Princess, At Your Orders! 

The Suicide Squad's Polka-Dot Man aka Abner Krill, played by David Dastmalchian, helped me come to terms with my own issues of anxiety.

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.

“And I think to myself….what a wonderful world”. Louis Armstrong sang about this notion via his classic 1967 song, an ode to witnessing elements of our life that should be but some reminders of exactly what that concluding line of each verse indicates. Now we see our contemporary realities and, just being honest, it makes a sentiment like this seem SO overtly far away….perhaps even impossible….to accept or believe could be. It sounds harsh, but again, so much of what is occurring speaks not to beauty, but bedlam.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

Omaha reminds us of what it can feel like to look at old family photographs.  You sit with the bittersweetness, allowing it to wash over you; not drowning in it, but certainly affected by it.