With Netflix getting ready to assimilate acquire Warner Bros. (and presumably to force Looney Toons, The Matrix, and various Hogwarts alumni into streaming servitude), the fate of theatrical film is once again being debated. Not so fast! As long as there’s breath in A.S. Hamrah’s lungs, or at least power in his typing fingers, the esteemed and iconoclastic critic will fight against the dying of the night at the movies.
When Revenge of the Sith and Jaws were rereleased this year on their respective twentieth and fiftieth anniversaries, they cleaned up at the box office, despite being available streaming. But being number one at the movies is still not enough for Smilin’ Ted Sarandos to press pause on his endless sales pitch for staying at home. Releasing movies in theaters, said the Netflix co-CEO as moviegoers lined up to see decades-old films, is “an outmoded idea for most people.” One wonders who Sarandos means when he talks about most people. As early as 1954 the powerhouse screenwriter Ben Hecht was referring to Americans as “the TV watchers,” and he hardly considered that a reason to destroy theatrical exhibition. But he wasn’t a co-CEO.
More picks about film criticism
What I Saw at the Movies
“I wasn’t a film critic or festival programmer or even an aspiring director. I was just an adolescent schoolboy and, in my parents’ probably loving description, a ‘weirdo.’”
Elevate Me Later
“Highbrow horror cinema has won respectability—but sold its soul.”
The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes
“The most overrated metric in movies is erratic, reductive, and easily hacked — and yet has Hollywood in its grip.”
Back, Scoundrels: Eating the Rich on Film
“A century after ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ portraying class conflict on screen seems less black-and-white, and not just because we’ve invented color photography.”
The Making of Silent Bruce
The tragic end to Bruce Willis’ career — aphasia that challenges his speaking and cognition — shouldn’t befall anyone. Yet, as Matt Zoller Seitz points out in an incisive reading of the actor’s oeuvre, Willis long ago chose a path that would eerily presage his eventual diagnosis. You could say Willis’s career was never the…
Il Maestro
Martin Scorsese on “content,” the films of Federico Fellini, and the art of cinema.
