what if there was a March movies roundup

I love Letterboxd—I think it’s maybe the only good piece of the social internet left and you should follow me—but sometimes one’s first thought is not one’s best. So, in the interest of doing a little compare and contrast, here’s my Letterboxd reviews for the movies I saw in March, paired with about 100 words of uncollected thoughts after letting them simmer for a bit.

DUNE: PART TWO

[3/3 and 3/7] There is a particular magic to seeing a movie of this size and weight twice in IMAX (and at Lincoln Square no less) within the same week. You get to do that whole first-watch-plot-second-watch-experience thing, but beyond even that meager level of interaction, the world of Denis’ Villeneuve’s Dune is blisteringly magnetic. There’s so much ground to be covered, so many mysterious locales and otherworldly characters and plans within plans, that the mere act of recitation becomes impressive. And while I’m a bit hesitant to immediately label this as ‘this generation’s Empire Strikes Back,’ it not only works, both as a straightforward narrative and as a critique of Paul’s messianic pivot in the face of overwhelming odds, but is in turns heartfelt, magisterial, and bleak, makes it a genuinely special effort.

AMERICAN FICTION

[3/10] Sometimes rounding out your Oscar ballot before a party means throwing on the one you didn’t see while you mop the floor. This is a good, mostly-enjoyable film, but its tone is so thoroughly split between snooty didacticism and heartfelt family drama that it’s basically two films that just happen to star the same cast. Cord Jefferson’s script can’t really decide just how much of an erudite asshole Monk is, or if he’s worthy of the consequences of his actions, so it’s all left to Jeffrey Wright to come up with the thorns. Wright is delivering a delightfully knotty performance—the guy kinda seems exhausting to be around! I’m not surprised he can’t find a date! or connect with anyone normal!—but Sterling is doing next to nothing and it’s kinda insane he got nominated. 

WONKA

[3/11] Paul King’s production design and juvenile gleefulness make a welcome return, but this doesn’t hit the same heights as Paddington 2. Maybe that’s an unfair expectation, but something about the branding of this whole project ends up diminishing the whole enterprise. Young Timmy might be the last new movie star we ever get, and Wonka is what convinced me of this. The man’s buying in to a degree that sells the rest of the project, inviting the audience on board to a fairly staid but wacky adventure that involves *checks notes* indentured laundry servents breaking free to sell chocolate. Beyond that, and paired with Dune, Timothée’s fully locked in as a true A-lister, leading the call sheet and making interesting choices in service of his career. Also, why drown him under so much pitch correction? He’s not a bad singer!

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

[3/12] Hooting, hollering, stomping my feet, etc. etc. I saw this on like a Tuesday night with a crowd that I can only adequately describe as Metrograph-pilled (mostly young, mostly queer, smoking right outside the door of the AMC), and we were all down for the loops this movie goes through. Kristen Stewart is such a weirdly precise actor, even when she’s taking these big absurdist swings with her performance. It’s a fun, sinister little love story, with plenty of indie thriller-horror tropes draping the frame. And, at this point, given the degree to which I loved this and Saint Maud, I am willing to follow Rose Glass into fucking battle no matter what she drops next. 

GODZILLA VS. KONG

[3/14] Dumb! Stupid and dumb and mostly bad. Millie Bobby Brown cannot act her way out of a paper bag, not that she’s trying particularly hard. Rebecca Hall somehow makes something out of the mountain of nothing she’s given, as is Brian Tyree Henry. On the other hand, this is a movie that says “eventually this big lizard is going to beat this monkey up, and vice versa” on the tin, so I can’t really be mad that I got that. It feels like asking a McDouble to be gourmet. I just wish it were like two percent smarter.

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN

[3/17] The kind of movie you throw on when you’re sick and it’s Sunday and you need to turn your brain into a little puddle of mush. It’s not good, but they sure did spend so much money on it. There are frames and sound cues ripped so directly from Peter Jacksons’s Lord of the Rings films that you could start quoting Arwen dragging Frodo’s limp corpse across the river during the climax of this thing. It’s meandering and droll, but only in the way that a $150+ million dollar project can. Everything is expensively designed and rendered and shot and none of it works.

