White's reviews are often piercingly insightful and eloquently written.

That said, for my taste, there too many reviews of movies and plays I haven't seen and don't want to see compared to French New Wave films I haven't seen (and don't want to see). As a result, I found this collection tedious at times ... but only periodically. When it comes to film, I'm not an avant-garde guy. Too many cutting-edge, artsy movies just bore me to tears. I'm willing to accept that's just my laziness in not wanting to devote the time and energy to understanding appreciating the artistry of those geniuses. All I ask is that my movies look good, make sense, don't support offensive ideologies, and entertain. Armond White's reviews are revelatory (I hadn't read any until reading this book) in that he largely seems to want the same -- although he's certainly more demanding on the ideology front, which I applaud, and he's got the eye and knowledge of film history to back up his opinions on the other fronts. I like a critic who's intolerant of mediocrity, furious when insulted, and whose reviews convey a passion for the subject; Armond White fits the bill.

I was watching Tin Man in the course of reading this and, as a white guy, it was painful to watch the one black actor with a significant role casually referred to by his lily-white cohorts as a "man ... dog ... thing." Sure, he was a shapeshifter who could morph from Toto to human form, so it was, in a sense, a justified observation, but White's reviews are a poignant reminder that pretty much all media that isn't labeled "Black" (ie., "Black Film") is overtly "White Film," just not labelled as such. ( )