I've published 500 reviews. Thanks for reading.
Plus, I watched a ton of new movies this week
As of today, I have published 500 reviews on 150 Word Reviews since launching this project way back in October 2023. That's hundreds of Mercifully Short™ write-ups, each exactly 150 words. Not 149, not 151. One hundred and fifty, and that's a John DeVore guarantee.
There are also dozens of longer essays about culture, masculinity, and movies. This one about Fight Club is one of my most popular. Here’s the archive of everything.
This has been a true labor of love-slash-coping mechanism, and I’m lucky enough to be supported by 2,400 subscribers — that’s you! — and I couldn’t be more thankful. Of those subscribers, 60 are also paying members who help me keep this newsletter free for all of humanity.
The inspiration for 150 Word Reviews is simple: I like watching movies. Film noirs, musicals, period dramas, sci-fi horror, Hong Kong action, westerns. I’ll sit through almost anything—even Terrifier 3.
I don’t believe in rating systems. Yes, movies are commodities. But they’re also alive; they breathe and change shape. I’m not writing product reviews here; I don’t actually know what you should do with your hard-earned money. Or your time. You should watch anything you want, in my opinion, but also open your heart to surprises, to indie flicks, foreign films, and stories about people who are nothing like you.
My process isn’t always perfect, either. There are times I don’t click with a movie, and that’s not the movie’s fault. I didn’t like Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula when it came out. I was young and couldn’t appreciate the horniness of his sensual, blood-sucking black mass. I disliked Poor Things, for instance, but, again, maybe that’s my problem? I will probably watch it again someday.
It’s a dark time for people who work with words. Social platforms want stars and hearts and likes. “Engagement,” whatever that means. Meanwhile, new technologies extrude words in vast quantities, for free, in an instant. None of that is what I do. I’m honestly not entirely sure I know what I do anymore sometimes, or even why, but I’m grateful as hell you’re reading.
— John
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New 150 Word Review: ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ (2026)
150 Word Review: ‘The Plague’ (2025)
New 150 Word Reviews: ‘My Own Private Idaho’ (1991)
New 150 Word Review: ‘Mr. Klein’ (1976)
New 150 Word Review: ‘Lost In America’ (1985)
¹I almost used the word “scale” instead of “grow,” which is a word I learned to use when I worked at a once high-flying start-up years ago. By the end of my time there, I was throwing around “scale” in casual conversations, just to sound like I knew what I was doing (I did not). The tech world is obsessed with “scaling,” at the expense of everything else. It’s the only thing that matters. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, congratulations on being spared this particular corporate brain worm. To scale is to grow, to consume, to do more with less. At this start-up, every conversation was about dramatically increasing traffic, engagement, users, KPIs—oh god, KPIs—just never-ending blabbering in meeting rooms about pushing all the arrows up, up, up without any new investments or resources. The answer was always “Work harder, longer, be a team player.” Burn out. I was laid off, eventually. I want to grow my newsletter, but a former colleague’s little voice is in my head: “Bro, you've got to scale.” I can’t scale a newsletter called 150 Word Reviews. I’m a bespoke business, and I’d love your money. The end.
Random 150 Word Review: ‘Jiro Dreams Of Sushi’ (2011)
well done, John. congrats on 500
It’s a rough time for snappers as well. My next door neighbor was a photographer for WaPo for 30 years.
I’m basically retired now but when I was shooting weddings as a means to an end, I probably spent half my time telling people why they shouldn’t hire me and directing them to the industry shooters who had scaled up.