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The Earth Dies Streaming
The Earth Dies Streaming collects the best of A. S. Hamrah's film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper s, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah s aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times.
452 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
March 25, 2021
quite difficult to read in a single sitting lol. But that's almost the point. Hamrah's style of film writing is never about the easy digestible take or single sentence phrase to be blasted on DVD covers as advertisements. His writing is like nettles, acerbic and bristling, but at the same time starkly refreshing. In one batch of reviews he adds a dream he had about a certain streaming giant, in another he adds a call he gets from his aunt. The freedom of his writing is its' key, his ability to contextualize movies within the framework of life. The inability to watch, or the frustration of watching on an iPhone or computer is as much a part of the criticism of the film itself, if not the shaky foundation 21st century criticism has to surmount.
His essay "Jessica Biel's Hand" is rightly lauded, as is his essay on zombies (although his grouping of Hunger Games and Divergent within the same category has me troubled, as I see those in the distinct YA tradition of the Battle Royale genre). Yet there are some hidden gems to be gleamed in Hamrah's writing in this period that should be looked over again. His piece "Kiarostami and The Purge" is melancholic and deeply mournful of the direction of contemporary cinema, and the very real and tangible ways that the vulgar Western entertainment complex fails Kiarostami and other directors doing real work in cinema. His essay on traveling through California is astonishing honestly. And makes me wonder if Hamrah could retire hopefully as a travel writer. Like J. Hoberman or Jonathan Rosenbaum, Hamrah creates a film criticism all his own, linking films together with their release and at the same time reminding readers of the fractured and often staggered ways that some films trickled down to the viewers. The most cynical Oscar watcher, the ironic Hollywood diehard, Hamrah is king.
His essay "Jessica Biel's Hand" is rightly lauded, as is his essay on zombies (although his grouping of Hunger Games and Divergent within the same category has me troubled, as I see those in the distinct YA tradition of the Battle Royale genre). Yet there are some hidden gems to be gleamed in Hamrah's writing in this period that should be looked over again. His piece "Kiarostami and The Purge" is melancholic and deeply mournful of the direction of contemporary cinema, and the very real and tangible ways that the vulgar Western entertainment complex fails Kiarostami and other directors doing real work in cinema. His essay on traveling through California is astonishing honestly. And makes me wonder if Hamrah could retire hopefully as a travel writer. Like J. Hoberman or Jonathan Rosenbaum, Hamrah creates a film criticism all his own, linking films together with their release and at the same time reminding readers of the fractured and often staggered ways that some films trickled down to the viewers. The most cynical Oscar watcher, the ironic Hollywood diehard, Hamrah is king.
February 3, 2019
Like Fred Seidel’s collected works, the n+1 film critic A.S. Hamrah’s collection starts now (some of the current Oscar contenders kick it off) and moves backward to 2008, that moment when our Bush horror ended and our present horror was but faintly blowing in the wind. What one notices hilariously from this reverse order is that as Hamrah goes on, Benjamin Button style, he becomes more politically incorrect. The SEX AND THE CITY gals are referred to as “grasping whores” and Daniel Berrigan is referred to as a little “fey” man who is “annoying”—hmm, we know what that means. The book is a reminder that not too long ago people wrote somewhat in alignment with how they spoke and thought, not as if before a clique of emotionally battered Aspergerian sixth graders.
Hamrah’s shtik in n+1 is to condense a big, much talked and written about movie into a small sarcastic faux childlike phrase, viz., “This is a movie in which a lot of very mean people yell at a lot of very dumb people.” This sometimes works like gangbusters, as when he describes Paul Thomas Anderson’s unsummarizably profound THE MASTER as “THE SHINING meets Altman’s POPEYE.” (I don’t really see it but the gesture is cool as fuck.) Unfortunately, one sad element of this big book (which features many think pieces whose time has come and gone) is that in the present day Hamrah is obliged to review a great many black-directed and -themed movies and never once uses the snappy, snarky, buzzwordy yet comically austere prose he uses on white movies. The black films are always referred to with great deference and solemnity, which I find fatally condescending, and, I hope, will appear so in a few cultural moments.
