By Nicholas BarberFeatures correspondent
A24
Including Dune: Part Two, Road House and the latest Ghostbusters – this month’s unmissable movies to watch and stream.
Warner Bros
1. Dune: Part Two
Frank Herbert’s epic science-fiction novel, Dune, is a whopping 900 pages long, which is why Denis Villeneuve‘s first Dune film, released in 2021, could only squeeze in the first half of the story. Now Villeneuve takes us back to the desert planet of Arrakis for the second half. Timothée Chalamet returns as Paul Atreides, a psychic-powered nobleman who vows to get his revenge on the murderous Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) with the aid of the native Fremen – and some gigantic worms. Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Florence Pugh and Austin Butler join a cast that already boasted such big names as Zendaya, Josh Brolin and Rebecca Ferguson, but it’s the film’s monumental design and thunderous atmosphere that really take the breath away. “Dune: Part Two, like its predecessor, is a work of total sensory and imaginative immersion,” says Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. “It’s unlike any other blockbuster in existence.”
On general release from 1 March
Neon
2. La Chimera
Never mind Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Cinemagoers who prefer their rogue archeologists to have a bit more magic and mystery about them should seek out La Chimera, a fantastical Italian fable from Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, Happy as Lazzaro). Its enigmatic hero is Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a rumpled Brit who visits Tuscany in the 1980s and stays with his ex-girlfriend’s mother (Isabella Rossellini). Arthur has the supernatural ability to sniff out buried treasure, so he is popular with the local grave robbers who sell Etruscan antiquities on the black market. But he is searching for something even more elusive: a fabled tunnel that could take him to the afterlife. “A rich and humorous folk tale overflowing with cultural details, aesthetic pleasures and the effervescent musicality of the Italian language,” says Tomris Laffly in The Wrap, “La Chimera is a pictorial delight to luxuriate in, as it is a philosophical wonder on the unknowability of time.”
Released on 29 March in the US, and 10 May in the UK
Mubi
3. High & Low – John Galliano
John Galliano is one of the most influential fashion designers of recent times. When he brought his British punk-rock edginess and cinematic flair to Givenchy and Dior in Paris in the 1990s, he revolutionised the industry. But he was also prone to destructive and self-destructive behaviour, all of which was overlooked by his employers until he was caught on camera spewing drunken antisemitic abuse in 2010. A new documentary from Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of One Day in September and Touching the Void, asks why Galliano behaved the way he did, and whether he deserves to be forgiven. Built on candid interviews with Galliano, the film is essential viewing for anyone interested in fashion, but also for anyone who wants to understand cancel culture. “Macdonald has crafted one of the most riveting rise-fall-redemption story arcs in documentary format in recent memory,” says Christian Blauvelt at IndieWire, “with Galliano himself as his unreliable – but never less than compelling – guide”.
Released on 8 March in the UK and the US
Amazon MGM Studios
4. Road House
In 1989, Patrick Swayze starred in Road House as a reluctant bouncer who protects a roadside bar in Missouri from a corrupt businessman. Thirty-five years on, Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr and Mrs Smith) has directed a bigger, more action-packed remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Much of the publicity so far has focused on how hunky Gyllenhaal looks with his shirt off, but, more controversially, Liman has spoken out against Amazon’s decision to send the film straight to its streaming service rather than granting it a cinema release. In protest, he says, he will be boycotting the premiere at the South by Southwest festival. “The movie is fantastic, maybe my best, and I’m sure it will bring the house down and possibly have the audience dancing in their seats during the end credits,” Liman said in Deadline. “But I will not be there.”
Released on 21 March on Prime Video
Netflix
5. Spaceman
Remember a few years ago when there was a rash of “sad man in space” films? Interstellar, First Man, High Life and Ad Astra were all about how lost and lonely you might feel when you were thousands of miles from Earth – and now the sub-genre is back. Adapted from a novel by Jaroslav Kalfař, Spaceman features Adam Sandler as a Czech astronaut having an existential crisis while he’s on a solo mission to the edge of the solar system. Carey Mulligan plays the pregnant wife he left back home, and Paul Dano voices a giant spider that is either a friendly alien or a hallucination. The director, Johan Renck, “mixes absurdist elements with familiar soul-searching themes to bring us one of the most innovative films on the subject,” says Linda Marric at HeyUGuys. “Kalfař’s original story has been expanded into a cosmic epic that resonates on a deeply personal level, weaving together themes of love, loss, and the passage of time.”
