Wrote about "Terri Joe: Missionary in Miami" for Common Sense Media. Went in skeptical. Came out impressed. The satire goes hard (think early John Waters) and knows exactly how uncomfortable it wants you to feel.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #Satire #CommonSenseMedia
Over at @ncronline.bsky.social I wrote about Diane Keaton’s constant search for HEAVEN through her filmography. Her eponymous 1987 documentary is one of many of her films playing at @filmlinc.bsky.social over the next week.
www.ncronline.org/culture/dian...
One of my former students could really use your help now, please share if you're able to
www.gofundme.com/f/urgent-nee...
Wrote about "Tell Me Softly" for Common Sense Media. The film piles on melodrama and calls it depth, pushing feeling at the audience without earning it.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
Wrote about "Meme Gods" for Common Sense Media. The film traces meme culture as a shared language shaped by humor, repetition, and collective authorship.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
Wrote about "The Tale of Silyan" for Common Sense Media. It received the Common Sense Seal for its thoughtful mix of fantasy, a stork at the center, and a clear climate thread that trusts young audiences to think seriously about care and responsibility.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
Last piece I’m publishing this year. I wrote it for @ncronline.bsky.social about films that kept returning to rescue, care, and the work of not leaving people behind.
Grateful to my editors, especially Shannon at NCR, for the trust 🙏🏽
www.ncronline.org/culture/2025...
Sharing this piece by the brilliant Faith Zamblé, who was part of the second BIPOC Critics Lab where she reflects on me and the work I’ve been building through the Lab. Reading yourself through the eyes of a former student is a rare gift.
extendedplay.thecivilians.org/i-is-for-ima...
I wrote about "Predators" for Common Sense Media. Probably the best documentary I watched all year.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #CommonSenseMedia #Documentary
Mary Bronstein has to have seen Rose Byrne in "Medea" at BAM, right? Her character in "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" seems like an extension of her electrifying take on Euripides in 2020.
just watched "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "If I
Had Legs I'd Kick You," back-to-back movies in which Meryl Streep is name checked ✔️
Wrote about "Lali: Time to Step Up" for Common Sense Media. I’d never heard of Lali before watching the film, but by the end I was looking up her music. A vibrant, generous portrait of an artist claiming her space.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #CommonSenseMedia
There's such beautiful, elegiac symmetry between JAY KELLY and LA GRAZIA. Clooney and Servillo deliver perhaps the best work of their careers as the leads, two men who are deeply terrified of being forgotten.
Beloved franchises like “Casablanca?”
Ah yes, I loved “Casablanca: Play It Again, But Faster,” “2 Casa 2 Blanca,” “Casablanca: Rick’s Revenge, “Casablanca: Across the Rickverse,” “Casablanca: Rick Harder,” “Casablanca: For Good,” ”Casablanca: The End of a Beautiful Friendship…”
I wrote about I Wish You Had Told Me for Common Sense Media.The film tries to explore memory and regret, but it didn’t fully land for me, still, there are thoughtful moments worth noticing.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #CommonSenseMedia #MovieReviews #InternationalCinema
I'm missing Munch's "The Scream" and everything in Florence and Rome, I'm sure I'll collapse when I lay eyes on The Pietà at St. Peter's 😭
Grateful to everyone who’s helped this grow from a pajama-brainstorm on Zoom into a global community.
Here’s to the next five.
#BIPOCCriticsLab #HowlRound #ArtsWriting #CulturalCriticism #Mentorship #EquityInTheArts #FiveYears
And to editors across all the arts: if you're looking for sharp, thoughtful writers with fresh perspectives, reach out. Our students are ready, published, and hungry for work.
To institutions, festivals, theatres, and publications:
If you believe in a richer, more plural criticism ecosystem, this is the moment to support the Lab. Host a workshop. Partner with us. Bring our critics into your conversations.
This five year mark feels like a reminder of what’s possible when we trust new voices, center care, and create spaces where critics can start from who they are not who the industry expects.
The Lab has always been a place where a review can become a collage, an audio meditation, a prayer, a video essay, or a joke. Criticism that breathes, just as alive as the art we cover.
In that time, 69 critics have come through the Lab, from four continents, multiple time zones, and wildly different artistic traditions. Somehow they all found their way to one digital room and made something bigger than any syllabus I wrote.
Five years ago I started the BIPOC Critics Lab in my PJs sitting in front of a laptop in the middle of a pandemic, trying to imagine a future for cultural criticism that wasn’t built on gatekeeping.
Today I’m sharing my essay for HowlRound on what we’ve learned so far. howlround.com/lessons-bipo...
Session 10 of the BIPOC Critics Lab yesterday, we talked about what happens after we’re published, when the piece stops being ours and starts living its own life (almost like having a child)
Taylor said it best: “Long live all the mountains we moved…”
#BIPOCCriticsLab #ArtsWriting #Criticism
Wrote about THE SON OF A THOUSAND MEN for Common Sense Media; a strange, tender little story about loneliness, chosen family, and the people we pick up along the way.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #CommonSenseMedia #InternationalCinema
Yesterday’s BIPOC Critics Lab session was all about editing, giving shape to our first drafts, and lost potato bags. @bedatri.bsky.social was, as usual, a fabulous guest instructor!
I'm very grateful for this cohort. They teach me as much as I teach them.
#BIPOCCriticsLab #Editing #ArtsWriting
There’s a quiet kind of performance in the way we grieve.
My review of THE FOLLIES is up on Common Sense Media, a film where bodies say the things the characters can’t.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #TheFollies #CommonSenseMedia
Wrote about ELOA THE HOSTAGE: LIVE ON TV for Common Sense Media. It’s a chilling reminder of how easily tragedy turns into entertainment and how spectatorship can become its own kind of violence.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#FilmCriticism #Thriller #CommonSenseMedia
My review of Baramulla is live on Common Sense Media, it's a richly atmospheric, but convoluted, thriller that fuses ghost story and memory in Kashmir’s haunted terrain.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-review...
#Baramulla #FilmCriticism #Horror #Kashmirimuth
We talked about podcasting in today’s BIPOC Critics Lab. You can see them, I wish you could hear them. Each voice carried so much heart, humor, and thought.
Mary Oliver said: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
That’s what they did.
#BIPOCCriticsLab #Podcasting #ArtsCriticism #Community