Mexican party for a 1-year-old baby: “We are having a few small beers.”

Rewatching some of Jafar Panahi’s films that I haven’t seen in a few years.

Bertrand Bonello’s apocalyptic NOCTURAMA would make an interesting double feature with ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. Bonello’s take on young revolutionaries fighting the system is bleak and brutal, while PTA’s humor-laced film opts for siding with hope.

Paul Thomas Anderson this, Wes Anderson that. The Andersson I need back on the big screen is Roy.

I interviewed Benicio del Toro earlier this year for LA Times. Seems like a good time to reshare. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

People posting that Bad Bunny’s visa should be cancelled so he doesn’t perform at the Super Bowl just exhibit their hateful ignorance. It has nothing to do with legality, they just hate anyone they deem foreign. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. No visa needed.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (PTA, 2025)

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (PTA, 2025)

If your parents got their green card through the amnesty in the ‘80s, they didn’t do it “the right way.” They just got lucky. Before that they were in the same shoes as the undocumented people being persecuted right now. The fact that some of you forget that is atrocious.

It will be available in the theatrical run in USA- but details are forthcoming

Jennifer Lawrence is earth-shattering in DIE MY LOVE. A wrecking ball of a performance that evinces the absurdity of normalcy, of social norms, in a breathtakingly blunt manner.

México selected the film WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED (No Nos Moverán) as its Oscar entry for Best International Film. The film won 4 Ariel Awards from the Mexican Film Academy this weekend, including Best First Feature, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay. 🇲🇽

It will be so stupid next year when ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER gets 10 Oscar nominations and the host and winners are asked to not make any political statements.

SUJO by Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero won the Ariel Award for Best Film from the Mexican Film Academy (Mexico’s Oscars). Valadez and Rondero also won the Best Director award, which makes Valadez the first woman to have ever won that award twice. So deserved! 🇲🇽🏆

One Safdie After Another

Nuyorican filmmaker Elaine Del Valle took her autobiographical work BROWNSVILLE BRED, about her relationship with her Boricua father, from the stage to the page to the screen. The feature film opens in theaters today. I interviewed her for De Los at @latimes.com: www.latimes.com/delos/story/...

If you are writing about ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER say “undocumented” and not “illegal.”

The first time I went to Sundance it surprised me that Robert Redford still did a press conference every year at the beginning of the fest. What he started had been the most important film fest in the country for decades, and he was still there cheering on the new generations. RIP

The Mexican Film Academy announced a list of 10 films in consideration to become the country’s Oscar entry. Happy to see I AM FRANKELDA among them. It would be cool if they selected the first Mexican stop-motion animated feature. It would also qualify it to compete for the Best Animated Feature.

I’ve seen ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, and I really hope Latino critics/writers get to dig into this one. There’s a piece I’d love to write and I’d love to hear from PTA or from the cultural consultant about some of the elements in the film that feel very specific (complimentary).

What a relief. Brazil ultimately selected THE SECRET AGENT as the country’s Oscar entry. It’s a masterful film. Happy for Kleber Mendonça Filho, who is one of the most brilliant filmmakers working today.

I talked to THE Stephen King for the New York Times, as well as to directors Edgar Wright, Mike Flanagan, Mary Lambert, Andy Muschietti and Francis Lawrence, who’ve made films based on his novels, about bringing the author’s words to the screen: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/m...

I talked to THE Stephen King for the New York Times, as well as to directors Edgar Wright, Mike Flanagan, Mary Lambert, Andy Muschietti and Francis Lawrence, who’ve made films based on his novels, about bringing the author’s words to the screen: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/m...

Early in the Japanese film HAPPYEND, a girl says: “That tyrant is faking an emergency to try and run a dictatorship.” It’s a near-future coming-of-ager on surveillance & fascism that feels disturbingly close to our reality. I reviewed it for @ebertvoices.bsky.social: www.google.com/search?q=joh...

Thinking about the immigrants and citizens who have been kidnapped, many in front of their kids, by masked men who deprived them of due process and basic human rights while certain people cheer at the thought of them being mauled by alligators. That’s where my empathy is going.

For De Los at @latimes.com, I profiled Oscar Nuñez, the actor who played Oscar Martinez in THE OFFICE and now THE PAPER. We discussed the character that has been part of his life for 20 years, and he spoke out about the current anti-immigrant climate in this country: www.latimes.com/delos/story/...

Saw a video of a racist white man on TikTok saying DACA recipients had all these years to become citizens but haven’t. The idiocy and ignorance is astounding. Once again, there’s no pathway for DACA recipients to get a green card much less become citizens. That’s the fight.

More than ever I hope outlets really highlight Latino heritage month. They should care for Latino talent and projects year round, but in this moment when Latinos, whether born here or not, are under attack, highlighting Latino contributions to this country is imperative, urgent.

