Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019-2025 - A. S. Hamrah

nA. S. Hamrah's writing on film is a delight.... Like all the best criticism, his writing makes art and life feel less lonely. --Elif Batumann nUnerring (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.n