETTER THAN The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Wong Kar Wai’s visionary romanticism explores existential loneliness, but David Fincher merely remade Titanic as Forrest Gump—an endless, two-hankie Kubrick movie for fanboys.

I also disliked Benjamin Button, but what the hell is this reasoning? I'll give him Forrest Gump, but… Titanic? Huh? No jokes here, there is very, very little the two movies shared in common.

And fanboys of what, exactly? I don't think Armond understands the meaning. Is the movie for all the fanboys of Fitzgerald's original story? It's been a while since I've gone to an F. Scott Fitzgerald convention (Fitzucon), so I don't really know if the subculture is still thriving. I swear, though, I was the best Amory Blaine there, three years in a row.

RocknRolla BETTER THAN Slumdog Millionaire Guy Ritchie comes into his manhood with this rich, Dickensian gangster comedy, while Danny Boyle gives colonialist Britain the last laugh in his epic Indian game-show travesty—a defilement of what Dickens revealed about character and society, humor and pathos.

The class whining isn't limited to Americans! British people are not allowed to make movies set in India. Danny Boyle himself killed over two hundred Indians in his own personal attempt to colonize India, because he is British and that is what British people do.

Except Charles Dickens, of course.

Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot BETTER THAN Man on Wire Adam Yauch brings fresh imagination to this Rucker Park bball documentary, extolling youth, class and American splendor; the other commemorates an egotistical stunt.

A dude TIGHTROPED ACROSS THE TWIN TOWERS. I don't give a shit how egotistical it was, I wanna watch a movie about it.

Twilight BETTER THAN Let the Right One In Catherine Hardwicke finds her métier in an outsiders’ romance disguised as a vampire movie; she turns Stephenie Meyer’s book series into a Brontë-esque vision, especially compared to the dismal Scandinavian J-horror rip-off.

J-horror rip-off. There are about ten million real, actual J-horror rip-offs, horrible low-grade adaptations of Asian horror films. And you pick a movie that is barely even a horror film.

I wish Victoria Alexander would smack some sense into you, Armony.

Cadillac Records BETTER THAN Synecdoche, New York Darnell Martin treats Black American history as R&B and her sizzling cast (Jeffrey Wright, Beyoncé, Eamonn Walker, Columbus Short, Mos Def, Cedric the Entertainer) salutes pop music legends. Charlie Kaufman’s Actors Studio cast merely imitated Fellini’s 8 1/2 like amateurs.

This is just great because all the other movies have at least something to do with each other, and these two were the outcasts the teacher had to pair up herself before activity time.

This is the beginning of a long, strenuous relationship, Armond.


* This is the blurb from Armond's review of "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry":

It’s a modern classic (despite a cheap-shot plug for Giuliani). By comparison, Hollywood’s most celebrated gay comedies -- In and Out, Chuck and Buck, Blades of Glory, even the laughable Brokeback Mountain -- were all failures of nerve.

This post couldn't help but be as long as it was, I think.

Taking Victoria Alexander Seriously: Let the Right One In

"Let the Right One In" was a fantastic movie, one of the best of the year. Even though Victoria Alexander agrees with me, her review still infuriates me and makes me almost dislike the film by association. This is why we're going to take Victoria seriously. Most of the people who would urge us to just ignore her would probably cite the fact that she tends to love bad movies and hate good ones, that she's just a troll looking for attention. I don't care. We're not really concerned with how much a critic likes or dislikes a film; we're concerned with how crappy they are at communicating their opinions via the written word. And Victoria is one of the worst communicators of the past millennium.