Hamrah’s short, dismissive, usually image-rich capsule blurbs crackle in the pages of n+1, less so in a tome. At the end of the day Hamrah seems (to coin a faux Hamrahism) a sort of Anthony Lane or A.O. Scott for Brooklyn beardos who have A THOUSAND PLATEAUS on a nearby shelf. Except when dilating on Ford and Murnau he rarely goes deep, preferring “gravitas” to actual gravity. (No serious writer can use words like “boomer” and “mansplaining.” Not without massive eye-rolling irony.)
Hamrah’s shtik in n+1 is to condense a big, much talked and written about movie into a small sarcastic faux childlike phrase, viz., “This is a movie in which a lot of very mean people yell at a lot of very dumb people.” This sometimes works like gangbusters, as when he describes Paul Thomas Anderson’s unsummarizably profound THE MASTER as “THE SHINING meets Altman’s POPEYE.” (I don’t really see it but the gesture is cool as fuck.) Unfortunately, one sad element of this big book (which features many think pieces whose time has come and gone) is that in the present day Hamrah is obliged to review a great many black-directed and -themed movies and never once uses the snappy, snarky, buzzwordy yet comically austere prose he uses on white movies. The black films are always referred to with great deference and solemnity, which I find fatally condescending, and, I hope, will appear so in a few cultural moments.
Hamrah’s short, dismissive, usually image-rich capsule blurbs crackle in the pages of n+1, less so in a tome. At the end of the day Hamrah seems (to coin a faux Hamrahism) a sort of Anthony Lane or A.O. Scott for Brooklyn beardos who have A THOUSAND PLATEAUS on a nearby shelf. Except when dilating on Ford and Murnau he rarely goes deep, preferring “gravitas” to actual gravity. (No serious writer can use words like “boomer” and “mansplaining.” Not without massive eye-rolling irony.)
February 20, 2025
If there’s a better working film critic today i havent read them. That’s not because i think Hamrah is always right, because he definitely is wrong about animation, but because like every great critic, his work is alive too
January 14, 2020
Three short passages from The Earth Dies Streaming:
Todays Republicans go out of their way to insist that the GOP is the party of Ronald Reagan, but after seeing Emile de Antonio’s films you realize that it’s the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover – de Antonio’s obsessions, his main villains. He has located the end of American democracy in these three figures. Sneaks, liars, and hypocrites who would be at home in John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, all three were smear specialists. They owed what power they had to their ability to make the population as paranoid as they were, to their ability to instill fear – of pinkos, the Vietnamese, the Russians, “subversives,” anyone who didn’t see things their way.
If that’s what a feel-good movie is, I can’t stand to feel that good. It’s physically painful for me to feel that good.
Farber states that he is not interested in pronouncing movies good or bad, but he is still always for or against something.
Todays Republicans go out of their way to insist that the GOP is the party of Ronald Reagan, but after seeing Emile de Antonio’s films you realize that it’s the party of Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover – de Antonio’s obsessions, his main villains. He has located the end of American democracy in these three figures. Sneaks, liars, and hypocrites who would be at home in John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, all three were smear specialists. They owed what power they had to their ability to make the population as paranoid as they were, to their ability to instill fear – of pinkos, the Vietnamese, the Russians, “subversives,” anyone who didn’t see things their way.
If that’s what a feel-good movie is, I can’t stand to feel that good. It’s physically painful for me to feel that good.
Farber states that he is not interested in pronouncing movies good or bad, but he is still always for or against something.
