comment #1

nemo says ...

It's not Warshaw, it's Warsaw. As in Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw, Indiana is the county seat of Kosciusko County, named after the 17th century Polish general who helped us win the American Revolution.

Armond White is probably confusing Warsaw with Robert Warshow, the 1940s and 50s film and popular culture essayist.

comment #2

cjKennedy says ...

Often the problem with Armond is that he fires away with double-barreled vitriol at targets that don't warrant it.

American Teen is a perfectly harmless entertainment. It fails as a documentary because it doesn't enlighten or illuminate, but it's entertaining.

comment #3

MilkMan says ...

I can understand why Armond White didn't like American Teen. It's nowhere near as savvy on a pop cultural plane as Spielberg's
underrated masterpiece Hook, nor as open to eccentricity as De Palma's Raising Cain, quite possibly the best picture ever made about adolescence. I can only concur with White when he thinks that any film about teenagers that doesn't have six or seven cuts from Morrisey's 1988 magnum opus Viva La Hate (the most important pop statement since The Little River Band's Greatest Hits), an album that shares with Spielberg's 1941 a complex understanding of the place dance plays in a society hell-bent on drowning in left-wing liberal bathos. In a just world, American Teen would re-invigorate the current war effort, showing those who would scoff at patriotism as nothing more than goody-goody poseurs, pseudo-intellects who can no more appreciate the pop art wizardry of Joe Kahn's Torque than the decades old blather of static waves of hippy nonsense. On this Me and Armond White can definitely agree.

comment #4

JCEFalconi says ...

The USA's Revolutionary War was during the 18th century, it's a common mistake to think the 17th century corresponds to the 1700's.

comment #5

Pinko Punko says ...

MM is always on fire, but the tiny detail of the mistitled Morrissey album seems like he's off his game. Armond White is an obnoxious jackhole. Civility!

comment #6

lipranzer says ...

"Armond White is an obnoxious jackhole"

I think that's an insult to obnoxious jackholes.

comment #7

racsluos says ...

Milkman 4 Prez.

comment #8

EOTW says ...

I *heart* MM.

comment #9

TheMilkManCometh says ...

Ambitious. Sprawling. Filled with disillusionment. Yet, still one of your lesser works.

I'm out, like Hickey's wife.

comment #10

lazespud says ...

As long as you keep running the vertical American Teen ads on HE that feature "Girl in tight blue shirt" I will be happy...

comment #11

BurmaShave says ...

Completely random, but holy shit, Victor Nunez has a new movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212443/

comment #12

K. Bowen says ...

Nunez? Wow. How unfortunately forgotten are Ruby in Paradise and Ulee's Gold?

comment #13

Yves says ...

I'm guessing that Mr. White wasn't well-liked in high school. But he brings up a good point-- that the documentarian didn't serve her subject well by chosing to focus on a narrow group of kids that she didn't bother to change when the better story was clearly elsewhere. However I don't understand why White complains that she didn't interfere with her subjects when the going got tough. Was this a flashback to a time when he was being bullied as a child and didn't have anyone to come to his aid?

comment #14

Craptastic says ...

No love, hate, comments on The X-Files here? Good or bad, it kills me how this movie in being ignored.

comment #15

swordandpen says ...

As MilkMan demonstrated, I think anyone can write an Armond White review, probably before he does. He should already declare Spielgberg's Lincoln movie a masterpiece now before a single has been shot, since the quality of the actual movie won't matter much.

comment #16

Howlingman says ...

Craptastic you just answered your own question. NOBODY cares about another X-Files movie. Big missed opportunity, if what I've heard about it is true.

comment #17

Josh Massey says ...

X-Files: $4 million yesterday, in what should be an extremely frontloaded movie. Talk about the polar opposite of Sex and the City.

comment #18

p.Vice says ...

As much as I love reading Armond's reviews, I enjoy the moronic responses even more. MilkMan, the shallowness of your thinking just proves his reference to the "cultural abyss" correct. You might want to stop embarassing yourself.

comment #19

nemo says ...

"The USA's Revolutionary War was during the 18th century, it's a common mistake to think the 17th century corresponds to the 1700's."

Oops, that was a typo. 17th C = 1600s, 18th C = 1700s, etc.

comment #20

johnc says ...

