Substack Corrections: Year One

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin, Searchlight Pictures

NOTE: For assorted reasons, this week’s regular newsletter will be folded into a double-sized edition next week, and regular readers should expect at least two extra posts in the coming weeks as well. Thank you for your patience and please stay tuned!

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Sometimes my first impressions are wrong. I’ve written before about my aversion to the question “What did you think?” being asked within seconds of a movie’s end credits rolling. I don’t know what I think, I always want to say, and even when I do, I never want to articulate my thoughts on the spot. There’s a certain reprocessing that happens in our minds given time and space and a good night’s sleep, and some of the best (and worst) movies I’ve seen have only become clear to me after a bit of distance.

With that being said, the first year of Hey, What Are You Watching? has been an interesting challenge in honing my opinions within a limited amount of time. Each week, at any given moment, I’m aware that by Sunday I need to know roughly how I feel about what I just watched, read, or heard – so I can tell all of you. This might not sound tough if you’re a critic who’s made your career firing off quick takes on Twitter moments after seeing your tenth new release of the day at a film festival, but that’s never been my style. It’s taken me a while to get used to the idea of sharing my opinion on everything – even in the safe confines of a newsletter I edit myself.

Opinions are malleable and impermanent, influenced by shifting moods, moments we can’t get out of our heads, and sometimes, frankly, by hearing better opinions from smarter people. It’s always seemed silly to me to pretend otherwise. As such, I’ve decided to issue some minor “corrections” from my first full year on Substack. Please forgive me.