That speaking Spanish or the way you look can now legally make you a target in a city like Los Angeles is beyond unspeakable. It’s not only about undocumented people, it’s a deep-seated hatred for a community. It directly relates to him calling Mexicans rapists/criminals in 2015.

TWINLESS is in theaters now. It’s one of my favorite films of the year. A brilliantly written dramedy by James Sweeney that boast one of the best and most poignant performances of the year: Dylan O’Brien in a dual role. I reviewed it for LA Times: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

The title of SPLITSVILLE in Mexico (and maybe all of Latin America) makes it sound like a soap opera, which in a sense it is: AMORES COMPARTIDOS (Shared Loves). Good film. Big fan of what Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin do.

Found PREPARATION FOR THE NEXT LIFE, a doomed romance between an undocumented woman and an army vet, surprisingly affecting. Fred Hechinger’s bro-ey tenderness and Sebiye Behtiyar’s unwavering dignity help it overcome some familiar trappings. My review for @variety.com: variety.com/2025/film/re...

Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN is the astounding culmination of the monster/human dichotomy fueling his oeuvre. The creature is now built from the same flesh as its maker and shares his paternal wound. Elordi and Isaac breathe stirring anguish into their respectively monstrous parts. Beautiful.

Bumping!

Feared HAMNET could be too much of a departure for Chloé Zhao, but she grounds the story on Shakespeare to the elemental forces of the world. In Jessie Buckley’s performance sorrow is devastatingly visceral, it courses through the physical body until it transcends via the divine.

I was dreaming I was at the airport heading to the Venice Film Festival, and suddenly, in the dream, I remembered that I’m DACA and can’t simply travel abroad. I panicked and woke up. Can’t even dream when I’m dreaming.

Canada selected the Turkey-set film THE THINGS YOU KILL as its best international film Oscar entry. I loved this incisive psychological drama out of Sundance. It’s a movie about how we forge our identity and how others perceive us. I reviewed it for @variety.com: variety.com/2025/film/re...

I had to remind a few different people today that I’m DACA and can’t go to Venice or TIFF or Morelia. Not their fault, I don’t expect everyone who knows me to keep up with my status, but I was already feeling down today, and this just reminded me again how bad things are.

He's an instant star in SPIDER WOMAN. Cannot wait for people to see.

My profile of Tonatiuh, the breakout star of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, is in print today as part of the LA Times’ Fall Preview. Hung out with Tonatiuh at El Mercadito in Boyle Heights, where he was born, for this story. Online version here: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Makes me sad that the rampant, inescapable cell phone use and talking in theaters, whether that’s a public cinema or a press screening, has really taken away a lot of the joy I had for watching a film on the big screen. Now I go in all anxious.

For LA Times, I profiled Alex Russell, writer-director of LURKER, one of the best films at Sundance this year, now in theaters. A movie about an outsider desperate to belong by any means necessary. Russell, a self-taught filmmaker, also wrote on THE BEAR: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

If Pedro Almodóvar made a stop-motion animated film set in Ecuador, it would be the new show WOMEN WEARING SHOULDER PADS. For De Los at @latimes.com, I profiled Gonzalo Cordova, the Ecuadorian American creator of Adult Swims’s first-ever Spanish language series: www.latimes.com/delos/story/...

So excited to share this one! Mexican American actor Tonatiuh is the breakout star of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN for his electrifying performance. I hung out with him at El Mercadito in Boyle Heights, where he is from, to profile him for LA Times’ Fall Preview: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

A wonderful piece (as usual) from @carlosfilm.bsky.social. Can't wait to see Tonatiuh in KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN.

Our annual fall preview is live and I'm proud of the breadth of tastes of all who contributed. A brief 🧵: @carlosfilm.bsky.social sat down at El Mercadito with Tonatiuh, born in L.A. to immigrant parents and commanding in the new KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

So excited to share this one! Mexican American actor Tonatiuh is the breakout star of KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN for his electrifying performance. I hung out with him at El Mercadito in Boyle Heights, where he is from, to profile him for LA Times’ Fall Preview: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Undocumented people can’t just apply for citizenship or a green card. A lot of racists say, “they’ve been in this country so long and haven’t bothered to become citizens.” You think if that was an option people wouldn’t do it? There’s no pathway to citizenship or a green card.

I don’t think I’ve been rattled by a movie this year as I was by Jafar Panahi’s scorching, devastating IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT. The ending truly shook me, physically. It’s a movie I will be thinking about for the rest of the year and beyond.

Exalting TikTok film accounts as the future of film criticism, quoting Letterboxd reviews on trailers and posters, and centering influencers for press opportunities are all symptoms of how the industry wants to devalue thoughtful criticism. 1/2