Welcome to Movie Time With Zach. As you might guess, this is a newsletter dedicated to movies, but also much more (including bad Photoshop).

Before I explain what goes on here, consider hitting the Subscribe button below. The time to get “MTWZ” with it is now. To start, I encourage you to join as a “free” subscriber—if you really like what I’m doing here, you can always upgrade later.

On January 2, motivated and more than a bit overcome by the New Year, I wrote down a to-do list on a white notepad. Most of these tasks were professional, or at least paid, in nature: lectures, tutoring work, job applications, research projects, etc. Long story short, I’ve made enough headway on this list that I can no longer put off the following item: “5) Substack.”

I’ve hesitated to launch this newsletter for various reasons, ranging from doubts about a realistic pace of output to the familiar cost/benefit calculus. It was #5 on my list, after all.

But a few things have changed to push me to “launch.” First, it doesn’t take as much work I thought to start one of these—Substack, to its credit, makes it easy. Second, I have recently encountered, for a change, some positive news on the employment front. As a result, this Substack now seems more doable, when approached as a carefree hobby rather than as some five-figure-pulling juggernaut that will solve all my immediate problems.

Lastly, I just want in! I have seen too many things in “the culture” come and go over these past few months, and I need an outlet that isn’t Letterboxd to chime in as I see fit. I have been reading others use this platform to do the same, often encountering a lot of incisive and witty writing in the process. I make no promises as to the quality of the newsletters to come, only that I see this outlet as a natural meeting point where I can connect the film/event/idea du jour to my foundational interests, enthusiasms, and dare I say expertise.

Who I am (Zach)

This blog is called Movie Time With Zach because with me (Zach), it’s always Movie Time. Yes, this is yet another cinephile’s Substack. For better or worse, it also belongs to a recent PhD in film studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On top of that, I also work as an archivist of film-related materials. These perspectives—cinephile, historian, educator, archivist—invariably inform the writing you’ll find here.

I strive to watch “everything,” and I’d like to use MTWZ to explore all corners of my viewing and reading habits. My critical perspective toward film leans auteurist, but I am much less doctrinaire (and grumpy) about cinema than I used to be. Thanks to my boyfriend, my television diet, such as it exists, includes a lot of Bravo; an axiom foundational to my current approach to moving images is that Real Housewives of Salt Lake City > 99% of prestige TV. I hope to address this very topic here soon.

Friday’s post—a belated “Top Films of 2024” list—will illustrate my critical sensibility with some recent film examples. You can also track my film taste on my personal website, where I keep lists of favorite films organized by decade, or again on my Letterboxd. While I’m on this topic, here’s some favorite directors of mine, shot from the hip: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Hong Sang-soo, Otto Preminger, Huillet/Straub, Chantal Akerman, Abbas Kiarostami, Mikio Naruse, David Lynch, and John M. Stahl.

Sorry. I had to get that out of my system, after seeing a Top 10 directors prompt going around on X/Twitter. Future posts will not just assert but elaborate on my critical preferences, as befits a platform for long-form prose. And many newsletters will shy away from opinions altogether.

What I write about

Most posts will relate, unsurprisingly, to movies. I envision the majority of newsletters to be short-to-medium-length (600-1500 words) critical essays on new releases and discoveries. Essentially, expect deeper, more fully evidenced versions of the capsule reviews I do on Letterboxd (for two recent examples, see me on A Complete Unknown and on Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point). As long as I have called myself a writer (since high school), I have written film criticism, and this Substack will serve as an outlet for this form of writing.

As mentioned prior, my main line of work is in education. Some blogs here will address this reality and/or put this training to use. Expect the occasional post that summarizes an ongoing research project or publication. As a researcher, I focus on the study of American media companies, with a specific interest in the history of “boutique” film distributors. I have written media industry analysis for a general audience before: see my co-written blogs for Observations on Film Art, on the state of independent filmgoing (from September 2024) and the production history of Moana 2 (from last month), for a taste.

In addition, I intend to address other education-related subjects like research methods and pedagogy, not to mention positively sunny topics like the academic job market. I believe my personal experience—with its many ups and downs—is broadly representative of junior scholars in the humanities writ large, so some good might come in reflecting on that experience publicly. Or maybe behind a paywall. Either way, I’d also like to use this platform to share thoughts on recent scholarship as well as report on the academic conferences I attend.

Beyond movies and academia, I imagine I will also address my other interests, in music, television, cooking, literature, American politics, internet culture, and video games.

Sometimes, all you need is a soundbite or an image from culture to inspire a post. Consider last week’s SNL50 and its cutaway gag to Jon Lovitz. I laughed the hardest at this stupid joke, out of everything from that anniversary special. And I was honestly inspired that multiple friends reached out to me to say they thought of me at that moment. I don’t know what that says about me, good or bad, but I do know that I am the second-biggest Rat Race (2001) fan in Madison, Wisconsin,1 and that you can count on me to unpack the silly as well as the serious. With a Substack, Important Moments like the image above get their due before culture jettisons them back into oblivion.

In sum, I vow that this Substack will stand apart from the crowd by finding space for discussions of slapstick comedy, Moses und Aron, the Walt Disney Company, Elden Ring, and, I don’t know, Thomas Grattan and ML Buch.

The more I learn about the kind of personalities and discourse Substack attracts, the more I realize that last declaration comes across as a joke. But seriously, I will write about all of those things.

The MTWZ publishing agenda

I will post here a few times a month—sometimes you’ll receive several newsletters in one week, other times two or three weeks might pass between new volumes. The more subscribers, the more incentive for me to keep writing.

In other words, please subscribe! To encourage you to join the mailing rolls, I keep most entries free to all subscribers, regardless of subscription level, for a three-day (72-hour) period after initial publication. After this initial three-day period, some posts will go behind the paywall. Paid subscribers enjoy full access to the Movie Time With Zach archive, plus the odd, subscriber-only entry.

I will keep this post public in perpetuity, as well as my next one. This Friday, expect a “Top 10 Films of 2024” list, just before Sunday’s Oscars ceremony closes the window, momentarily at least, on this annual iteration of listmaking.

In addition to new pieces on various aspects of culture, I will occasionally post older works of mine that can no longer be (easily) accessed online. Next week, for instance, I will share a 2017 essay on the world music soundtrack of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986). To avoid missing this and the rest to come, sign up above!