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January 9, 2022Five bags of popcorn out of five with an extra hot dog. Some poet or other said that we need to praise and condemn with equal intensity, if art is to thrive. You already know Hamrah can condemn with the best of em'. When he praises films, he avoids hollow superlatives; he avoids pull quotes they can slap on the poster. That doesn't make him an elitist.
"Forty years on, film and TV have begun to merge, and there is no longer any discourse that can conceive of being against cinema or against TV."
The thing that the 'let people enjoy things' crowd don't understand is that entertainment is only one dimension of aesthetic pleasure. As Hamrah quotes Casavetes as saying: "I hate entertainment". The insistent piety of a poser convert is tiresome to a person with a mature faith. Anyone who thinks Hamrah is just a cynic is out of their element. The man LOVES movies; that's why he roasts the bad ones.
"Forty years on, film and TV have begun to merge, and there is no longer any discourse that can conceive of being against cinema or against TV."
The thing that the 'let people enjoy things' crowd don't understand is that entertainment is only one dimension of aesthetic pleasure. As Hamrah quotes Casavetes as saying: "I hate entertainment". The insistent piety of a poser convert is tiresome to a person with a mature faith. Anyone who thinks Hamrah is just a cynic is out of their element. The man LOVES movies; that's why he roasts the bad ones.
April 28, 2021
If Washington is Hollywood for the ugly, does that say anything about those that write politically about Hollywood?
This book has a wit sharp enough to show the dullness of wit’s effects on its target, because nothing has changed. It attacks and loves with the same ferocity, excited to praise in a world that mostly makes one bitter.
Hamrah is smart, has good taste, and has somehow found a way to make the capsule review interesting and uniquely his own. I feel that he occasionally goes too hard on things and it left me feeling weird, like watching that clip of the 8th grader choking out Katt Williams. At a certain point it’s best for everyone to ease up and move on.
This book has a wit sharp enough to show the dullness of wit’s effects on its target, because nothing has changed. It attacks and loves with the same ferocity, excited to praise in a world that mostly makes one bitter.
Hamrah is smart, has good taste, and has somehow found a way to make the capsule review interesting and uniquely his own. I feel that he occasionally goes too hard on things and it left me feeling weird, like watching that clip of the 8th grader choking out Katt Williams. At a certain point it’s best for everyone to ease up and move on.
June 10, 2019
Very solid collection of contemporary film criticism. Older and lesser-appreciated films get large treatments, while new releases get 1-3 paragraph writeups that are wickedly funny. Hamrah is certainly disenchanted with the film industry for its lack of imagination and how it carries water for some of the worst institutions in America, but he has an affinity for protecting underdogs that keeps his meanness from sliding into nihilism.
October 21, 2024
A hefty and strong collection from a film critic who loves movies as much as he hates pretenses. The final interview was a knockout. I will say that reading these in one go is impossible. The capsule reviews only work in short bursts.
February 9, 2019
Taking one star off for the article where he looks down his dumb Brooklyn nose at Hamilton, ON. Just move already!
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December 1, 2025Something I learned from this book is that the best reviews sometimes don’t tell you whether the reviewer liked it or not
July 26, 2022
Hamrah is basically a disciple of the great Jonathan Rosenbaum - sociopolitical, personal, and a lover of all cinema, but a handicapper of contemporary big budget Hollywood and an all-around cynic who is romantic about the movies. His capsule reviews are a personal favorite style of mine (they're harder to write than they look!) and so this collection is fun to read like a little reference book. Hamrah also has disdain for the reviewer style, complete with plot details and a Rotten Tomatoes score in mind. I share this very disdain. Too much Trump stuff - I know, I know, it was hard to avoid, but still....boooooorrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnng. Enjoyable book. I love film crit. Whoopie!
January 24, 2019
I haven't read every essay yet (and there are a few on topics less-cared-for that i probably won't return to) but i have to say i loved this more than even my lofty expectations might have suggested. i was familiar with Hamrah's writing and wit from the n+1 movie reviews, but the long-form essays are fascinating and allow his analysis to breathe a little more. Hamrah moves quite quickly with references, many of which are well beyond my knowledge, but that isn't to say that he is a high-culture critic. Land of the Dead is approvingly discussed at least twice!
