“Black Swan” was called “a ridiculous psychological thriller.”
“Precious” was “racist hysteria masquerading as social sensitivity.”
And in a review that drew death threats, “Toy Story 3” was deemed “a bored game that only the brainwashed will buy into.”
Such excoriations are regular fare in
movie reviews by Armond White, a man variously described as the most
contrarian,
most hated or
most important film critic around New York.
“He’s an intelligent critic and a passionate writer,” Roger Ebert wrote in a
2009 blog post — after calling Mr. White an online troll. “A smart and knowing one,” Ebert added, “but a troll.”
Despite his relative infamy and three decades of controversial criticism,
Mr. White remains largely unknown outside the New York film world, at least until this month, when he drew headlines for reportedly heckling Steve McQueen, director of “12 Years a Slave,” at an awards dinner in Manhattan.
The charge immediately went viral,
fueled by the intriguing dual facts that Mr. White had loathed Mr. McQueen’s film, and that both men are black. The New York Film Critics Circle, which hosted the awards and had named Mr. McQueen best director, issued an immediate, agonized apology and promised disciplinary action. Mr. White, who wrote for New York Press and now edits CityArts, which covers arts for several New York community papers, denied the heckling in a recent interview and said that no one from the group had bothered to check the report’s veracity with him.
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Armond White, CityArts film writer, was voted out of the New York Film Critics Circle. Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Yet on Monday,
the circle, the country’s oldest such film critics group, voted to oust Mr. White, who had chaired the group three times and had been a member since 1987. It was the first expulsion in the group’s 79-year history and left the 34-member circle with one black member.
Reactions from various circle members were visceral and mixed. “Stalinist” was how Thelma Adams, contributing editor at Yahoo News, described the ouster.
“It was lose, lose,” lamented David Edelstein, chief film critic for New York magazine, adding that the whole matter left him feeling “devastated and dreadful.”
“We need to treasure the cranks, we need to treasure the crackpots,” Mr. Edelstein said, “because the profession has gotten so cautious.”
In Mr. White’s view, the expulsion was symptomatic of what he sees as a group in decline, beholden to studios that help foot the dinner’s bill and reviewers who are unwilling, if not unable, to criticize films as eruditely as he can — and thus they are jealous and vindictive.
In the last few days, he has publicly likened the group to “Mean Girls” and identified “enemies” who, he says, worked to successfully kick him, the unpopular kid, out.
“It’s an incestuous clubhouse of friends,” he said over breakfast the other day, “not people who made their bones as journalists or critics.”
Yet Stephen Whitty, the circle’s new chairman, said action had to be taken because Mr. White had raised hackles at the group’s awards dinners before. In 2011, as chairman and host, Mr. White introduced Tony Kushner, who was presenting best picture to “The Social Network,” with a wry “Maybe he can explain why it won” (among other perceived barbs). Last year, he shouted protests as Michael Moore delivered a speech. Mr. White said Mr. Moore had been unfairly maligning the Roman Catholic Church.
Though Mr. White’s actions brought scrutiny, they drew no reprimands.
Mr. White, 60, lives by himself in Chelsea with no pets or plants, amid piles of DVDs. Standing 6-foot-3, he cuts an imposing figure. Yet in conversation, he comes across as exacting, quiet and polite, far different from what his writing — and seeming bad behavior — might suggest.
“My sisters called from Detroit to see how I was doing,” he said. “I don’t like to worry them.”
He deeply admires Pauline Kael, who sponsored his critics circle membership. And he holds his own scholarship in high esteem, having earned a master’s in film history, theory and criticism from Columbia University.
He admires films, he says, that show viewers part of their “spiritual self” on screen. This year, in his annual “Better Than” list, that meant lauding “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa,” which found “common, if derisive humanity” better than “Nebraska” did, which “merely derided unsophisticated Middle Americans.”
It is unclear what precisely happened the night of Jan. 6, as Mr. McQueen stood onstage at the Edison Ballroom before some 300 attendees, including Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford. Harry Belafonte had just finished speaking when yelling broke out in the rear, where Mr. White and his friends — along with several critics and journalists — sat.
Someone hollered “you’re embarrassing,” followed by “doorman and garbageman.” Then came a quick epithet that might have come from someone else. Mr. McQueen heard nothing, according to his publicist. Variety reported that Mr. White was the yeller and Mr. McQueen the target, and other news outlets echoed the same. (Critics from The New York Times, according to staff policy, are not members of the group and thus were not at the dinner.)
Mr. White insisted that he never yelled anything, let alone at Mr. McQueen, but said he did curse at a fellow attendee who had told those at his table to shut up. But Dana Stevens, a film critic at Slate seated at Mr. White’s table, said the outburst was the culmination of meanspirited commentary that Mr. White and his friends had been bandying about all night. (Others noted the same.) Ms. Stevens also said she paid little attention to who was saying what and instead listened to the awards. “I was trying to hear what was going on and sink underneath the table,” she said.
The next day, with the blogosphere in a tizzy and Fox Searchlight, which produced “12 Years a Slave,” none too pleased, Josh Rothkopf, the outgoing chairman of the critics circle, issued an apology. But neither he nor Mr. Whitty ever asked Mr. White for his version of the events. Mr. Rothkopf noted that Mr. White did not reach out to them either, yet “spoke at length to The Hollywood Reporter.”
The circle’s emergency meeting was announced in a group email, which Mr. White received, along with a separate message from Mr. Whitty exhorting him to attend. Fearing a hostile environment, Mr. White chose not to. The meeting lasted nearly two hours, with a majority of members concluding that Mr. White’s actions forced their hands.
“We drew a clear distinction between Armond’s ideas, which can be provocative, but you know, that’s fine, and his behavior, which had become indefensible, ” said Owen Gleiberman, a film critic at Entertainment Weekly, who wrote a column about the affair.
Yet several of Mr. White’s defenders wondered how dinnertime rowdiness could ever merit expulsion from a critics group.
“What’s so solemn about an evening that can’t tolerate someone banging on a pot?” said Harlan Jacobson, a critic who has known Mr. White for 30 years.
Ms. Adams, who was not present at the meeting, said too few people appreciated Mr. White’s contributions to the circle, among them organizing events at the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music for its 75th anniversary.
A member since 1995, Ms. Adams said the expulsion reflected a change in the group, whose previous dinners were rife, she said, with disturbances and immoralities of various kinds.
“There was a housecleaning that happened,” she said of the vote. “Sometimes a person gives their enemies an opportunity.”
Good for him, he's the 
of film critics. Dude just hates on movies on some Stinkmeaner steez.