Things you should know about Vickie A:
1. She looks and acts like a middle-aged Katy Perry trying to recapture the sauciness! of what made her stupid face famous twenty years earlier, even though she doesn't realize everyone got tired of it five months before "I Kissed a Girl" got annoying. She also has Jaws teeth, apparently. That is the only picture of her that exists on the internet.
2. She is very, very bad at writing professional movie reviews, and probably just as bad at writing non-professional ones.
3. She likes to go on train-of-thought tangent-rants that make Thom Fowler's Coen Brothers paragraph look like it belonged perfectly well in an article about Monster's Inc.
4. She loves the idea of homosexuality. She's the kind of girl who thinks it's wrong if she doesn't go shopping with Stereotypically Gay Male Friend Who Tells It Like It Is And Calls Her "Girlfriend" And Is Always Wearing A Pink Polo With The Collar Popped Because Gay Guys Are Allowed To Do That. As such, homosexuality is mentioned in the reviews of every single movie that includes two or more male characters.
5. She is the first person who needs to be kicked out of the RT database.

Which brings us to our feature presentation! (sorry for the esoteric movie jargon! ^_^)

Let the Right One In
By
Victoria Alexander
FilmsInReview.com

A great intro, makes us really believe that she's writing in the 1940s via typewriter, smoking a cigar and drinking scotch.

The best vampire movie of the year.

Oh yeah, she always starts her reviews with the blurb she wants RT to use. Because she's on Rotten Tomatoes, and by jove, she likes to rub it in.

Also, what. If this is a joke, good job, Vickie. You've successfully handed it to Twilight fans. Not really, but any respectable critic could've used such a quip.

I've been given no reason to believe you're joking, though, V.

Remember in Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire when iconic vampire Lestat de Lioncourt made six-year old Claudia a vampire? She then stayed six years old forever and was very angry about it.

"This would make a great opener for a review of the film Let the Right One In!"
-a wrong person

The film does indeed feature a young female vampire… and it shares absolutely nothing more in common with anything in this passage. Victoria acknowledges this by continuing her review and never mentioning anything about it again.

In the brilliant, macabre, mood rich Swedish movie, "Let the Right One In", it is the 1980s and shy 12-year old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is living with his mother in a Stockholm suburb and bullied by his schoolmates.

I can play this game!

In this clueless, grating, owwie rich review of "Let the Right One In," America is in a recession and 18-year-old-at-heart Victoria Alexander (Victoria Alexander) is an atrocious human being in Las Vegas and sometimes decides to just fall asleep on the couch and pretend not to be there rather than get up and potentially make noise when someone knocks on the door even if the person is just the mailman who wants her to sign off on a package that was sent by her aunt, Christine, for her forty-third birthday.

Writing tip for Victoria: just because the synopsis isn't the most "important" part of the review, it doesn't mean you should just fart it out as quickly as possible. Fortunately, there's more!

One evening in the courtyard he meets pale, underdressed Eli (Lina Leandersson). She has just moved in next door to Oskar with an older man who takes care of her, Hakan (Per Ragnar). Oskar and Eli meet every night and soon bond. Oskar wants Eli to be his girlfriend but she tells him she is not like other girls. In a wonderful moment of true acceptance, Oskar doesn't mind if she's a boy. We soon find out that Eli is a vampire and Hakan murders people for their blood for her.

OH FUCK SPOILER i guess.

Whoops, spoilers don't matter unless they're plot twists. This is the Vickie A Way. You will often find her describing only the things we'd like to discover for ourselves, as we, you know, watch the movie. Which makes me think that she's actually one of those critics that wants to be read after the film is watched… so we can hear her wonderful thoughts and reflections.

"In a wonderful moment of true acceptance, Oskar doesn't mind if she's a boy."

It was really amazing, by the way, how the director could get his actors to show the audience the emotion of "not minding." He also got us to see "slight hunger" and "foot almost falling asleep" without any dialogue, movement, or sound effects. (my point here is that this sentence is a complete mess because she's too lazy to just write "Oskar admits that he doesn't mind if she's a boy." It also completely undermines 100% of the context of the scene and all of the character development attached to it. It also brings us back to Victoria Characteristic #4: GAYS!)

"We soon find out that Eli is a vampire and Hakan murders people for their blood for her."

