His interest in journalism and film criticism began as a student at Detroit’s Central High School, when he first read Pauline Kael's book, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang whom he cites for "her willingness to go against the hype", along with Andrew Sarris, for his "sophisticated love of cinema", as being a major inspiration on his choice of professional career. White is a recipient of a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
He is a member of New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Online. He was the three time chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle (1994, 2009 and 2010), and has also served as a member of the jury at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival and Mill Valley Film Festival and was a member of several National Endowment for the Arts panels. He has taught classes on film at Columbia University and Long Island University.
In 1992 White won the 25th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism for "The Gloved One Is Not A Chump", his essay on Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video.
White claims to watch "five to 10 movies a week" and "as many as 400 films a year".
White, who has asserted in an interview that "most films are dismissable", has been described as the "most contrarian" of film critics for allegedly "position[ing] himself in diametric opposition to virtually every film critic on earth". White has dismissed these allegations, stating that he has never "said anything about a movie out of meanness or indifference" and that he always contrasts movies he evaluates negatively with ones he considers superior, as in his annual "Better-Than Lists". Rotten Tomatoes, a website that aggregates film reviews, indicates that he agrees with the consensus of other professional critics 52% of the time. He has been compared to such critics as Pauline Kael, Dorothy Parker, Kenneth Tynan and Nathan Cohen for his "intransigent refusal to think what people expect him to think".
White is known for his use of the term "hipster nihilism" as a description of what he sees as a prevalent, and destructive, attitude toward film and the world, as well as his controversial notion of "kinetic art" which he identifies in many action films. He coined the label "the American Eccentrics" to describe a group of "millennial" filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Sofia Coppola whose works "offer an unabashed solipsism, whimsy, and undisguised film savvy."
White is known for his advocacy for the works of directors Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma and for the music and films of Michael Jackson. In a 2002 Sight & Sound poll he ranked Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence as the greatest film of all time.
White has been an outspoken opponent of online film criticism, which he associates with "amateurism, gossip [and] cliques" rather than the "education, expertise [and] experience" he attributes to professional film criticism. He has cited film review aggregators in general and Rotten Tomatoes in particular as examples of how "the Internet takes revenge on individual expression" by "dumping reviewers onto one website and assigning spurious percentage-enthusiasm points to the discrete reviews" and "offer[s] consensus as a substitute for assessment." He has also stated his opinion that "there should be no film critics younger than 30" since they would lack the necessary scholarship and life experience.
In interviews he has repeatedly demurred when asked to identify critics other than himself whose work he values. However, in other settings he has praised the writing of Molly Haskell and GayToday.com critic John Demetry. Among film critics of previous generations, in addition to Kael and Sarris, White has credited James Agee and former New York Times critic Bosley Crowther.
Because of his consistently negative reviews of Noah Baumbach's and Spike Lee's films - and his ad hominem attacks on their creators - he was barred by publicists from press screenings of their films Greenberg and Get on the Bus. In the case of Greenberg, the ban was rescinded in time for White to watch the film with other critics. Director Darren Aronofsky also publicly disparaged White's film criticism.
Detractors have criticized White for his "hyperbolic rhetoric" and "misanthropic mudslinging". Critic Glenn Kenny called White "a bully and a hypocrite" and complained that "the sub-theme of every White review [...] is that every other critic is a moral degenerate and an aesthetic cretin." Essayist Dan Schneider dismissed White as a "critical clown" and "a contrarian with political and personal axes to grind", Similarly, critic Vadim Rizov described White as "a jerk who combines rhetorical misdirection with bullying behaviour". In an in-depth "meta-review" of White's negative review of Toy Story 3, freelance writer Paul Brunick noted that "it's the swipes he takes at the audience that are most objectionably nasty: viewers who enjoyed TS3 are 'brainwashed,' 'suckers,' 'saps,' and (my personal favorite) 'non-thinking children.' Take that, kids!" Brunick nonetheless concluded that he found White's reviews "perversely fascinating" in that "he is so obviously intelligent, yet this intelligence has been harnessed to the warped imperatives of an increasingly frustrated personality."
Because he often castigates critical and audience favorites, White has been labeled "contrarian for the sake of being contrary" and "America's most hated movie critic". Citing the straw man arguments in White's review of the 2006 film Dreamgirls, critic Jim Emerson wrote that "White doesn't necessarily practice film criticism, although what he writes is almost always based on his real or imagined characterization of what other critics have already written. The movie itself sometimes gets lost in White's internal monologue as he rages against some chimerical critical consensus." In 2009, following an eruption of controversy on the Rotten Tomatoes website over White's negative pre-general release review of District 9 (which ruined its 100% rating up to that point), Roger Ebert defended him against the "fanboys" of the "Tomatoes lynch mob": "The fact that you don't know what someone is writing about is not a real good reason for disagreeing with him [...] [White is] an intelligent critic and a passionate writer, and he knows a very great deal about movies, dance, and many other things." However, after being presented with a list of films that White had liked and disliked, Ebert withdrew his overall support of White's work, writing "It is baffling to me that a critic could praise Transformers 2 but not Synecdoche, NY. Or Death Race but not There Will Be Blood. I am forced to conclude that White is, as charged, a troll; a smart and knowing one, but a troll." White condemned Ebert's response, saying "the guy has won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism [...] Criticizing colleagues is not what we do". Ebert stated that he had shown "very poor judgment" in writing that entry.
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