TURNING RED

[3/18] Really funny and sweet! Infectiously charming, and perhaps the best movie Pixar has put out in a while that is quite simply a fun time for kids, rather than a metatextual examination of the whole meaning of life (Soul) or a metatextual examination of the whole meaning of life (Toy Story 4). Kinda crazy that Ludwig Göransson was doing this and Wakanda Forever at the same time. Also I want 4Town merch. Double also, it’s so funny to see which parts of Pixar’s production pipeline get all the money—the fidelity in the shots of the dad cooking dinner could have been from like a well-known hotel restaurant’s EPK and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

JACKIE BROWN

[3/21] Far and away the best film Tarantino made. I don’t know if it’s the most entertaining—Inglorious Basterds and the Kill Bill duology both deliver some zany grimy delights that outpace what this film has in store—but it’s definitely the most human. Rather than ersatz archetypal clowns masquerading as characters (his usual shit), Jackie Brown exists in a universe of moody, antagonistic buffoons who fuck up in predictable, silly, stupid ways. Their actions are all rooted in the banal mundanity of human life—Pam Grier’s Jackie is underestimated, and that stings; Robert DeNiro is a jittery ex-con who can’t get his head screwed back on after a long prison stint; Sam Jackson as Ordell is shockingly charismatic and predictably violent, looking to protect his piece of the action above all else. Even Robert Forster, the movie’s closest analogue to an outside moral observer, is more human than expected. He is content to spend his time as a boil on the ass of the American justice system, and his refusal to follow Grier off into the sunset is maybe the movie’s most powerful statement—no matter what shit happens, you’re still your cowardly, striving old self. 

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

[3/23] I have maybe nothing to say about this one, because it is kinda horseshit throughout. My thoughts have not evolved, nor will they. It’s plain, unoriginal, and bland. I guess the bigger question is, what are we doing to Michelle Williams? She’s been bad approximately never, has about ten Oscar-worthy performances under her belt (even though she’s only been nominated for five, but whatever) and yet we refuse to reward her. If we would simply give her a trophy, I bet we would all be happier, as a society.

IMMACULATE

[3/24] Sydney Sweeney is a genius, I think. Beyond the already-reported maneuver of being in one of the superhero glut’s all-time stinkers to get Anyone But You produced, I think that with Immaculate she’s effectively positioning herself as not just versatile, but willing to yes-and a knotty idea into utter, shocking believability. She’s not the world’s most complex actor, preferring to wear all her emotion nakedly, but for something like this project, where her naïveté and guile make her the perfect target for ancient religious institutions, that approach shines. It does that very simple thing that the better horror-thrillers do, which is slowly revealing, both to Sweeney’s Cecelia and the audience, just what the fuck is going on.

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

[3/26] I can feel myself souring on this in real time, and that’s a damnable shame because Dastmalchian, one of our greatest weirdos, is doing some genuinely fun, tense work (then again, when is he ever bad?) and it’s drowned out by the vagaries of the premise and supporting cast. And what a good premise! A once-popular but now forgotten TV host losing his way and calling upon otherworldly forces to juice his numbers is some good shit! That’s like half of what makes the first Alan Wake funny! Decently stylized and shot, paced weirdly, and they used A.I. to make the commercial bumpers so I’m not even sure I should be lending this more time in my brain.

BLUE VELVET

[3/27] There is a particular way that David Lynch chooses to depict evil. On the one hand, you have BOB or Cooper’s doppelgänger, in Twin Peaks, forces that look human but have some kind of ethereal evil to them that occasionally releases itself into the wild. On the other hand, there’s Dennis Hopper in this—a sad, angry, awful little man who sits on the margins of society, demanding big-city O.G. respect in the mostly-quiet mostly-shitty third-tier city of Lumberton. His is the kind of evil that we all possess, the terrible little part of your center that, when backed against the wall by circumstance and society, would lash out with violence and abuse. 

LAST ACTION HERO

[3/28] An absurdity. I have no new thoughts, and I barely had old thoughts. Parts of it works, but the whole package is silly goofy bullshit and not in a fun turn-your-brain-off way. 

TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR (TAYLOR’S VERSION) 

[3/29] Watching this movie is a lot like looking at the above picture. The movie version of the world’s best-selling tour is only really a movie in the sense that 24 frames pass before your eyes per second, each one dedicated to beatifying a billionaire songstress who refuses to be seen in any context that’s not her own. It’s a coronation, and a boring one at that. There’s almost nothing visually interesting happening—everything swaps between master shots and rule-of-thirds close-ups, and the staging is boring, and the choreography is boring, and the outfits aren’t designed with the film in mind, and Reputation still sucks.

GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE

[3/30] The lizard punches the monkey, the monkey punches the lizard. This movie is stupid as hell. It’s so sincerely stupid, and I hope every person in it was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in it. I hope that one guy who was really good as an Imperial schmuck in Andor had a lot of fun getting eaten by a tree. I hope Rebecca Hall got a visit from her hot husband Morgan Spector and they kissed in front of a big statue of Godzilla. I hope that Brian Tyree Henry and Dan Stevens smooched in between takes.

In addition to all of this I’m way deep on Season 2 of The Sopranos, and perhaps the funniest thing in this very funny show is that every so often we get these little scenes where Peter Bogdanovich (yes! really!!) berates Lorraine Bracco for being a shit therapist.

More tk,

Luis