YOU ARE SO BAD AT THIS

Anyway, here's the real reason I picked this article, and it's a sure good reason:

When Hakan is arrested at a vicious crime scene, Eli must kill. Oskar becomes her confidante. He's not afraid of her. Encouraged by Eli to confront his tormentors, the result spirals to a fascinating, and quite satisfying, conclusion.

And the hope for a sequel.

"HUH"

"WHAT"

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
-every single person who has seen "Let the Right One In," besides Victoria Alexander

This is one of those movies in which there's no conceivable way to create a sequel. There is no conceivable reason to want a sequel. It's like saying, "Gee, why haven't they come out with a Deliverance 2 yet? And I've always wanted a Cool Hand Luke 2! Or, oh! Breakfast at Tiffany's! They can get Kate Winslet!"

Not only that, but "Let the Right One In" has a perfect ending, and that quality comes from the fact that it ends where it does. It's emotionally ambiguous, the kind of ending that allows the audience to want to contemplate and discuss what happens afterward without ever actually knowing. From that point on, the viewer makes their own decision about what happens… and there aren't many options, not enough to warrant a damn sequel you dumb jerk.

There are very few films that allow this kind of speculation. The fact that Katy Perry wants to tear one away from me… I just can't forgive that.

Eli is not a magical, ethereal vampire beauty but an unkempt girl suffering from blood starvation, an animal's instinct to survive, and a frightening feral look. She's very strange. She could be Nosferatu's niece.

Nosferatu's niece! Get it!? Nosferatu was also a character of vampire lore! Eli is a young, female vampire! NIECE! NIECE!

Vampirism isn't genetic, BITCH.

Director Tomas Alfredson has made a stunning, darkly complex film using the Swedish dark nights as an important element in the vampire myth.

Ah, yes, the famed "Swedish dark nights"—a phenomenon that only occurs in Sweden, in which nights are dark.

I urge you to see or rent this film and hope we can encourage a sequel.

I am going to destroy you and everyone you've ever loved.

As far as a Hollywood remake goes, is Dakota Fanning ready to look dirty, smelly, hungry and an unrepentant killer?

Dakota Fanning joke! Topical humor!!!!!

Also, this is not how sentences work. Is Victoria Alexander ready to write annoyingly, nauseatingly, smellily (probably), and a bad cook?

(Not that she doesn't have it in her. She's a product of Hollywood.)

What the hell is this? Is it sarcasm? Is Vickie admonishing Hollywood? Somehow? Is she making fun of the original for being Swedish? Huh?

Maybe her next paragraph will explain!

My weekly column, "The Devil's Hammer," is posted every Monday. The Devil's Hammer on FTB. If you would like to be included on my private distribution list for a weekly preview, just email me at masauu@aol.com.

Victoria Alexander lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and answers every email. You can contact Victoria directly at masauu@aol.com.

Nope, apparently that's it. Huh? =(

We'll wait until we've gotten past Katy Perry jokes before we email her, though.

Meet Thom Fowler

I feel kinda bad for this. This is my first post in this blog, besides the manifesto at the bottom of this page… and I'm already breaking a rule. Sort of.

I just discovered this critic today. Thom Fowler. He might actually be the worst critic we've found yet, and we’ve been following this game for days. The problem is, he's been out of commission for a couple years; his last review on the hot bellwether site Hollywood Bitchslap was posted in April 2006, and it isn't really that bad. But he seemed to virtually stop reviewing for "The 'chslap" (as Variety calls them) in 2003, only posting one review a year after that until 2k6, and hopefully improving with each try. He is Rotten Tomatoes-certified, but his last review there is from '04. But still… his 180+ reviews for HollyBitch remain in RT's archives, and they shouldn't be.

Let's start with his review of Monsters, Inc. As you read, please keep in mind that, according to his info, Thom Fowler was thirty-two years old when he wrote this.

Monsters, Inc.
By Thom

Oh wow. This movie is totally funny and even kind of sad at times.

