“A. S. Hamrah’s writing on film is a delight. . . . Like all the best criticism, his writing makes art and life feel less lonely.” —Elif Batuman
“Unerring” (Bookforum), “hilarious” (Dana Spiotta), “our age’s most irreplaceable critic” (Guernica), “a genius” (Kenyon Review), A. S. Hamrah returns with an extraordinary collection of his best film writing for n+1, The Baffler, The New York Review of Books, the Criterion Collection, and other publications. Algorithm of the Night assembles Hamrah’s essays on films and filmmakers and his inimitable, aphoristic reviews—a body of work that, taken together, presents a powerful alternative to a culture mired in publicity and stale convention. A journey through the overlapping dystopias of the Trump years, the Covid years, and the Trump years, Algorithm of the Night attends with remarkable style and precision to a film industry in self-imposed crisis, a chronicle of failures and occasional miracles from AI to The Zone of Interest. Against the tides of ignorance and solipsism, Algorithm of the Night is film criticism as literature and—perhaps—prophecy.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: A Total Breakdown of All the Easter
Eggs
1. We Can Still Think Our Own Thoughts
2. Double Squibs with Hamburger Meat
3. The Shallow Now
4. The MoMA Gramercy
5. Stay Near the Tree
6. Welcome to Violence
7. Dutch Angles
8. Dreams Are Lost Memories
9. Every Moment Between Human Beings
10. All We Got in Common
11. Money Is an Iron
12. Thread Count
13. The Work of Fate
14. The Other Guy Being Socialism
15. Zero Hour Contracts
16. The Old Bamboo
17. All-Consuming Horror
18. Slime Regained
19. In Three Years We Can Quit Chicken Sexing
20. Postcard from Home
21. The Bitter with the Sour
22. Time Is a Rabid Dog
23. Inside the Special People Club
24. Cinema Is Never on Time
25. The World Was Just an Address
26. The Captain’s Dinner Is Coming Up
27. Sound Sleeper
28. Riding the Elephant
29. Persistence of Mission
30. Objects in Space at a Moment in Time
31. Beyond the Visible
32. This Glass, This Drink, This Countertop, Our
Bodies
33. The Business of Nostalgia
34. A Young, Honest Guy Like Himself
35. Time to Face Reality
36. Vacuum Studies
37. Agnès All Along
38. Oil Paintings at the Dentist’s Office
39. Enemy of the Good
40. Movie Stars in Bathtubs
Acknowledgments
Index of Titles
Index of Names