February 4, 2020
95% of today's film critics are either fanboys, plot recappers, awards whores or spoiler alerters so when you run across someone who takes film seriously, has a point of view and something of a style it is refreshing. His Trump obsession did become tedious after a while, however.
January 15, 2019
Far and away my favorite film critic. Convincing.
February 18, 2019
This is the most entertaining book of film criticism I’ve read in ages. Hamrah’s sardonic wit and interesting takes left me wishing he could review every movie.
July 7, 2019
One of the best film critics going.
January 1, 2019
Tinha uma professora que me dizia que, quando se escrevia uma crítica, se devia dizer quem era o artista, qual o contexto e não me lembro de mais nada. Tentei nunca seguir essa ou outras «listas de compras». Tenho tiques de estrutura a escrever, claro, que preferia não ter. Sempre que possível, tento identificá-los e eliminá-los. É difícil. Mas prefiro esses clichés inadvertidos aos que se praticam de propósito, que se ensinam como se fossem coisas sérias.
Fico com uma boa dose de inveja de The Earth Dies Streaming, porque é bem escrito, porque cada recensão, das pequenas às maiores, é sumarenta e vibrante. Antes de ler não se sabe onde o crítico quer chegar, nem como vai lá chegar. Usa referências teóricas e sabe a sua história mas não as emprega por norma, apenas quando fazem sentido, quando são necessárias. A História do Cinema é tão depressa invocada ou descartada como um sonho, como a descrição de uma sessão de cinema, como uma anedota pessoal ou um mito. É uma escrita frondosa mas económica, onde mesmo meia dúzia de linhas dizem muito mais do que seria razoável esperar de tão pouca coisa.
Por comparação, a maioria da crítica lê-se como um formulário preenchido, que tem sempre a mesma duração, a mesma estrutura, as mesmas intenções ou os mesmos critérios.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, o último filme dos irmãos Cohen, lembrou-me até que ponto ando viciado em barras de progresso, um hábito derivado de assistir a filmes no computador. Saber quanto falta para terminar é um grau zero de spoiler, é algo que nos sossega um pouco, talvez demais. Um volte-face a uma hora do fim dificilmente será definitivo. A barra de progresso é um indicador da nossa falta de tempo, do nosso tempo formatado, e aparece em todo o lado. Um romance lido no kindle tem a sua barra de progresso, um ensaio no medium anuncia-nos o tempo estimado de leitura. A Balada de Buster Scruggs, usando o formato velhinho da antologia temática de pequenas narrativas, baralha-nos as expectativas. Sabe-se que as histórias vão terminar mal, mas nunca se sabe como ou quando se vai chegar ao triste fim. Fantasiei até que seria interessante rodear um filme de pseudo-imagens, de outros filmes, de modo que o espectador nem avançando com o rato sobre a barra de progresso soubesse o que vinha para a frente ou quando o filme terminava. Havia uma estratégia semelhante quando se importavam livros proibidos durante o período da inquisição em Portugal. Disfarçava-se uma obra, compondo-a dentro de outra, com uma falsa introdução e conclusão.
A crítica de Hamrah com as suas oscilações de formato, de temática e de método tem o efeito semelhante de apanhar o leitor desprevenido, de não lhe dar uma lista de compras. É o tipo de escrita que só muito dificilmente será plagiada num trabalho de escola, porque não responde a perguntas concretas, não dá estrelinhas, tem a sua própria agenda a cumprir. Vale a pena segui-la nos seus próprios termos.
