For me, I think Inde Navarrette will and should be a star. I think the things that are good and interesting about this bottom-heavy, exhausted masterplot are entirely due to the wisdom of her performance. Entirely. She's the moral rudder. The ship isn't seaworthy, but the rudder is unerring & true.

The people who have spent centuries depicting Jesus Christ, a real brown Palestinian Jew, as a blond haired blue eyed white guy, are upset that a film depicts Helen of Troy—a fictional person—as a Black woman They are upset that another film depicts Snape—also a fictional being—as a Black man 1/2

Oh so this is the "I will spot you some early wildness before I harvest your souls" Misiorowski.

When you realize you HAVE danced with the devil in the pale moonlight.

All the developers 404 Media talked to were excited to try using LLMs at work at first, or were at least curious about them. Their feelings about the tools, based on their personal experience, are now overwhelmingly negative. AI is rotting their brains www.404media.co/software-dev...

Who was that guy having too much fun at that midnight screening of the 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival? Here's the answer, along with my top five of the festival. @mkefilm.bsky.social

Beginning to think Kubrick is staging these assassination attempts but demanding more takes

Most days my son, who attends school where I teach, uses my car in the middle of the day. On Thursday, I found my returned car oddly angled in the parking lot. Then I looked at my texts.

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival @mkefilm.bsky.social is at its midpoint but hardly slowing down. Check out these under-the-radar picks for the remaining days. This year you can find my fest pieces in area Conley Media newspapers, and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

The 2026 Milwaukee Film Festival @mkefilm.bsky.social started today. Check out the retro program! This year you can find my fest pieces in area Conley Media newspapers, and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

I'm sure it's because I was a film critic for 21 years and went to a movie theater 2-5 times a week and getting treats every time was untenable, but I do not understand people who think $20 in concessions is "part of the cost of moviegoing." You can bring your own! Or not eat! You don't have to eat!

Some thoughts about the 2026 @mkefilm.bsky.social Festival, which kicks off April 16. This year you can find my fest pieces in four local Conley Media newspapers and online at Greater Milwaukee Today. Link in comments.

The NYT calls it like it is

I think one of the reasons so many films today don’t hit emotionally like they should is so many films shot digitally just do NOT use film grammar well anymore. Film is a dying language. This is a close-up in a 1922 Elvira Notari film. She cuts in close so we feel this woman’s sadness viscerally.

I can't recall a time when more talented reporters and writers on movies and culture who have real skill and knowledge are struggling to find a foothold. We live in an "Everyone's an expert" era. But everyone isn't. Editors: Please take a chance on folks you haven't tried before. Read their clips!

Everybody's asking

There were tiny kids in the audience laughing their little heads off at 99-year-old comedies and I don’t think there’s a stronger recommendation than that

Isn't it fun to watch teams trade clutch buckets in the final minute of a basketball game without stopping for timeouts or for referees to fuss over where to set the clock?

Least aware religious fanatic I’ve ever seen.

When you choose the movie and everyone hates it

No one will ever convince me that having thousands of open hands between the patient, the doctor, the medicines, and the facilities needed is "smarter business."

A truly excellent @kphipps3000.bsky.social rumination today on video stores, inspired by Alex Ross Perry's VIDEOHEAVEN and the Criterion Channel VHS series. Not a nostalgia piece, but a more clear-headed remembrance of a bygone era. (Also free to read!): thereveal.film/ghosts-of-vi...

The martial arts scenes in It’s A Wonderful Life were a key influence on The Matrix

This really feels like an Orban/Erdogan situation in which the aspiring dictator is making sure his friendly oligarchs control as much media as possible www.cnbc.com/2026/02/26/w...

Paramount getting rid of Warner Brothers’ woke movies

Look at the mask on the far right. Kubrick knew.

‘Diane, 11:30 a.m., February 24th. Entering the town of Twin Peaks. Move out of the way of my gun, Diane.’

Incredible opinion. It holds that the common ICE tactic of jumping out of an unidentified rental vehicle and seizing suspected noncitizens while masked violates the Fourth Amendment because the *manner* of the seizure is incompatible with a free society governed by the rule of law.

I think i'm a book snob. I have a lit degree, read the classics and settled on a modern american lit focus. Most of the books I read and loved for my degree were old, tightly written and well told. Every time I try to read current fiction, my brain spends the entire experience rewriting the book.

Sometimes very hard not to feel like the rest of the country has abandoned Minnesota. We STILL have ICE everywhere. Our schools, businesses, and economy are in profound crisis. But without Bovino here throwing tear gas, much of the country seems to not care at all what’s being done to us.

Listen, it's not my favorite genre, either. But imagine being so myopic that you can't set aside your personal music preferences for a mere 15 minutes and find a way to recognize the joy, pageantry, artistry and patriotism in a superstar's labor-of-love performance. That sounds so... miserable.

Father confronts ICE after they chase his daughter home…

The execution of Alex Pretti is playing so badly because you can look at his actions and life story - his last act was helping, boy scout, athlete, health care worker to veterans - and compare those to the men who killed him and know which you would want to be your son, brother, father, uncle.

Wouldn’t have made it out of the VEEP writers room

Alex Pretti was a great American. The people defending his killers are not.

This witness to Alex Pretti's murder not only refutes the governmen't story, but says she is afraid to go home because federal agents might arrest her. This is what it feels like to live under state terror. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

It is fun when you’re heading for a screening of a movie called THE SHITHEADS and the volunteers directing people to the correct theater have to keep asking everyone: “Shitheads? Shitheads?” I’m just as God made me, sir.

ICE is now responsible for 66% of the homicides in Minneapolis this year.

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

RAGING about SINNERS being totally shut out of Best Documentary Short. Time we called out this category's bullshit systemic bias against films that are not documentaries or shorts.

SEEING IS BELIEVING DHS claims the car being chased rammed the ICE vehicle. The video shows the opposite. 📌 A father and son, a US citizen, are chased. The teen is beaten and seriously injured. The father is deported. DHS lied. The video tells the truth. Excellent reporting by Antonia Hylton.

I guess I do think if you participated in the arrest of a five-year-old you are probably just fundamentally incompatible with society. That you are not a safe person for humanity to be around, generally

I didn’t love the movie at the time, and haven’t watched it in its entirety since, but this does feel like the defining scene of our American moment.

At Davos, Trump mocked allies, rewrote WWII history, and framed gratitude as obedience—suggesting nations “owe” the U.S. for not being conquered. That’s not statesmanship. It’s imperial nostalgia and global embarrassment, delivered on the world stage.

An especially great book delivery day. Most looking forward to "The Warner Brothers," written by my friend (and former student) @chrisyogerst.com

just got out of an uber. the driver was telling me how he has to work 16 hour days, seven days a week, at two different jobs to afford rent. he doesn't have healthcare and he worries about retirement. "i would feel a lot better if we owned greenland," he told me. then he cried.

A former federal agent after watching the New York Times breakdown of the ICE shooting:

ICE is now behaving in such a way that even Tucker Carlson’s favorite Holocaust minimizing, Hitler-apologist “historian” is like “hey now guys, this is getting a little out of hand.”

Not everything is fucking RASHOMON.