
Nora and Javier have been hired to transport a shipment of cocaine in an ambulance. With the help of Wendy, Javier's transvestite brother, they rob a part of the shipment and escape from the police. Moulded by loneliness, indifference and a lack of communication, Nora, Javier and Wendy are three youths with no future who move on the outer rim of society and are helpless in the face of a corrupt power. They hide in El Marquesado, a seaside resort built by the military on dynamited cliffs where Rodolfo and Mercedes, Javier and Wendy's parents, survive by rustling pigs and cows from neighbouring farms. The conflicts and tensions in this marginal family resurface as they are reunited in this remote place with a sinister past.
As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc.
How do zombie films shine new light in the post-Covid and post-Brexit era?
“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.
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.
As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.