Fico com uma boa dose de inveja de The Earth Dies Streaming, porque é bem escrito, porque cada recensão, das pequenas às maiores, é sumarenta e vibrante. Antes de ler não se sabe onde o crítico quer chegar, nem como vai lá chegar. Usa referências teóricas e sabe a sua história mas não as emprega por norma, apenas quando fazem sentido, quando são necessárias. A História do Cinema é tão depressa invocada ou descartada como um sonho, como a descrição de uma sessão de cinema, como uma anedota pessoal ou um mito. É uma escrita frondosa mas económica, onde mesmo meia dúzia de linhas dizem muito mais do que seria razoável esperar de tão pouca coisa.
Por comparação, a maioria da crítica lê-se como um formulário preenchido, que tem sempre a mesma duração, a mesma estrutura, as mesmas intenções ou os mesmos critérios.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, o último filme dos irmãos Cohen, lembrou-me até que ponto ando viciado em barras de progresso, um hábito derivado de assistir a filmes no computador. Saber quanto falta para terminar é um grau zero de spoiler, é algo que nos sossega um pouco, talvez demais. Um volte-face a uma hora do fim dificilmente será definitivo. A barra de progresso é um indicador da nossa falta de tempo, do nosso tempo formatado, e aparece em todo o lado. Um romance lido no kindle tem a sua barra de progresso, um ensaio no medium anuncia-nos o tempo estimado de leitura. A Balada de Buster Scruggs, usando o formato velhinho da antologia temática de pequenas narrativas, baralha-nos as expectativas. Sabe-se que as histórias vão terminar mal, mas nunca se sabe como ou quando se vai chegar ao triste fim. Fantasiei até que seria interessante rodear um filme de pseudo-imagens, de outros filmes, de modo que o espectador nem avançando com o rato sobre a barra de progresso soubesse o que vinha para a frente ou quando o filme terminava. Havia uma estratégia semelhante quando se importavam livros proibidos durante o período da inquisição em Portugal. Disfarçava-se uma obra, compondo-a dentro de outra, com uma falsa introdução e conclusão.
A crítica de Hamrah com as suas oscilações de formato, de temática e de método tem o efeito semelhante de apanhar o leitor desprevenido, de não lhe dar uma lista de compras. É o tipo de escrita que só muito dificilmente será plagiada num trabalho de escola, porque não responde a perguntas concretas, não dá estrelinhas, tem a sua própria agenda a cumprir. Vale a pena segui-la nos seus próprios termos.
December 27, 2018
It feels incompatible with Hamrah's style to give this book a rating on a scale, but it shifted the way I think about entertainment, and I laughed out loud more times than I can count. Several favorite quotes:
"...Star Wars showed that the unparalleled appeal of the American system is bound up with the projection of images that combine innocence with firepower."
"[A Quiet Place] is a paranoid fantasy for dads who want to move upstate. The family is Pinteresty and wholesome in a Kinfolk magazine way: sustainable-farm craftspeople who the director-stars John Krasinski and Emily Blunt have observed from their Brooklyn town house on the way to Court Street Grocers."
"'Always imagine new places,' Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) instructs, but Inception refuses to do that. It presents instantly recognizable non-places, swanky hotel bars in world capitals, vistas from James Bond movies with skiing in them, postapocalyptic landscapes from comic books. Suffused with an ahistorical sensibility, this insta-remake of Shutter Island combines the washy metaphysics of Nicolas Roeg films with Where Eagles Dare--a range of unsmiling British unfun. Terrible dialogue fights to the death with bombastic music meant to pound a 'militarized subconscious' into further submission, which it does.
"Inception succeeds in convincing us for two and a half hours that somehow our dreams and lives are exactly like all the bad action movies we have ever seen. The film has none of the vivid unpredictable banality of dreams or life. Instead it has the kind of banality found in Speed 2--it puts dreamers on cruise control, lays them out on gurneys, runs them up and down elevators. I can't recount the plot of Inception or tell you what it means, but I can tell you this: People whose dream movie is a bad movie about dreams that are like bad movies are fucked."
