Algorithm of the Night

“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.