Don't Look Up and White Noise are some recent highlights

🔔 HEAR YE 🔔 HEAR YE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE opens @anthologyfilm.bsky.social on 3/27 with a medieval series of my fav flicks! Watch the trailer! See the film!! Add'l screenings in April to be announced!! 🎟️ linktr.ee/cinemafirmam...

"Intellectual Dark Web"—still one of the stupidest coinages of the 21st century

The horror stories rolling in from Minnesota are just the tip of the iceberg. This 20-year-old, who's lawfully present in the country, was arrested for being Latino, then jailed in a filthy cell where he couldn't even sit down. 18 days of illegal detention. democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...

Pleased to speak to @nickturse.bsky.social about USG rescue efforts for the survivors of boat strikes. “It does not appear as if they were eager to rescue additional survivors and then be faced with the question of ‘what do we do with them?’”

How is it possible that Kristi Noem still has this job. Imagine if you’re a family member or a shipmate of this guardsman. www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...

The Moment made more money in its first weekend, on 4 screens, than it made last weekend on 1,119

I know this makes me an extremist but I think our baby concentration camps should be abolished.

coming back from a weekend at burning man to my HR job at a startup that uses AI to bury dangerous chemicals in suburban parks

Legend. RIP — Frederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies www.nytimes.com/2026/02/16/m...

Feb 16th 1988 - Agent Dale Cooper tells FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole he's worried, because of a dream he had. Agent Chester Desmond goes missing. 📽️📅 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

“Sirāt” sends itself into the unknown—and then further and further, until the destination has been lost, and there is no return. @robrubsam.bsky.social writes on three new entries in the canon of spiritual cinema.

I wrote about something I've been thinking about for a long time. A kind of post-ironic collapse in our politics and culture where nihilism has become the lingua franca of the internet and beyond. It links Kirk, Clavicular, Epstein, memestock/coin stuff, mass shooters. I hope you'll read it.

Looks like Wuthering Heights got Train Dreamed www.notebook.bdmcclay.com/p/new-writin...

What a perfect example of how these people are not just incompetent, they’re lazy.

With “The Testament of Ann Lee,” Mona Fastvold shows the viewer how mystical ecstasy feels. The film centers on the founder and history of Shakerism—but more importantly, it expresses their existential mode.

Looking at David Simon's post-Wire career:

Diane Keaton @ 4Columns, TAXI DRIVER @ 50 @npr.org + @theguardian.com, @robrubsam.bsky.social on spiritual cinema @thebaffler.com, THE BORDER (1982) @newyorker.com, Bardot @lrb.co.uk … Did You See This? www.criterion.com/current/post...

Jane Schoenbrun's TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA has set a release date, with the meta-slasher slicing into theaters this summer.

Over at @thebaffler.com, some thoughts on spiritual cinema, medieval mystics, Shaker chairs, dance music, and what it might mean for modern art to yearn for the divine. thebaffler.com/latest/wild-...

Meta's plan for launching glasses that people can use to secretly identify strangers on the street is to do it "during a dynamic political environment" when people who care about why that's bad are "focused on other concerns." www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

There are interesting critics and even opponents of modernity but unlike Rod Dreher you actually have to know something about the history of the world to read them

CBP didn’t give her or anyone any water; she asked 3 times accg to other reports. CBP killed a 7yr old. “8 hours after the girl & her father were taken into custody, she began having seizures & her body temperature was measured at 105.7 degrees by emergency medical technicians. shorturl.at/d2OTJ

I'm going to spend the rest of my life in opposition to the prevailing state of things, aren't I?

Modernity draws a bright line between the possible and impossible, the rational and irrational. Yet spiritual cinema reaches out toward the ineffable, offering audiences a glimpse of a world beyond our circumstances.

About "agitators" -- 1. Homan can't even capitulate without threatening more illegal, military-ish force against people exercising their 1A rights. 2. I doubt it's unintentional that they continue to use a loaded term inextricably linked with segregationists and bigots.

ICYMI: went mystic mode on the cinema of today

This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.

“I want this: an art of expectation and aspiration, an art that levitates and revelates, that shakes and speaks in unknown tongues—a miraculous art that pushes beyond itself.” thebaffler.com/latest/wild-...

Gonna be thinking about this part of @robrubsam.bsky.social's article for a good long time.

A real nice bit of reviewage from Rob Rubsam in @thebaffler.com, placing "Revelations" within a larger trend of the sublime and spiritual in contemporary cinema!! And can you believe they used a still from our movie for the header!! Read on! thebaffler.com/latest/wild-...

Very beautiful essay that made me want to watch all three films discussed. Should be of interest to many medievalists, too, as a film of Julian of Norwich is among them.

An amazing piece. Thank you for this, Robert.

yoooo, new Rubsam just dropped and shit's 🔥🔥🔥

Ours is a culture of persistent literalism, a society which routinely mistakes surfaces for depths. @robrubsam.bsky.social writes on three films that reach toward something deeper: “The Testament of Ann Lee,” “Revelations of Divine Love,” and “Sirāt.”

a bit of great news: we're getting another Mike Leigh movie

What this man is describing would seem to constitute crimes against humanity under international law. Other governments could and should contest the abuses he’s describing the U.S. government committing against migrants.

Over at @thebaffler.com, some thoughts on spiritual cinema, medieval mystics, Shaker chairs, dance music, and what it might mean for modern art to yearn for the divine. thebaffler.com/latest/wild-...

Wow, looks like Lionel Shriver is back to puncture liberal pieties like "migrants are people" www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

This is the 38th time that the U.S. military has unlawfully killed civilians on the orders of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. At least 130 people — never charged with crimes, their identities unknown to their executioners — are now dead.

Tatiana Maslany I was not familiar with your game

I’m listening to this while reviewing recent photographs from Gaza that a source provided me for a forthcoming piece and certain resonances between both circumstances have me about at my emotional limit

i think this more than anything is what miller wants. vast detention camps with all of the suffering and death that means.

When you think about it Rip Van Winkle was the original deadbeat dad

When you think about it Rip Van Winkle is the original deadbeat dad

So ICE is forging people’s signatures to say that they agreed to be deported and then holding them hostage if their lawyers appeal their cases www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

Naipaul

845 excellence

Textually this is more the first movie about Andrew Cuomo