"Ben Stiller is the Mel Gibson of comedy."
Do I always agree with Hamrah's opinions? I don't. Inception's not my "dream movie," but I enjoyed the experience of watching it in a theater. I think the review of Call Me By Your Name is much too pat and cynical and Hamrah's treatment of the protagonist of Lady Bird is unfair. But it's always a particular pleasure to watch Hamrah apply his grim, deflating brain to overstuffed Hollywood pap.
"...Star Wars showed that the unparalleled appeal of the American system is bound up with the projection of images that combine innocence with firepower."
"[A Quiet Place] is a paranoid fantasy for dads who want to move upstate. The family is Pinteresty and wholesome in a Kinfolk magazine way: sustainable-farm craftspeople who the director-stars John Krasinski and Emily Blunt have observed from their Brooklyn town house on the way to Court Street Grocers."
"'Always imagine new places,' Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) instructs, but Inception refuses to do that. It presents instantly recognizable non-places, swanky hotel bars in world capitals, vistas from James Bond movies with skiing in them, postapocalyptic landscapes from comic books. Suffused with an ahistorical sensibility, this insta-remake of Shutter Island combines the washy metaphysics of Nicolas Roeg films with Where Eagles Dare--a range of unsmiling British unfun. Terrible dialogue fights to the death with bombastic music meant to pound a 'militarized subconscious' into further submission, which it does.
"Inception succeeds in convincing us for two and a half hours that somehow our dreams and lives are exactly like all the bad action movies we have ever seen. The film has none of the vivid unpredictable banality of dreams or life. Instead it has the kind of banality found in Speed 2--it puts dreamers on cruise control, lays them out on gurneys, runs them up and down elevators. I can't recount the plot of Inception or tell you what it means, but I can tell you this: People whose dream movie is a bad movie about dreams that are like bad movies are fucked."
"Ben Stiller is the Mel Gibson of comedy."
Do I always agree with Hamrah's opinions? I don't. Inception's not my "dream movie," but I enjoyed the experience of watching it in a theater. I think the review of Call Me By Your Name is much too pat and cynical and Hamrah's treatment of the protagonist of Lady Bird is unfair. But it's always a particular pleasure to watch Hamrah apply his grim, deflating brain to overstuffed Hollywood pap.
March 15, 2021
Hamrah's signature move is writing a little bit about a bunch of movies in short succession, mostly movies that came out at the same time but also a few that he happened to see during the period he's covering. It's an effective move and is particularly effective in the context of a book; it turns out reminders of half-remembered dreck is a good way of remembering what a particular moment in time felt like. I wouldn't have guessed that Milk, Frost/Nixon, Tropic Thunder, and Slumdog Millionaire all came out the last year of the Bush presidency and the Obama/McCain election. I can't imagine wanting to remember any of those movies (or that election) ever again.
Hamrah is at his best when he's reflecting on US imperialism/foreign policy. The essay about the films of the Iraq War is a real highlight. You kind of wish he payed a little more attention to the runaway inequality and one-sided class war of the era he covers a little bit more. He's so sharp at reading into the politics of a set of movies; I wonder what the movies of the Obama era had to say about the effects of explosive inequality on the body politic.
Hamrah wrote a lovely essay about Rosenbaum which is collected in this book. I've been reading Rosenbaum a lot lately and it highlights something Hamrah doesn't really do: he's not big on championing artists or movies he likes. It's hard to think of people like Kiarostami, Raul Ruiz, de Oliveira, Straub-Hulliet without thinking of Rosenbaum. Hamrah doens't really advocate for anyone in particular (with the exception of Akerman, who doesn't need the help). I was a little frustrated with that until I read MZS's ludicrous Snyder Cut review earlier today and was reminded how few critics there are with Hamrah's thoughtfulness, political seriousness, and insight.
