In 2015, Matt Zoller Seitz started a series of essays with these words: “The following is the inaugural installment of “30 Minutes On, “a new feature at the MZS blog wherein the author spends exactly 30 minutes writing about a movie, then hits publish.” Since then, he has run this critical exercise dozens of times on old movies, new movies, blockbusters, and independent films (and sometimes expanded it to 60 Minutes). This is a collection of those essays. (Header Credit: Brianna Ashby.)


30 Minutes on The Killer

30 Minutes on The Limey

30 Minutes on I Am Big Bird

30 Minutes on Halloween

“30 Minutes on Commando

30 Minutes on Cool Hand Luke

30 Minutes on Whiplash

30 Minutes on The Swimmer

30 Minutes on The Apartment

30 Minutes on The Revenant

30 Minutes on Midnight Special

30 Minutes on Hollow Man

30 Minutes on They Live

30 Minutes on The Lobster

30 Minutes on Planet of the Apes

60 Minutes on The Dirty Dozen

30 Minutes on The Thing

60 Minutes on Doctor Strange

30 Minutes on Allied

60 Minutes on John Wick: Chapter Two

30 Minutes on The Terminator

30 Minutes on King Kong Escapes

30 Minutes on Baby Driver

30 Minutes on Elevator to the Gallows

30 Minutes on It

30 Minutes on Straight, No Chaser

60 Minutes on Wonder Woman

60 Minutes on Get Out

30 Minutes on As Good As It Gets

30 Minutes on The Hudsucker Proxy

30 Minutes on The Greatest Showman

30 Minutes on Wonderstruck

60 Minutes on The Death of Stalin

30 Minutes on Rampage

30 Minutes on The Meg

30 Minutes on Searching

60 Minutes on The Hate U Give

30 Minutes on A Star is Born

30 Minutes on Mid90s

30 Minutes on Beautiful Boy

30 Minutes on A Private War

30 Minutes on Bohemian Rhapsody

30 Minutes on The Public Enemy

30 Minutes on White Heat

30 Minutes on If Beale Street Could Talk

30 Minutes on I Knew It Was You

30 Minutes on The Public

30 Minutes on Rocketman

30 Minutes on The Mule

30 Minutes on Alien

30 Minutes on Prometheus

30 Minutes on Crawl

30 Minutes on The Post

30 Minutes on Not Fade Away

“30 Minutes on The Manchurian Candidate”

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30 Minutes on “The Graduate

30 Minutes on “Body Heat

30 Minutes on “The Thomas Crown Affair

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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