These are his first two lines: notice how he begins with "Oh wow," as if his mother was playing peek-a-boo and surprised him with a DVD of Monsters, Inc. Now remember everything you can about it, Thom! (I REMEBER SILLY + CRYING)

I love the stuff about the doors. No, not the late sixties, early seventies psychedelic rock band led by the legendary Jim Morrison.

Aww, you just walked right into that one, Thom!

I tell you one thing, I don't think Jim Morrison is the role model those Disney folks are trying to make him out to be.

I don't understand this? Am I missing context? I don't know? I'm having so much fun!

My favorite monster is the big hairy blue guy. I asked the Disney/Pixar rep for one of the big cardboard blue guys they had in theatres but he said they didn't get any.

I'm seriously gonna have to take this sentence-by-sentence, aren’t I? Firstly, "the Disney/Pixar rep"? Is this implying that Thom saw the film at a critics' screening? Thom circa 2002, member of the Celebrity Bitchslap Blog? I can't see it. I'm guessing he was talking to an usher. Seriously.

I normally don't collect movie memorabilia because, guess what?, I just don't care that much about movies.

Oh!! Then I don't feel bad about this anymore!!

But that blue guy, I don't know, there is just something about him. His voice is done by John Goodman who played not only the husband of popular sitcom queen Roseanne Barr on the hit show Roseanne, but he also played a really nasty pig of a man in a Coen Brothers film called O Brother Where Art Thou . That movie was a far cry from their cult favorite Raising Arizona. That seems to be their thing, making cult favorites, because all their films are so unique. For more about the new Coen Brothers film, The Man Who Wasn't There, use the search function! Its [sic] fun!

what just happened

At the end of this unsuccessful attempt at a recreation of a passage of Catcher in the Rye, Thom seems to grow aware of the sheer silliness of his paragraph. He does not grow aware of the backspace key.

Anyway, the blue guy is the loveable, good hearted oaf who just happens to get himself into a fix because of his equally good hearted but somewhat smarmy friend, the one eyed green guy.

Is he actually trying to give a review from the perspective of a six year-old who just left the theater? Thom, is that you?

The Monsters have normal people names because they live in this reverse human world that looks a lot like Sesame Street on 'shrooms.

Aw, nevermind.

I really hope Thom Fowler isn't dead. That would actually make me feel bad about this.

The blue guy is named James P. Sullivan. How dignified is that? And the one eyed green fellow, who is voiced by Billy Crystal, from the popular seventies sitcom, Soap, where, he incidentally, played the very first openly gay character on television. That was a milestone in popular culture!

So now he's a rambling old man. Thom Fowler, master of disguise!

I can see what he's doing now. He's trying to mimic those horrible Pitchfork album reviews that would read from the perspective of fictional characters created by the critics. You needed to give them silly names, Thom! That's why they never caught on!

The worst part is how he teases us with one name, and then tricks us into thinking we'll get the equally important name of the second lead character. Instead, we get chapter 1 of the official "How to Misunderstand Commas and Clauses" guidebook.

Sorry: Instead, we get, chapter 1 of, the official "How to, Misunderstand Commas, and Clauses" guide,book.

See, in this parallel world, the electrical company is actually the scream company! The monsters scaring children at night work for this big power company and they catch the screams and that is their electricity!

Thom! You're reviewing a children's movie! You gave it four stars! You don't have to summarize it with a dickish sarcasm! Unless you're actually this excited about the movie! In that case I guess you're okay!

It becomes a moral dilemma when a little girl accidently [sic] walks through the closet door and into the monsters [sic] world. Normally, a decontamination unit would come in and KILL THE CHILD! This is way too much like Auschwitz for a jew [sic] like Crystal to have any part of this project.

What the fuck are you talking about?

What?

What?

