Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
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Current Issue
Q&A
/ February 4, 2026
Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
A conversation with A.S. Hamrah about the dispiriting state of the movie business in the post-Covid era.
Kyle Paoletta
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Over the past two decades, A.S. Hamrah has carved out a peculiar niche for himself in the increasingly bowdlerized world of American film writers as an uncompromising critic of not just movies, but the systems of power they reflect. Take his quip about Everything Everywhere All at Once, from one of his signature short-form reviews for n+1: “The thing I don’t understand is how you lose money running a laundromat,” Hamrah writes, “especially if you own the building.”
The latest collection of Hamrah’s work, Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019–2025, includes dozens of such reviews along with longer essays for Bookforum, The Baffler, and The New York Review of Books that reverberate far beyond Hollywood and into the uneasy place film holds in the post-Covid era. Noting that Donald Trump’s two favorite movies are said to be Citizen Kane and the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport, he writes, “There it is, the Trump administration summed up in one weird double feature.”
Hamrah’s most recent project was Last Week in End Times Cinema, a weekly newsletter collecting together “pathetic and ridiculous” news stories about the movie business. (True to form, Hamrah blasted these digests out from his EarthLink account rather than bothering with Substack.) Those columns are now available in a separate collection as well. There are dispiriting headlines like “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Ending Explained” and summaries of news stories about Sam Altman, the “eyebrowless CEO of OpenAI,” suggesting “AI might figure out on its own how to stop itself from ending the human race.” Read enough of these missives and it becomes obvious why studio heads were too focused on replacing actors with algorithms to properly market a film like Train Dreams, filing it away in Netflix’s library of slop after a curtailed theatrical release.
Together, Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema provide a sardonic—yet sobering—guide to the societal breakdown of 2020s America. The Nation spoke with Hamrah about how the pandemic ruined the movie-going experience, AI hustlers and rubes, and the cinematic experience of social media, where police violence, fascist propaganda, and pygmy hippos compete for our enfeebled attention spans. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
—Kyle Paoletta
Kyle Paoletta: In Algorithm of the Night, you write that 17 months passed between the last film you saw in theaters before lockdown in 2020 and …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
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Current Issue
Q&A
/ February 4, 2026
Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
A conversation with A.S. Hamrah about the dispiriting state of the movie business in the post-Covid era.
Kyle Paoletta
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Over the past two decades, A.S. Hamrah has carved out a peculiar niche for himself in the increasingly bowdlerized world of American film writers as an uncompromising critic of not just movies, but the systems of power they reflect. Take his quip about Everything Everywhere All at Once, from one of his signature short-form reviews for n+1: “The thing I don’t understand is how you lose money running a laundromat,” Hamrah writes, “especially if you own the building.”
The latest collection of Hamrah’s work, Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019–2025, includes dozens of such reviews along with longer essays for Bookforum, The Baffler, and The New York Review of Books that reverberate far beyond Hollywood and into the uneasy place film holds in the post-Covid era. Noting that Donald Trump’s two favorite movies are said to be Citizen Kane and the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport, he writes, “There it is, the Trump administration summed up in one weird double feature.”
Hamrah’s most recent project was Last Week in End Times Cinema, a weekly newsletter collecting together “pathetic and ridiculous” news stories about the movie business. (True to form, Hamrah blasted these digests out from his EarthLink account rather than bothering with Substack.) Those columns are now available in a separate collection as well. There are dispiriting headlines like “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Ending Explained” and summaries of news stories about Sam Altman, the “eyebrowless CEO of OpenAI,” suggesting “AI might figure out on its own how to stop itself from ending the human race.” Read enough of these missives and it becomes obvious why studio heads were too focused on replacing actors with algorithms to properly market a film like Train Dreams, filing it away in Netflix’s library of slop after a curtailed theatrical release.
Together, Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema provide a sardonic—yet sobering—guide to the societal breakdown of 2020s America. The Nation spoke with Hamrah about how the pandemic ruined the movie-going experience, AI hustlers and rubes, and the cinematic experience of social media, where police violence, fascist propaganda, and pygmy hippos compete for our enfeebled attention spans. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
—Kyle Paoletta
Kyle Paoletta: In Algorithm of the Night, you write that 17 months passed between the last film you saw in theaters before lockdown in 2020 and …
Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
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Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
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Current Issue
Q&A
/ February 4, 2026
Is it Too Late to Save Hollywood?
A conversation with A.S. Hamrah about the dispiriting state of the movie business in the post-Covid era.
Kyle Paoletta
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Over the past two decades, A.S. Hamrah has carved out a peculiar niche for himself in the increasingly bowdlerized world of American film writers as an uncompromising critic of not just movies, but the systems of power they reflect. Take his quip about Everything Everywhere All at Once, from one of his signature short-form reviews for n+1: “The thing I don’t understand is how you lose money running a laundromat,” Hamrah writes, “especially if you own the building.”
The latest collection of Hamrah’s work, Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019–2025, includes dozens of such reviews along with longer essays for Bookforum, The Baffler, and The New York Review of Books that reverberate far beyond Hollywood and into the uneasy place film holds in the post-Covid era. Noting that Donald Trump’s two favorite movies are said to be Citizen Kane and the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport, he writes, “There it is, the Trump administration summed up in one weird double feature.”
Hamrah’s most recent project was Last Week in End Times Cinema, a weekly newsletter collecting together “pathetic and ridiculous” news stories about the movie business. (True to form, Hamrah blasted these digests out from his EarthLink account rather than bothering with Substack.) Those columns are now available in a separate collection as well. There are dispiriting headlines like “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 Ending Explained” and summaries of news stories about Sam Altman, the “eyebrowless CEO of OpenAI,” suggesting “AI might figure out on its own how to stop itself from ending the human race.” Read enough of these missives and it becomes obvious why studio heads were too focused on replacing actors with algorithms to properly market a film like Train Dreams, filing it away in Netflix’s library of slop after a curtailed theatrical release.
Together, Algorithm of the Night and Last Week in End Times Cinema provide a sardonic—yet sobering—guide to the societal breakdown of 2020s America. The Nation spoke with Hamrah about how the pandemic ruined the movie-going experience, AI hustlers and rubes, and the cinematic experience of social media, where police violence, fascist propaganda, and pygmy hippos compete for our enfeebled attention spans. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
—Kyle Paoletta
Kyle Paoletta: In Algorithm of the Night, you write that 17 months passed between the last film you saw in theaters before lockdown in 2020 and …
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