Hamrah is at his best when he's reflecting on US imperialism/foreign policy. The essay about the films of the Iraq War is a real highlight. You kind of wish he payed a little more attention to the runaway inequality and one-sided class war of the era he covers a little bit more. He's so sharp at reading into the politics of a set of movies; I wonder what the movies of the Obama era had to say about the effects of explosive inequality on the body politic.
Hamrah wrote a lovely essay about Rosenbaum which is collected in this book. I've been reading Rosenbaum a lot lately and it highlights something Hamrah doesn't really do: he's not big on championing artists or movies he likes. It's hard to think of people like Kiarostami, Raul Ruiz, de Oliveira, Straub-Hulliet without thinking of Rosenbaum. Hamrah doens't really advocate for anyone in particular (with the exception of Akerman, who doesn't need the help). I was a little frustrated with that until I read MZS's ludicrous Snyder Cut review earlier today and was reminded how few critics there are with Hamrah's thoughtfulness, political seriousness, and insight.
April 25, 2021
From the interview that concludes the paperback edition that just came out: "I hope what I write isn't 'takes.' 'Takes' to me means short-form bursts shared on the internet, initial reactions that people for some reasons think they have to get out in public immediately, without hesitation, right after they've seen something - yawns or sneezes of the keyboard. You could say 'takes' just means 'reaction,' or 'opinion.' Then, when the takes by definition have to be hot, it's going to be nihilistic and crummy. If all criticism is just takes now, at least I serve mine cold."
A little too dismissive and he doesn't stay with the material he is barreling through to really mine much insight or create startling realizations for the reader. These aren't extended or close examinations. Rather you are made to get a sense of the sheer number of movies he has to grind through to work as a critic.
But there are some great nuggets in it and it's refreshing how negative he is (he goes into why that is rarer and rarer in criticism). One thing I particularly enjoyed and sympathized with was Hamrah's seeming dislike of most documentaries: a stream of stock footage is "detritus from the lower rungs of film history could be marshaled into formation to make glib points about things we are against. Most documentaries do this now, even if that's not all they do." Also: "(Most documentaries are radio with pictures.)"
A little too dismissive and he doesn't stay with the material he is barreling through to really mine much insight or create startling realizations for the reader. These aren't extended or close examinations. Rather you are made to get a sense of the sheer number of movies he has to grind through to work as a critic.
But there are some great nuggets in it and it's refreshing how negative he is (he goes into why that is rarer and rarer in criticism). One thing I particularly enjoyed and sympathized with was Hamrah's seeming dislike of most documentaries: a stream of stock footage is "detritus from the lower rungs of film history could be marshaled into formation to make glib points about things we are against. Most documentaries do this now, even if that's not all they do." Also: "(Most documentaries are radio with pictures.)"
December 18, 2021
Read these essays as the Earth, and America, is dying, or at least on life support, sitting still at a private hospital run by clowns and, what, bankers? Politicians? It's hard to figure what people actually want – what they actually are – at this moment. You could say greed in general is the motivator, but there should be a lot of money to be made in saving ourselves. So what is it? What has become of us in these decades of ignored wars and continually disseminated media?
Hamrah's writing on film – the industry, the art, the experience seeing and trying to see it – gave me immense clarity to what actually has taken place in the first two decades of my adulthood. He writes about film wondering what it is in our shared culture, at the global scale. A review of Kiarostami is as much about America as it is his own films. For those pages, I imagined myself an émigré, and felt finally able to see how casually, expectedly violent American culture really is. We read critics like Hamrah to not just know these things, but to remember them, because that's our way out.
Hamrah has to be one of our great critics, who's writing should be celebrated and devoured. Lucky for us we have this collection.
Hamrah's writing on film – the industry, the art, the experience seeing and trying to see it – gave me immense clarity to what actually has taken place in the first two decades of my adulthood. He writes about film wondering what it is in our shared culture, at the global scale. A review of Kiarostami is as much about America as it is his own films. For those pages, I imagined myself an émigré, and felt finally able to see how casually, expectedly violent American culture really is. We read critics like Hamrah to not just know these things, but to remember them, because that's our way out.
