10 Spectacularly Wrong Movie Reviews

1. Everything Armond White Writes

A self-described "pedigreed film scholar", the characterisation most give to Armond White is that the guy's a troll. Not the kind that lives under bridges and asks you questions three (although we've noticed his Wikipedia entry lacks a "personal life" section...), but the internet neologism used to signify a person who has awful, contrary opinions specifically to wind people up. To upset them. And we have plenty of evidence that White has such opinions, because the dude's been writing film reviews for decades, even acting as the lead critic and arts editors for a number of prestigious publications. All whilst extolling the virtues of Paul WS Anderson and being fiercely critical of acclaimed directors like Darren Aronofsky.

One time he actually heckled Steve McQueen. Y'know, the guy who won an Oscar for Twelve Years A Slave. White doesn't just blindly follow the opinions of his fellow critics, which we suppose is something to be commended. But also his dissenting opinions are usually terrible and wrong. And not consistent. He hated Toy Story 3 because he thought it was a crass celebration of consumerism, but bloody loves the Transformers films, which are based on and designed to sell toys? Eh? He also hated The Dark Knight Rises for similar reasons, and reviewed GI Joe positively in comparison to "such utter banality as Iron Man and Star Trek and Harry Potter's Half-Blooded Chintz".

He found Bridesmaids contrived, and called Adam Sandler's Grown Ups "cheerful and surprisingly heartfelt". I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry is preferable to the "laughable Brokeback Mountain". He even went so far as to suggest the Clash Of The Titans remake "shows a better sense of meaningful, economic narrative than the mess that Peter Jackson made of the interminable, incoherent Lord of the Rings trilogy". Armond White is a crazy person. And pretty much every movie review he's written has been spectacularly wrong.