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Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex, a film with a 90s countercultural ethos on the idea that one can depict the frictions between desire, power and precarious labor without being prudish, delivered through a glam aesthetic complemented by a perfect cast, led by a brilliant Olivia Wilde. In theaters

Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron, a brilliantly shot, subtle, emotive film devoid of melodrama and hyperbole on mental illness and the gaps between trauma and memory, a truly excellent first feature, with echoes of Akerman and Martel but ultimately boasting a very personal cinematic style. In Criterion

Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, a capacious remake that delivers a 21st century updating of Albee, with four actors at the top of their powers turning a small film into a perfect balance of tension, eroticism, and humor. In theaters

I’m very happy to receive the 20th book in the SUNY Series in Latin American Cinema, which I coedit with Leslie Marsh: John Mraz’s Film and History in Revolutionary Cuba, which studies ICAIC and proposes historical readings of Memorias del subdesarrollo and other films.

W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer on the question of translation

Gaston Solnicki’s The Souffleur, a beautifully shot film on the tension between the commitment to tradition and the gentrifying winds of change centered on the Intercontinental hotel in Vienna, architectural and deadpan, featuring a lovely performance by Willem Dafoe. In Kino Film Collection.

Freshly arrived form Spain, a new bilingual edition of Rimbaud

Today in the Pittsburgh Review of Books, a personal essay on packing my library, the history of my collection and why I continue to build it. pghrev.com/a-library-on...

A Library on the Eve of Packing - Pittsburgh Review of BooksI hope a bibliophile like me can be forgiven to write an essay on the eve of my library being packed. Since the publication of Walter Benjamin’s 1931pghrev.com

Lucrecia Martel’s Nuestra Tierra, a masterclass in filmmaking and a transformative work for documentary genre, one of the best films ever made about the everyday forms of dispossession and their longue durée, full of cinematic countercutsrion and rich layers of testimony and historicity. In theaters

I am very grateful to my friends in St Louis on the Air, producer Emily Woodbury and host Elaine Cha for the kindness of inviting me for a farewell interview, where I spoke about the importance of the humanities and the interdisciplinary programs in universities Link: www.stlpr.org/show/st-loui...

Today, I begin my new adventure as the Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies at Cornell University!

A great little book showing the ways in which Massive Attack’s debut Blue Lines emerged out of anti-Thatcherite subcultures embracing multiculturalism in Bristol, a lineage out of hip hop that is not US but driven by the Afro-Caribbean diaspora and the creative interracial alliances of the time.

This has been an incredible year in music. I have heard a lot in hours of driving, packing and working and I still have to process much, but these are my favorite albums of the first half of 2026, in no particular order : 1-4