Was that the Director's Cut of "Independence Day"??
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I am so happy to see A.S. Hamrah's work getting some broader exposure, and hopefully some amplification via the review, here in the Times. He is a master of the pithy sentence that ties a film's meanings--whether hidden or overt--to larger cultural and political implications in brilliant and unexpected ways. Such "against the grain" readings are illuminating, and in too-short supply among most film critics working today. As mentioned in the review, Hamrah manages to be politically incisive without being pedantic or long-winded. His resistance to the dull logic of the blurb is also commendable. Highly recommended! (as is n+1 overall)
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Just movie reviews? Now, ff you're properly streaming, you're likely binging multi-part series as well, in which case the inevitable bane issue for any contemporary critic is discerning whether a particular property would have been better off as a movie or a series. If some movies can feel a bit light or sketchy in so far as character development, there are too many series that feel slack, over-padded and over-dialogued because the producers have been contractually obligated to make ten flaccid episodes when all that was needed was a tight seven. The earth may die streaming, but till then, the great work is to find the those movie and/or series that achieves that holy grail of grails, narrative efficiency: a story that tells itself in the right amount of time.
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Nice = sentimental. Good to know there is someone out there saying no to sentimental in a new way.
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I am a big fan of A.S. Hamrah. This book is a remarkable read. Thank you for this review, Jennifer Szalai.
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A.S Hamrah (along with Richard Brody), are my 2 favorite film critics. Not because we share distinctly similar tastes, but because the way they write about film makes me pause and reflect on what I’m seeing.
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This review seemed self-contradictory to me. Mr. Hamrah says he doesn't want to be blurbed, but then Ms. Szalai uses pull-quote after pull-quote in exactly the way advertisers and publicists do in their blurbs. Why not a more thoughtful, if short, summary of a single review (or essay) that could stand in as a prime example of Mr. Hamrah's approach, or if that's not possible, saying so and describing why? That would be harder to write, but potentially more useful to a reader.
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@James McCalla You make a good point, but if Szalai had done that, chances would be good that the review chosen would be of a movie that not every reader had seen. I know people who've never seen a Whit Stillman movie, and although I see many movies, I haven't seen everything Spielberg's done in the last ten years (The BFG? War Horse? Missed 'em). There's no easier way to get people to tune out than to discuss something they know nothing about. I can't bother reading beyond the first sentence of any essay on Harry Potter, for example.
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@James McCalla - Can you see any of the pull quotes being put to commercial purposes? Would the line about McEwan's shopping lists or the one about Stillman's films resembling porn without sex ever work as DVD box or Netflix / Amazon summary material? That's Hamrah's point. Because Ms. Szalai doesn't work for Miramax, her use of the quotes doesn't violate Hamrah's critical ethos, but rather helps to explicate it.
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@James McCalla
I'm not sure celebrating a sentence's nuance, precision or wit by giving an example is the same thing as a blurb, as Hamrah describes 'used for publicity'.
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