Released on 1 March on Netflix
A24
6. Love Lies Bleeding
Rose Glass’s debut film, Saint Maud, was one of the most critically acclaimed releases of 2020, and the British director’s follow-up, Love Lies Bleeding, is getting a similarly enthusiastic response. Co-written with Weronika Tofilska, this steamy crime thriller stars Kristen Stewart as a small-town gym manager who is kept under the thumb of her gun-running father (Ed Harris). When a bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) stops by the gym on her way to a contest in Las Vegas, the two women have a passionate fling which could help Lou break away from her father, whatever the cost. “If her feature debut was an austere slow-burn, Glass’s second feature is a Molotov cocktail: hot, dirty, fast, combustible,” says Hannah Strong in Little White Lies. “It’s Thelma & Louise by way of The Outsiders and Blood Simple channelling Arnold Schwarzenegger… a heart-pounding, iron-pumping descent into the heady heart of obsession and desire.”
Released on 8 March in the US and Canada, 15 March in Australia, Portugal and Thailand, and 3 May in the UK and Ireland
Universal Pictures
7. Kung Fu Panda 4
It’s been eight years since the last Kung Fu Panda instalment, but the series is alive and kicking once again, with the perfectly cast Jack Black returning to voice Po, the lovably roly-poly Dragon Warrior. Awkwafina voices his new sidekick, a thieving fox who helps him combat an evil chameleon (Viola Davis) with magical powers. Awkwafina’s distinctively croaky tones have been over-used in animation lately (see also: Raya and The Last Dragon, The Bad Guys, Migration and more), but maybe that won’t matter if the cartoon is as dazzling as its director, Mike Mitchell, promises. “We’re putting all our energy [over] the past three year into making sure that our set pieces and our action are epic, big and beautiful, and all of our effects for our crazy villain and all of her magic looks spectacular,” Mitchell said to Jackson Murphy in Animation Scoop. “This isn’t for streaming, man. We’re making this for a big theatre.”
On general release from 8 March
Sony Pictures
8. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Audiences – and sexist trolls – weren’t too keen on Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, not just because it introduced an all-female team, but because it ignored the events of the classic film and its sequel. The next attempt to restart the franchise, 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, appeased the fans by restoring the continuity of the 1980s films, and by bringing back the characters played by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire goes a step further: the characters have moved back into the team’s converted firehouse in New York. Besides, the film’s director, Gil Kenan, insists that he has been true to the spirit of the man who made the first two Ghostbusters films, Ivan Reitman. “Not a day went by when I didn’t ask myself, ‘How would Ivan handle this?'” Kenan said in Empire. “I wanted that same approach to character, comedy and scares he had on the first two Ghostbusters. This one feels more connected to those movies than Afterlife was.”
On general release from 22 March
Lionsgate
9. Imaginary
There are two films released this year on the subject of children’s imaginary friends. In May, there’s John Krasinski’s family comedy, IF, but first there’s a horror film from Blumhouse, the company behind M3GAN and Insidious – so make sure you don’t get the two mixed up when you’re buying your tickets. In Imaginary, a girl (Pyper Braun) finds an old teddy bear that once belonged to her stepmother (DeWanda Wise). But it might not be an ordinary teddy bear. The director, Jeff Wadlow, told SFX magazine that he was inspired by 1982’s Poltergeist. “It perfectly strikes the balance between scares and this benign sense of wonder and excitement and emotion that you get when you have a family that you care about… We try to do a modern-day version of that with our film, where the terror is coming from this unknown presence that has infected the safety of the family home.”
On general release from 8 March
Warner Bros
10. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
The so-called MonsterVerse franchise got started with a US reboot of Godzilla in 2014. King Kong was rebooted in Kong: Skull Island in 2017, and, after a second solo outing for Godzilla in 2019, the oversized pair had their inevitable showdown in 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong. But it looks as if cinema’s most famous lizard and gorilla have put aside their differences in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. According to the director, Adam Wingard, civilisation is threatened by “a devilish, Kong-type creature” – and our only hope is for Godzilla and Kong to join forces against it. Could this be the beginning of the world’s biggest bromance? “As soon as the [last] movie came out and the audiences started to see it, I was like, ‘You just can’t separate these two guys again,'” Wingard told Katie Reul at IGN. “It’s too exciting having them in one movie. And now, the next one has to be about the continuation of that relationship, which is going to be the team-up.”
On general release from 29 March
HBO
11. A Revolution on Canvas
It’s easy to talk about art being “outrageous” or “radical”, but in the case of Nikzad “Nicky” Nodjoumi, those terms actually mean something. When Nodjoumi’s paintings were exhibited in a museum in Tehran in 1980, they were seen as being critical of the new regime, and he had to leave the country for his own safety. Now his daughter, Sara Nodjoumi, and her husband, Till Schauder, have made an intimate documentary about his career in Iran and New York, and about his choice to prioritise art and activism over family life. Their film is also a kind of heist thriller, as surreptitious attempts are made to reclaim stacks of his “treasonous” paintings from Tehran. “A Revolution on Canvas is a smart intersection of the political, personal, and artistic,” says Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com, “revealing how all three can be intertwined in a way that makes them impossible to extricate.”
Released on 5 March on HBO and Max
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