"...it's a common mistake to think the 17th century corresponds to the 1700's."

Maybe if you're six years old.

comment #21

Howlingman says ...

You give too much credit to six year olds, johnc. I'd raise that bar to sixteen, twenty-six and I'm sure more than a few thirty-six year olds .

comment #22

George Prager says ...

Soemthing tells me that I'm going to agree with White this time. There's no way that this movie is good. The last thing I want to see right now is a documentary called "American Teen." It's about as timely as a Rat Pack movie in 1971.

comment #23

George Prager says ...

From WIkipedia:
"She lives in New York and co-owns a Manhattan bar The Half-King, with Scott Anderson and Sebastian Junger.[5] "

Well, now, that explains everything, doesn't it?

comment #24

Kim Voynar says ...

WARNING: SPOILERS -- don't read if you've not seen the film, or don't care about seeing it.

CJKEnnedy wrote:

"American Teen is a perfectly harmless entertainment. It fails as a documentary because it doesn't enlighten or illuminate, but it's entertaining."

I don't agree with you that American Teen "fails" because it doesn't enlighten or illuminate. Burstein, from what I can tell after seeing this film three times now, sought to capture this moment in time with this group of kids

It's up to the viewer to take what they will out of that, and I expect that the response of the viewer is very likely to directly correlate with their own experiences in high school and the emotional reactions the film conjures up as a result.

As for White, he obviously didn't pay very much attention to the film, which discounts his overall impressions of it for me. He goes on about how Megan lost an election and takes out her anger by vandalizing a rival's house.

This isn't what happened at all; she vandalizes the house of the person who dared to cross her on the prom theme, and because she chose to include the word "fag" and a graphic penis in her vandalism, she crossed the line from mere "TP'ing" to harassment. She doesn't lose an election, she's booted from the throne of student council president by her own actions. It's the first time, one gets the impression, that this girl has ever had to face repurcussions for her actions, and one wonders if she subconsciously wants to get in trouble, to eliminate the familial pressure to get into Notre Dame.

Were there more interesting stories Burstein could have followed? Perhaps, but she made the decisions she made for the reasons she made them, and for me, they worked. The film does enlighten in that it reflects how broader societal values impact even students living in middle America.

What underlies the whole film is this theme of parental pressures and values and these kids having to find their way through or around them. The pressure parents put on their kids to adhere to the parental view of what they should do and how they should do it is enormous, and we're creating a generation of stressed-out, neurotic kids. It's sad.

Megan's "bitch-princess" entitlement values and the way she treats other people come from somewhere; there's clearly a class-divide, even in little Warsaw, that permeates these kids' lives.

Colin's gotten over the money=popularity hump on the strength of desirable athletic skills and an affable personality, but the stress heaped on him by his father about the need to win a basketball scholarship have a tremendous impact on this kid that, I imagine, his father cringes about in retrospect (especially the scene in the car where he vaguely threatens that Colin might have to join the miliary -- which in this day and age means putting his life on the line -- if he doesn't get a scholarship).

As for the unfortunate girl who sends the guy she made out with (not her boyfriend, btw, just a guy she likes) a picture of her boobies and finds that everyone in school sees them -- what's most telling about that whole bit to me was not that Burstein didn't interfere or stop documenting when it happened, but that later in the film, you see that this girl is once again hanging out with the very people who victimized her.

As for Hannah, I don't get how White couldn't at least like her. He talks about the scene where Hannah's manic-depressive mom tells her "you're not special," but he fails to put that scene in perspective with the later scene where Hannah's leaving. Her mom's a nutcase, yes, but the beauty of Hannah is that she overcomes her mother's craziness and being basically left alone to make her way through her senior year of high school and the siren-call pull to stay where things are safe and familiar, and she gets out.

She knows inside that she's special, no matter what words her mother slings at her to try to keep her safe and close. And Hannah's trials and travails -- the effects of being an artsy, social outcast in a small town, the teenage romances and breakups -- may seem trivial to White, but in the teenage world, they're far from trivial.

That's kind of the whole point of a doc about teens -- that we, as adults, have the perspective of looking back on our own lives and realizing the things we thought were the end of the world when we were 17 really aren't.

comment #25

Craptastic says ...