Some other films Billy Crystal notoriously passed on:
-Silence of the Lambs. Buffalo Bill kind of reminded him of Pharoah.
-Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Aliens at the end reminded him of the bunks of Dachau.
-Die Hard. Felt Alan Rickman was "too Hitlery"
-Chariots of Fire. Please, for the love of God, don’t make Billy Crystal think of the fire…

It gets better though, like in A Christmas Carol.

This sentence directly follows the Auschwitz statement. This, in turn, is followed by:

The blue guy and the one eyed guy, named Mike Wazowski, figure out pretty quik [sic] that the touch of a child won't kill them like they are led to believe.

First off, everyone thank Thom for finally naming the other main character only two paragraphs after he originally promised.

Secondly, if you can figure out the Christmas Carol sentence, you'll be the very first person to win a prize from Fire Lisa Schwarzbaum! You'll have to think: is A Christmas Carol, like… the best-known example of a story starting out troublesomely and getting better in the end? Is it the only other story Thom knows that follows that structure? Or is he talking about his appreciation for A Christmas Carol, saying that he really hates it until the end? It's up to you!

To make it worse, there's a bad monster, voiced by Steve Buscemi, who everyone cheered when his name on the credits rolled, named Randall, who wants to be the number one scarer but its [sic] worse. much [sic] much worse.

Chapter 2 of "How, To Misunderstand, Commas Clauses Guidebook and Parentheses Too!"

There's a conspiracy afoot to extract the screams of children in the most horrible way possible, making scarers like Mike and James irrelevant and probably unemployed. And then the greedy owner of the power company can sit on a pile of gold while the rest of the populace starves and dies. See, there is only one company in the Monster world. And that's the scream factory. It's a weird economy. There is, however, a restaurant, so I guess you can work there if you don't want to work with the scarers.

It's been a while since I've seen the movie, but I'm pretty sure this is all wrong.

And, oh, Thom (critic for "VH1's Celebreality Donkey Punch Blog") circa 2002, I've got a question. When are you going to review the film?

Oh. Here it is.

It seems really bad at first, but it gets good. The bad guy gets it right in the ass in the end by the furry blue guy who really digs it! The one eyed green guy is hetero though and he gets busy with another one-eyer who has snakes for hair. And all her snakes have serious attitude. The little girl finally makes it back home and the evil, greedy, power hungry industrialist gets SO BUSTED. In the end, its [sic] all good.

I didn't make any of that up.

Thom Fowler lived on this planet for thirty-two years before coming up with this paragraph.

Just think about that for a bit, okay? I need some rest.

The War on Schwarzbaum: Burn After Reading

Given that the name of this blog is Fire Lisa Schwarzbaum, I thought I might get the ball rolling on just why we here at FLS find this woman so hilariously aggravating. I'm about 90% percent sure it was this very review that planted the cyber-seed for the digital cornucopia that is Fire Lisa Schwartzbaum (ah, horrible, hackneyed metaphors! Get used to seeing alot of those in the reviews we'll be looking at here). Let's take a look at Lisa's review, shall we?

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20224739,00.html

"Anyone who has seen the trailer for Burn After Reading on TV — and given the aggressiveness of the promotional campaign for this lazy new frolic, I assume most everyone has —.."

Let me just say that I love the idea of a "lazy frolic". What exactly would that be? Was Schwarzbaum deliberately trying to create an oxymoron here? I think the more likely answer is that she just writes her reviews MAD LIBS-style and her alternate creations of "sleepy new claptrap" and "bashful new pennyfarthing" weren't up to par.

I do have to hand it to her though, Schwarzbaum is absolutely dead on about the adverstising for this movie. I'm glad I'm not the only one who got fed up with hearing the constant radio and television ads, the huge, skyscraper-spanning billboards, the aisles of talking John Malkovich dolls, the seemingly neverending news coverage of the die hard Burn After Reading fans dressed up in homemade outfits camping out for the midnight release of the film, the pre-film speculation as to the fates of the film's beloved characters, and, of course, the fruit snacks.

"The dour terrain of novelist Cormac McCarthy sharpened the best of the brothers' instincts for tracking the path of human anarchy, and the reward from their public and peers was a bookcase of awards, Oscars included."

