Thank God For Armond White

He's not right all the time. Maybe not even very often at all. But he's still the most important critical voice we have because he dares to speak against the problems in film culture: the corporate values, the cultish progressivism, the sadism, the arrogance. No one misses his ire. And he is at least capable of speaking about aesthetics and film history instead of only ideology and wokeness.

Here, he talks about Wrinkle In Time. Now, I'm hesitant to criticize a film I haven't seen, but gimme a break - I'm not seeing this movie. Especially after White eviscerates it. I remember the first time hearing about DuVernay and being like - oh cool, a new, original voice. Then I found myself tortured by actually watching Selma. Good lord, what a piece of shit. And then I saw DuVernay speak and discovered she's a PR person and her whole "career" now makes sense. She made 1 not very good movie. Literally, 1 movie and her name was suddenly blasted around film circles like some type of auteur. What gigantic scam. And even more evidence of a scam: her next film is a $100 million dollar Disney picture based on a famous children's book with Oprah in it. Talk about a desperate, almost fanatic ploy to be taken seriously and loved.

Now...you ask...why pick on DuVernay? Isn't her career the exact same as Patty Jenkins? I'd argue there are a couple of differences. One, Monster was a legitimately personal film. I didn't love it, but it was at the very least interesting and original and she managed to coax out that performances from Charlize. Selma? An entirely forgettable, inelegantly directed film about one of the greatest Americans in history. That's almost hard to pull off.

Second, Jenkins was in the Hollywood trenches for years after - directing loads of pretty good television and out there trying to get stuff made. She wasn't held up as some type mystical new important American the way DuVernay is. I guess part of it is just hitching herself to the Oprah thing, but God, why does anyone take her seriously as a filmmaker is beyond me.

To be fair, I haven't seen Wonder Woman either.