Howlingman,

Then you should go check out X-Files for yourself.

I don't know if the bagels and cream cheese table was forgotten about by Fox before the screening but it's nowhere NEAR as bad as critics are making it out to be.

It's not perfect by any means but I'd say that it is definately a creepy little thriller.

***SPOILERS***
What other film this summer (or ANY summer) will have a main character that is an alter boy loving, psychic priest that is tied to gay, Russian Frankenstein people?

comment #26

George Prager says ...

"That's kind of the whole point of a doc about teens -- that we, as adults, have the perspective of looking back on our own lives and realizing the things we thought were the end of the world when we were 17 really aren't."

No fucking way!!!!!!!

comment #27

D.Z. says ...

Josh: Box Office Prophets was stupid enough to predict a $45 million opening for X Files 2, even though the last one only opened to $30 million, unadjusted for inflation. Still, I'm surprised that this one was so low on the top 10. I kind of imagined all those dvd sets helping to keep the show afloat after it was canceled/finished. So I'm guessing most of that audience moved on to Buffy or something. I'm not really surprised, though, since what really killed the franchise was "Millennium". It always wanted to be the new X-Files, but it came off more like "Se7en"-lite. Carter was never really the same after that follow-up, since he became more obsessed with spelling it out for the viewer than allowing them to fill in the blanks.

As for American Teen, it sounds like an interesting fantasy for people who've never really had to tough it out-like "The Wackness".

comment #28

otakuhouse says ...

yeah, yesterday i said i was done with this site, until google led me here as a friend sent me a link to White's Hellboy 2 review, which is quite possibly the worst movie review ever written. I had to google the insanity of this man after reading this complete and utter tosh.

http://nypress.com/21/28/film/ArmondWhite2.cfm

It's completely indefensible to spend most of the review comparing Hellboy 2 to a bad British band whose greatest contribution to culture thus far has been an ipod commercial. Likewise, he likes to accuse Del Toro and Cuaron of hipster nihilism but always takes them to task for their romanticism. He keeps accusing any filmmaker who is embraced of being a hipster, when he himself writes for a paper that only hipsters would give a shit about. None of what he writes makes any sense and the cultural connections only matter to him - being knee deep in hipster hot tips for obscure British bands no one gives a shit about. I miss Jonathan Rosenbaum.

His Dark Knight review claims that The Black Dahlia is a superior movie...

Milkman rules.

comment #29

Pinko Punko says ...

pVice versus the Milk is like a tiny insignificant atom brushing the nutsack of a gigantic colossus bestriding the universe. Harmless.

comment #30

swordandpen says ...

As much as I love reading Armond's reviews, I enjoy the moronic responses even more. MilkMan, the shallowness of your thinking just proves his reference to the "cultural abyss" correct. You might want to stop embarassing yourself.

Posted by p.Vice at July 26, 2008 07:23 AM

Armond White's reviews represent a cultural abyss. I said it before and I'll say it again. Anyone who takes Armond White seriously needs to have their head examined.

White's a phony. Milkman's take on White was right on the nose.

comment #31

cjKennedy says ...

Kim, fair enough. I just didn't feel like a came away from American Teen having learned anything I didn't already know. I did like it though, particularly Hannah and Jake. I don't think Armond saw the same movie I saw.

As for X-Files, I caught a morning show and it wasn't bad. The auditorium was full. The x-fans seemed to enjoy it. My expectations of it were very low and it met them, but I was kind of hoping it would surprise me by being good enough to justify its existence. That never happened.

It was better than Step Brothers which I walked into afterward. One genuine laugh and a couple of chuckles. The rest was tedium.

comment #32

corey3rd says ...

wasn't it Sidney Lumet that proclaimed "Armond White is a hack."

Armond White hates white people and moves that dare to explore white the lives of average white people. He hates the fact that he thought David Gordon Green was a young black filmmaker that was going to revolutionize black filmmaking as the second coming of Spike Lee.

Armond White hated American Teen because he was forced to watch white American kids.

comment #33

George Prager says ...

"Armond White hated American Teen because he was forced to watch white American kids."

That would make anyone hate the movie.

comment #34

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