A.S. Hamrah is a writer and resident film critic for the New York-based n+1 literary magazine.Supplied
It is deceptively easy to label A.S. Hamrah a doomsayer.
Flipping through Last Week in End Times Cinema, one of the two new books coming out this season from the acclaimed writer and resident film critic for the New York-based n+1 literary magazine, you get the sense that Hamrah is acutely attuned to the very worst instincts of modern Hollywood. Written in diary fashion, Last Week collects one example after another of the contemporary film industry’s self-imposed injuries, from its disastrous love affair with AI to the ongoing hubris of Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav (whose cocky, sunglasses-clad mug adorns the book’s cover).
Yet speaking with Hamrah the other week as he promotes both Last Week and Algorithm of the Night, his deeply satisfying and frequently hilarious collection of n+1 writing from 2019 to 2025, it becomes clear that the critic isn’t a cynical fatalist so much as a till-death-do-we-part champion of movie-going, a true cinephile whose unerring and cutting criticism makes the cultural world feel less empty and doomed than it may appear.
Ahead of the publication of both Last Week in End Times Cinema and Algorithm of the Night, The Globe and Mail spoke with Hamrah about the state of the seventh art.
Supplied
Both of these books strike me as some of the most depressing things I’ve ever read, but in an invigorating and almost existentially hopeful way. This is all stuff I’ve been feeling in the air, but collected into two concise collections of writing. The diary-like form of Last Week had a particularly cumulative effect on me.
It started in March of 2024, when I was reading the news and there were four ridiculous things that caught my eye. So I posted them on my Instagram stories, just examples of the stupidity of what’s going on in the film industry right now, and my followers seemed to like it. That turned into a newsletter, and before you know it I had 1,000 subscribers, and now a book. It can get a little depressing, especially when we get to the L.A. wildfires, the death of David Lynch.
Books we’re reading and loving in November
And you’re always careful to check in with Warner’s David Zaslav about whatever ridiculous thing he’s up to.
And Bob Iger at Disney, Tony Vinciquerra at Sony, all the studio heads say absolutely absurd things and spin half-truths and obfuscations about their bad products.
It’s an interesting time to be talking about Zaslav, especially as we’re in the midst of Warner Bros. being either swallowed up by another studio, maybe disappearing altogether into Netflix’s catalogue. How close to the bone are you cutting by using “End Times” in the title?
There’s something particularly depressing about the potential Warner Bros. sale. When Disney bought Fox a while ago, for some reason that didn’t register as very depressing, though it was. But with Zaslav you get the sense that he’s this kind of villainous character, who maybe his plan all along was to lead to some kind of consolidation that’s going to lead to a worse product that costs more money for the moviegoer. All this stuff should be much more regulated than it is.
When you published your previous book of collected essays in 2018, The Earth Dies Streaming, you described the times as “very bleak,” yet they only feel bleaker now. How do you reconcile that mood with your work as a critic, trying to make sense of the art that is put out into the world at such a tremulous time?
The landscape that I described back then has gotten worse, yes. But at the same time, because it’s gotten worse, the year after my book came out, 2019, now appears as a somewhat golden age for cinema. The pandemic of course was a real opportunity for studios to make a fundamental change in their business regarding streaming, and I feel it was a kind of gleeful moment because they could really envision the end of theatrical exhibition, which they don’t like because they can’t really control it to the extent that they wish they did. In the first book, I was talking about a world in which streaming was going to take over the world. Now, they’ve moved on and want to do away with the cinema altogether by turning it into a fully automated assembly line using, at every step in the process, with artificial intelligence, with as few humans involved as possible. But the question was about how do I continue working as a critic, yeah?
Supplied
Well, yes. In the face of such opposing forces and the ever-increasing sense of dread.
So many people who write about films have turned to writing about older films now, classic Hollywood, avant-garde films. But I think it’s the obligation of the critic to write about the films of their time, and I’m very dedicated to doing that. And it doesn’t bother me at all that that’s the subject matter presented to me. There are very good films made all over the world. And any kind of films made independently will move the cinema forward going into the future. But the health of the film industry in America? It’s not an important component of the cinema in general. I feel it’s important to document that as a critic.
A new wave of literary satire tackles the sociopolitical issues of our time with sharp wit
And most criticism today doesn’t do that, so much. It can be more service-oriented, in a way ...
It’s just responding to films on a case-by-case basis, pretending that there are no problems in the industry. I don’t like to do that. I try to do a kind of anti-Rotten Tomatoes style of criticism. ... This extends not only to daily newspapers but to major market magazines. Vanity Fair just got rid of their film critic. There’s a giant feeling of, “Who cares?” I’m able to do this because of n+1, because they’re the opposite of that kind of thinking. But I also keep my overhead very low. I’ve made a lot of personal sacrifices. Being an independent critic is important. Being fully a critic is also important. I’m not an academic. I don’t have a job at an arts institution, I’m not programming. This is what I do. I’m just a writer. And if you’re committed, you have to roll with the punches.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Last Week in End Times Cinema is available Nov. 25 from Semiotext(e); Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019-2025 is available Dec. 12 from n+1