Movie culture in the post-pandemic, or the late pandemic, or whatever the hell we’re meant to be in, is clearly going to be a lot different than it was in the long-ago days of February 2020, now two years gone. But the indescribably bleak model of what might, and I pray deeply doesn’t, become the new normal has never been so piercingly clear as in looking over what is ostensibly the release schedule for March. There’s basically nothing coming to theaters – I could just as easily write this entire post as, “so, we’re all going to see The Batman, right?”, and it would be essentially identical. Meanwhile, the type of small movies that would ordinarily come out and add color to the multiplexes are getting dribbled out across several different streaming platforms, where they will instantly disappear into the endless churn of New Content.
So I’m not optimistic, is what I’m saying.
4.3.2022
So, we’re all going to see The Batman, right? In fact, by the time I publish this post, I will likely have already seen The Batman, but I’m locking this in early, just to officially register my expectations: it seems a little disappointing that this looks, very overtly, like “Christopher Nolan’s Unmade Fourth Batman Project”, but I like Nolan’s Batman films, so that’s not a turn-off. And I’m curious as hell to see Robert Pattionson’s Batman. Counterpoint: there is no way in hell this justifies a nearly three-hour running time, right?
[Checking in on the backside of seeing it: no, there was in fact no way in hell]
Despite what I was just on about, there are some limited releases that look more or less good, and none, surely, looks more interesting than After Yang, the second feature by video essayist Kogonada, this time starring Colin Farrell. The plot is something to do with A.I., but given Kogonada’s previous work, I suspect the real star of the show will be stately compositions and a hauntingly slow pace. And speaking of things that will probably never show up where I am, there’s also Huda’s Salon, which appears to be some manner of morality thriller by director Hany Abu-Assad, whose work I have always admired without ever quite rounding the corner into “love it”.
11.3.2022
There’s literally nothing interesting hitting theaters, but Disney’s horrible new strategy of sending Pixar Animation Studio’s feature films straight to Disney+ claims its third victim, with the studio’s 25th feature, Turning Red. Which I am, in honesty, not super excited for (Pixar’s not in a good place right now), but I’d be more excited if it were a theatrical release, and thus felt more “real”.
Elsewhere in direct-to-streaming, The Adam Project is a time travel adventure-comedy directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds, which is a pretty good team-up to make sure I’m not even a little interested.
18.3.2022
A huge day – two wide releases. By far the more interesting-looking is Umma, a psychological horror film starring Sandra Oh as a woman being figuratively and perhaps literally haunted by her overbearing mother. Which, at a minimum, means a couple hours spent with Oh, and I look forward to spending it.. The other is The Unbreakable Boy, which appears to be about a terminally sick child whose can-do spirit warms the heart of all who encounter him.
Out of a fairly substantial number of limited releases that look at least mildly interesting, the two that strike me as most promising: The Outfit, which stars Mark Rylance as a tailor outwitting mobsters, and if “Shawn Levy directs Ryan Reynolds” is one of the least-appealing phrases you could say to me, “Mark Rylance as a tailor” is close to the exact opposite; and X, which jumps off of the delightfully stupid premise, “what if The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was set during the production of a pornographic film?”, and comes to us from director Ti West. Not, perhaps, the most reliably great horror director, but certainly a reliably creative and thoughtful one.
25.3.2022
It’s hard to imagine a film ripping off another film more directly than The Lost City, an adventure-comedy about a romance novelist being thrust into a jungle journey that feels uncommonly like one of her books, rips off 1984’s Romancing the Stone. And I admit that this is actually enough for me to feel some legitimate sense of enthusiasm: this looks like a real Movie Star picture, and Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are pretty much what we’ve got for Real Movie stars these days.
Also a movie star: Michelle Yeoh, and that’s enough to perk up my interest in Everything Everywhere All at Once, a limited release about a retiree getting tangled up in the multiverse. The whole thing seems a bit precious, but we certainly need more Michelle Yeoh vehicles in this world.