Hamrah has to be one of our great critics, who's writing should be celebrated and devoured. Lucky for us we have this collection.
February 7, 2020
"The Earth Dies Streaming" is a hilarious and mean corrective to the prevailing idea in popular American criticism today: that "entertainment" is the best thing anyone or anything can offer, and that you should shut up if you think otherwise. You could call A.S. Hamrah a "hater," and you'd probably be right-- he's got pretty acerbic things to say about 90% of the films he watches-- but I consider his bile, uh, well-meaning. The critique he comes to again and again is that a lot of films tell bullshit stories: stories that endorse violence, stories that demean entire populations, stories that offer phony chances at redemption, stories that justify horrible atrocities, stories that make light of serious issues, stories that distract us from the truth. It was the third film book I've read this year, and it paired well with that Arundhati Roy essay collection I'll probably never finish... Both are finally energetic feats of political commentary, only this one has way more insults directed toward James Franco.
January 7, 2019
This might be the most exciting and refreshing first collection of film criticism to come along since Pauline Kael’s ‘I Lost It at the Movies’ more than 50 years ago. Like Kael back then, Hamrah has been writing outside the mainstream, mostly for the brilliant journal n+1. He has developed his own tight, iconoclastic style in which he praises - or kisses off - a movie in just a few graphs. Because he isn’t employed by a MSM outlet the writer makes his lack of a major power base into a real advantage. He points out the ridiculous notion of mainstream critics hewing to the PR/wide release strategy of the major studios, wasting space on films that few adult readers of newspapers or magazines would have any interest in (i.e. Marvel junk & Disney kiddie fare). Hamrah’s attitude and outlet have left him a financially struggling freelancer but this book should open new doors just as ‘I Lost It...’ did for Kael. He has restored my faith in movie criticism.
February 22, 2020
This a smart, compulsively readable book of film criticism by a film critic who is not afraid to take a position at odds, at times, with other more mainstream reviewers. And he knowledgeably backs up his positions with references to film history, contemporary culture, politics and even the occasional arcane piece of knowledge. Still, it is more than just film criticism; it is a book that takes aim at the world we live in. As such, it should be read – and enjoyed – by any reader interested in the current state of our deeply divided world. Highly recommend!
April 5, 2022
This is a great collection of top notch film and cultural criticism. I may not want to discuss my personal film opinions with him directly as his takes tend toward the acerbic and anti-entertainment. But, I certainly enjoy reading as he tears films apart and weaves cultural analysis into his takes without becoming preachy or heavy handed. If you hate the current climate of blockbuster friendly recaps in most magazines/websites, you will dig this. I highly recommend.
September 2, 2024
I hope Hamrah never dies so he can write about movies forever. Watching genocide play out made me good for nothing, but I was able to read a little of bit of this book and watch a movie that Hamrah made interesting and read the critique again. That didn’t feel insignificant when every screen was filled with horror and helplessness. It kept me focused.
December 5, 2018
I’ve read at least half of the pieces in here and I still devoured it in two days. Mordantly, surgically funny, Hamrah can unearth the true and essential (or inessential, in many cases) in practically any film in under two sentences.
April 13, 2021
Love this guy's film writing so much that I didn't even mind when he sidetracked into covering painter Thomas Kinkade's housing subdivision, and in fact that might've been my favorite part. No spoilers but the book leaves you needing to watch more movies by Boris Barnet.
October 5, 2021
I've read these essays many times over. I turn to Hamrah's criticism again and again, not only for his perspective on cinema but for his singular writing, which is often darkly funny, and eternally quotable. Essential reading from an essential critic.
August 11, 2019
A great read, highly enjoyable. But the question has to be asked - if you hate so many movies, why be a film critic?
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