The shady businessman Klaus Mandel (Christopher Waltz) spends time in Belgium prison for allegedly having set fire to a building in an insurance scam, that cost the live of an accountant. In order to get time off, Mandel offers to testify against his former partner and best friend Krieger (Matthias Redlhammer). Retired Cop Schimanski (Götz George), now living on a houseboat in Belgium, is asked to transport Mandel across the border to Germany and hand him over to the authorities there. Schimanski agrees reluctantly, but the pair – snobbish Mandel and proletarian Schimanski, who once attempted to book Mandel – make uneven travel-companions. The journey is interrupted when a pair of Romanian hit men tries to kill Mandel. Now tied together by handcuffs, Schimanski and Mandel have to find their way to safety via car, train or on foot.
CODA' is about a child of deaf adults torn between staying with her parents and her dreams of pursuing music. This film is a step forward for deaf representation and disability in movies despite negative messages about the burden of actors deaf deafness.
Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.
This film manages to be simultaneously topical and timeless. Without being preachy, it highlights society’s flawed relationship with tech; insights into the complex ideas of family struggle are expertly dispersed among a perfectly paced and balanced story.
In this short film, writer/director Nikita Hattangady focuses on Jai, a starving artist rooted in the latter category. Though unhoused, he works hard.
The Force Awakens is A New Hope 2.0, in essence. The story structure is virtually unchanged, marking a safe opening to the new trilogy.
Now that we're officially halfway through Hispanic Heritage Month, let's look ahead at movies featuring Hispanic & Latine representation through the rest of 2021.
