America Ferrera

Disasters are real — also, these days, frighteningly common, be they epic confluences of nature and negligence or the murderous and preventable kind. And when it comes to disaster movies, it’s hard to know what the acceptable level of exploitation is.

Of course, director Paul Greengrass could never be confused with the unseriousness of producer Irwin Allen (“The Towering Inferno”) or filmmaker Roland Emmerich (“The Day After Tomorrow”), ringmasters who preferred heaping helpings of A-listers on slick, expensive calamities. Rather, when Greengrass, coming from documentaries, tackles dark days of mass casualty, they tend to be true stories like “United 93” and “Bloody Sunday.” His stripped-down, jagged style, absent marquee names and focused on such issues as terrorism and community, brings intelligent urgency to the unfathomable.

With his new film “The Lost Bus,” however, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, about the real-life effort to save a busload of schoolchildren from the 2018 Camp fire, a wildfire that would destroy most of Paradise, Calif., Greengrass is trying to merge the two sensibilities. This time he mixes star heroism with you-are-there spectacle and the results can be galvanizing if awkwardly framed.

“The Lost Bus” is not as potent as Greengrass’ “Captain Phillips,” in which Tom Hanks anchored a re-created reality no less pulse-pounding than any action blockbuster. Instead the director seems to be in a programmatic mode. There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, but they’re sandwiched in between a lot that feels very much sculpted for three-act character arc effect by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby.

McConaughey plays Paradise bus driver Kevin McKay, whose life is almost comically scripted to come off as especially challenged before one lick of flame gets near it: strapped for cash, dying dog, recently dead father (no love lost), sullen teenage son (love lost), ex-wife (also unhappy) and a memory-ailing mother. But on the afternoon of Nov. 18 as the fires reach eastern Paradise, Kevin’s is the only bus that can meet a request from his dispatcher (Ashlie Atkinson): Pick up stranded elementary schoolkids and evacuate them to safety.

A failed dad feeling the weight of sudden responsibility, Kevin corrals as co-chaperone a schoolteacher (America Ferrera). Though Mary is a mother eager to get to her own child, she’s willing to help. The occasional cut to Yul Vazquez as the fire chief spearheading rescue efforts, however, is this movie’s barometer of increasingly bad news. As smoke quickly darkens the day and the unstoppable, town-hopping fire hems in the bus, cutting off routes, the journey takes a dystopian turn, raising the stakes and alarm levels to unimaginable heights. (Eaton and Palisades survivors, fair warning — you were never going to watch this anyway.)

McConaughey is solid casting, his unshowy working-class fortitude slightly tinged with fear. In his and Ferrera’s sturdy presence and in the serrated frenzy of Greengrass’ editing style, a shorter, tighter “The Lost Bus” would still hold plenty of dread and dramatic resilience. The fire sequences alone, captured in the hellish fuzz of Pål Ulvik Rokseth’s cinematography, are pinnacles of this practical-meets-digital-effects discipline. But Kevin’s dippy redemption arc, doled out midperil in tortured glances and forced dialogue, drags us out of the intensity.

It’s also odd that the activist-minded Greengrass didn’t do more with so corporate a villain: legally responsible utility PG&E, represented in the movie by an ineffectual suit who is briefly yelled at. Forget that redemption story — Greengrass could have leaned even more into those action tropes and, as a final touch, had McConaughey punch PG&E in the jaw.

Stoner comedy legend, actor and Chicano art curator collector Cheech Marin will be honored this year at the 38th annual Hispanic Heritage Awards.

The Hispanic Heritage Foundation named Marin as a recipient of the 2025 Hispanic Heritage Award for the arts on Tuesday, one of several honors bestowed on notable public figures for their accomplishments and cultural contributions to the Latino communities.

Past awardees at the Hispanic Heritage Awards include Bad Bunny, America Ferrera, Becky G, J Balvin and others. Marin will be awarded alongside National Public Radio journalist and “Alt.Latino” host Felix Contreras and Rizos Curls co-founder and CEO Julissa Prado.

“I’m extremely honored to be receiving this Hispanic Heritage for Arts Award,” Marin said in a press release. “I accept this recognition with deep gratitude and a commitment to continue uplifting voices, building bridges, and honoring the legacy of those who came before us.”

Having spent his childhood in South-Central L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, Marin’s comedy career kicked off in the late 1960s, when he fled to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War. It was during that time that he first met his future comedy partner Tommy Chong — and the rest is burned into history.

“For over five decades, Cheech Marin has reflected our cultural impact on America and the world as a comedian, actor, director, art collector, and humanitarian,” said Antonio Tijerino, the president and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, in a press release. “His groundbreaking work has not only entertained but enlightened. We are thrilled to pay tribute to Cheech and the other 2025 Honorees and tell their stories to inspire, unite, and mobilize other generations.”

Cheech and Chong’s blazing success first reached national attention after the release of their first comedy album “Cheech and Chong” in 1971. The 11-track LP was nominated for a comedy recording award at the 1972 Grammy Awards and generated the famous “Dave’s not here” line. Their second album, “Big Bambú,” was nominated for a Grammy in the same category at the 1973 award ceremony.

In 1978, the duo released the stoner comedy feature film, “Up in Smoke,” which was based in L.A. Though it was critically panned, the film became a cult classic and was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2024.

Marin’s 1987 film “Born in East L.A.” — which includes a spoof of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” — was acclaimed by critics for blending of comedy with such serious subject matters as deportation and living as an undocumented person in the U.S.

“Without saying so much as a single word that could be even remotely described as preachy, Cheech Marin makes his points about the second-class nature of American citizenship for ethnic minorities and the desperate situation in which illegal aliens find themselves,” The Times wrote in a 1987 review of the movie.

In recent years, Marin is perhaps best known for his work as a collector of Chicano art. After being a lifelong gatherer of art, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum opened to the public in June 2022.

Many consider the museum to be the largest private collection of Chicano art in the world, with more than 550 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs from Marin’s personal collection will be on permanent rotation. Nicknamed “the Cheech,” the 61,420-square-foot, two-story art museum and education center resides in what used to be the downtown Riverside Public Library, and has displayed works by artists Chaz Bojorquez, Judithe Hernández, Frank Romero, Patssi Valdez and others. It’s considered the only permanent art space to exclusively showcase Chicano and Mexican American art in the country.

“You don’t have to be Chicano to love and appreciate this work,” Marin told The Times in 2022. “Just like I don’t have to be French to appreciate Impressionism or German to appreciate Expressionism. We recognize it as part of the conversation in the history of art. And now we are part of that conversation in a more concentrated effort than we’ve ever had before.”