I think we can assume the Oscars were included, Lisa. No one talked about how No Country For Old Men swept the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Awards.

"But the reward to themselves turns out to be a retreat to the familiar funny farm."

...Alliteration!

"Once more in Burn After Reading they goof around, in their arch, bemused way, with conventions of genre— a little screwball here, some spy spoof there. Once more they work from an original Coen story in which needy people are rewarded with chuckles for their neediness."

Way to pick on needy people, Coen brothers. >:(

"But as a result of all that tilling, the movie is overplowed"

Ahahahahaha. A FARMING metaphor. A completely random, unnecessary FARMING metaphor. Welcome to flavor country, people.

"Pitt plays Chad Feldheimer (the characters wear funny-sounding names as they might fake mustaches)"

This just in: Characters in fiction often have unusual, preposterous names. More at 11.

"Good news: Clooney plays the third in what he has called his Coen-created ''trilogy of idiots'' with less of a capital I than he did in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty."

...What?

"For idle amusement, Osborne Cox sports a bow tie and a loyalty to his fellow Princeton alumni, signifying a brand of outmoded, old-boy values I guess the filmmakers are laughing at just because such things are outmoded. Even so, the ever more rococo performance artiste Malkovich manages to bust looser and goosier than even the Coens know what to do with, and his virtuoso thespian arias of alcohol-
enhanced nuttiness (precisely tailored to fit an aging ex–CIA man's lifestyle) are the movie's one honestly fresh turn of the screwy."

This is a pretty characteristic Schwarzbaum sentence: a very simple observation ("John Malkovich plays a drunk ex-CIA agent really well!") that has been made almost completely indecipherable by throwing out of place nonsense words at it ("Rococo"? seriously, Lisa? Are you just flipping the pages of a thesaurus and pointing at words randomly?)

"...McDormand portrays fellow gym employee Linda Litzke, a sad, single lady who treats her femininity as something akin to an embarrassing, itchy rash. (She's got some of the choppy, desexualized speech patterns of Fargo's Marge Gunderson, and a whole lot more self-loathing.)"

Oh, here we go.

"Linda hates everything about her face and body — her goal is to finance a head-to-toe surgical overhaul, possibly with extortion money wrung from Chad for his computer disc, if that's what it takes. Still, she's also brave enough to look for love online; she dares to have real feelings. And while she hurts, we're invited to laugh. Linda is Burn After Reading's most troublesome character — she's a serious woman disguised as a joke, thrown into a story that has no use for seriousness (or, jeez, for women). Here's something to consider after watching Pitt revel in the role of a dim bulb perfectly contented with his life while McDormand is stuck once again playing a bright-enough woman discontented with the universe:.."

This is the part where Lisa projects her own neuroses on to the film and misses the point. For some reason, she decides that this movie is misogynist or something, based solely on the fact that there is a female character and she is unhappy. Nevermind that pretty much no one in the film was depicted with a shred of dignity besides Tilda Swinton's character. Schwarzbaum also apparently missed the part of the movie where the "dim bulb perfectly contented with his life" was (SPOILERS!) shot in the fucking head. I don't get where she's coming from here, did she think people were meant to sit in theatres, cheeks filled with popcorn, guffawing loudly at how Frances McDormand's character wanted liposuction? That poor, fictional woman.

You may have noticed I cut off right before the end of the review. I did this to highlight the Crowning Moment of self -indulgent insanity that is Lisa Schwarzbaum's review of Burn After Reading.

"...Is this not very old country for Coen men?"

...

...

...

..It's like she just decided "eh, I could make a point here I guess, but that'd interfere with my half assed word play. Fuck it, '...IS THIS NOT VERY OLD COUNTRY FOR COEN MEN?'? Oh Lisa, you've done it again. Ka-ching!"

In conclusion, is this review not the BAUM? ;) ;) ;) ;)