Cristina Escobar

Crime can pay, sometimes—it’s playing by the rules that doesn’t work. That’s the situation Aubrey Plaza finds herself in as the titular character in ‘Emily the Criminal,’ in theaters August 12.

After news broke Thursday that Portuguese-Swedish-Russian (a.k.a. white) actor James Franco was cast as Fidel Castro in the upcoming film, Alina of Cuba, Latinx people across Al Gore’s Internet were quick to hate on the choice, pointing out all the problems with Hollywood’s continued erasure of our community.

Hollywood’s commitment to diversity is more about looking good than actually doing good. The latest casualty of this words-only approach is Gordita Chronicles, which HBO recently canceled after one stellar season.

The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival partnered with Netflix for its 2022 fellowship, recruiting five Black and five Indigenous filmmakers and giving each $20,000 and a few months to complete their projects, which premiered at the festival during the first week of June.

‘Clara Sola’ communicates an insider’s understanding of the connections between Latina spirituality and sexuality. And that’s not something we usually see on-screen.

The film finds its horror in anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx sentiment, policies, and power grabs, but the frights are only half of it. ‘American Carnage’ is as much a comedy as it is a scary movie, and the laughs mostly come from intra-Latinx racial politics.

HBO’s new docuseries ‘Menudo: Forever Young’ showcases how the record-breaking boyband Menudo helped promote Puerto Rico as cultural ambassadors for the island, and how its members went through all kinds of abuse to be part of the group.

HBO’s much-watched ‘Father of the Bride’ tells the story of two Latinx families as aspirational and aspirationally American. While there are problems with the movie, it is nice to see Latinx people headline a successful, classic film—especially one that punches up at whiteness.

Danny Ramirez, who plays Lt. Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia in the new ‘Top Gun’ sequel, tells Latino Rebels that he’s been dreaming of this role since he saw the first movie back in college.

‘The Valet,’ a romantic comedy starring Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez (‘Instructions Not Included, ‘CODA’), presents a warm and thoughtful representation of Latinidad that gently nudges its audience to evaluate their own values and how they play out in the world.

It’s good to see Latinas get some solo on-screen time. But not when the only time you see us, we’re reduced down to some white-centric stereotype, it’s a problem. It does our community dirty and, most egregiously for Saturday Night Live, it’s not even funny.

The series is an HBO reboot of a 20-year-old Nickelodeon show, ‘The Brothers Garcia,’ that the current show’s team bills as “the first English-language sitcom to have an all Latino cast and creative team.”

Whole Woman’s Health is in McAllen, Texas, a place documentarian Maya Cueva describes as already “post-Roe.” If this clinic closes, the next closest one is over 250 miles away, with checkpoints along the way.

‘Undone’ brings nuance and humor to modern characters with Anglo and Latin roots without ever questioning their authenticity in either space — a powerful break from the narrative of difference and less-than we normally see.

If you know a bit about President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and you’re a music lover, ‘¡Viva Maestro!’ is worth a watch, as it reveals the way art can transform, its limitations, and its power.

Let’s leave the slap alone and take a moment for the rest of the Oscars, which, like Best Picture nominee ‘West Side Story,’ was well-intentioned but couldn’t deliver. For me, the perfect encapsulation of its failing short was the rendition of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”

Argentinian American journalist Nick Barili wants Latinx Hollywood icons to “get their flowers” now, as he recently told Latino Rebels. That’s why he created the web series ‘SEEN’ to highlight Latinx talent, distributed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Latino Rebels talks to the venezolana author whose teen romance, which began on the self-publishing site Wattpad, is now a global hit movie with two sequels already greenlit.

Latinx people should make up more than five percent of the critics reviewing any movie, let alone one starring our own. If it was just Latinx critics, Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Marry Me’ would have a 78 percent approval rating—not perfect but much more in line with what it deserves.

With the recent cancelation of Gentefied (and seemingly every other Latinx show), there’s a lot of pressure on ABC’s new ‘Promised Land,’ a primetime, network drama featuring Mexican American characters, played by Hispanic actors, and created and run by Matt Lopez.

Written in 2017, shot in 2019, and out in theaters on January 14, the Brazilian film ‘The Pink Cloud’ explores what happens when a deadly phenomenon forces the whole world indoors immediately and indefinitely. Sound familiar?