Lessee…yes, this year will actually have a couple nuggets of good in this scattershot month (not like 2006. March, 2006 blew. But all of 2006 blew).

2.3.2007
Ah, David Fincher. None of his five films have completely bowled me over, but he’s such a relentless stylist! And his best film so far, no question, has been about a serial killer. And that is why I shall overlook the potential for Zodiac to be an ahistoric mess, and instead proclaim it my most anticipated film of the month.

Less anticipated: Wild Hogs, a comedy starring Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and John Travolta as pudgy men having a midlife crisis on motorbikes. Somehow, the presence of William H. Macy makes me think that this obviously-misbegotten project (although one written by an Arrested Development vet) might be watchable. We’ll all have a good laugh at my presumption next week.

9.3.2007
You know, I really did love Sin City, but that doesn’t mean that every Frank Miller graphic novel needs to be turned into a green-screened CGIscape epic. And as a story, 300 is not hardly Sin City. The trailer makes me a little tingly, I’ll admit that. Still, I’ve got low hopes.

I am pretty excited about the delayed release of The Host, which by all accounts is a great Korean monster film, and I won’t get into a whole thing comparing Korean and Japanese monster films, because I need to save something for the review, but it bodes well.

The oft-delayed Miss Potter tries again, Abigail Breslin dies of cancer (I presume; but it is a Christian-type film, so who’s to say?) in The Ultimate Gift, and a crabby young Indian man learns that he was named after Nikolai Gogol in The Namesake, and instead of killing his parents with an axe, this news evidently makes him realize the value of family and blah blah how did Kal Penn get a dramatic role, exactly?

16.3.2007
Things That Make Me a Tool, part 94: I am hugely excited about The Wind That Shakes the Barley for almost no reason other than its Palme d’Or win last May. Okay, another reason: Cillian Murphy is the star.

And then, the crap – and such crap, too, better suited for (dare I say it) February: Premonition, in which Sandra Bullock gets all “temporal paradox” because that worked soooooo well before; Chris Rock starring in – and directing – I Think I Love My Wife, which sounds like a CBS sitcom right from the title; Oscar nominee Marky Mark in Shooter, a doubtlessly non-exploitive film about the US government conspiring to kill a man from the director of King Arthur; and Dead Silence, a ghost story (yay) from the team that gave us the Saw franchise (never mind).

23.3.2007
I am a movie viewer “of a certain age,” which in my case means that I have a severe case of The Nostalgia whenever I see the trailer for the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feature. This makes me a tasteless person, insofar as the movie – being as it is about anthropomorphic turtles who are mutants, ninjas, and teen-aged – will suck.

Competing family movie: The Last Mimzy, which has a plot that becomes harder to suss out every time I see the trailer, but it involves an alien cyborg plush bunny.

Yikes, another severe case of the Februarys this weekend: Guy Pearce in a thriller about a man who is convinced he will die because of something a palm reader said (First Snow); Terrence Howard in an Uplifting Story about Urban Youths succeed because of Inspiration and Faith in Themselves (the rather literally-named Pride); The Hills Have Eyes 2, no explanation needed there. And then a particularly obnoxious-looking thing starring Adam Sandler in drama mode, about delicate damaged humanity after 9/11, Reign Over Me. It has actual buzz, apparently because it was directed by Mike Binder, the creator of the repellent HBO series The Mind of the Married Man (and the director of the weirdly overrated The Upside of Anger).

30.3.2007
Hey, it’s a new Disney film! You know how John Lasseter has pledged to bring back 2-D animation in Disney films? That’s gonna be great, when it finally gets started. Meanwhile, we have Meet the Robinsons.

Hey, it’s a new Will Ferrell comedy! You know how those are always about as funny as lancing a blister on the tip of your big toe? Anyway, Blades of Glory.

Hey, it’s a new Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie! You know how last year he was the hot new indie breakout star? Well, he’s gone Hollywood: The Lookout.

Hey, werewolves! That always works! Skinwalkers, from the director of Jason X.

Hey, it’s the new Herzog film! Thank you, Jesus.