Favorite First Watches of March 2023
Lady bank robbers, a disasterpiece, hitmen, domestic problems, and Nevada sandworms + the return of Succession & Gwyneth Paltrow
March always kind of feels like a messy void to me. Along with August, it’s a month I actively loathe most every moment of. It’s always too long, always too blustery, teases you with mild weather before freezing your ass off again the next day, totally devoid of federal holidays, and just generally kind of miserable. Despite having basically no snow (!) this winter, you can just tell everybody is thirsty AF for spring. Nobody wants to wear their sleeping bags masquerading as winter coats anymore. The longer I live on the East Coast, the more I understand the appeal of San Diego where it’s always like, 70-80 degrees and sunny. I also understand why all the rich old people winter in Florida (and also I just binged the two most recent seasons of Real Housewives of Miami on Peacock which both earn an A+ for being fun and more eventful than a lot of the other Housewives franchises right now), but I cannot condone spending any lengthy amount of time in the Fascist Penis Peninsula of the United States unless you have no other option. Honestly, more upsetting than the month of March is learning Ron DeSantis is only 10 (!) years older than me so I will conceivably have to hear about This Fucking Guy for the rest of my life.
Speaking of problematic white people, Succession returned this past Sunday, nicely coinciding with Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski trial. If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s watching slightly-to-mostly delusional privileged people issue hilarious one-liners with zero self-awareness and max entertainment value. The lawsuit against Gwyneth Paltrow could easily have been a subplot on Succession where the Roy siblings have finally teamed up against Daddy Roy but still have zero business acumen. Just beautiful synergy of events in the universe. I’m so happy Succession is back and horribly sad Gwyneth’s trial ended (she won! America!).
This past month, my movie-viewing was pretty eclectic, but if I had to choose one word to describe most of my choices, I’d have to go with FUN. March feels like such a slog, so I didn’t really have the patience for super serious flicks. My choices this month really reflect how much I just mostly wanted escapism. As always, you can view the full list on my Letterboxd.
Married to It (1991, dir. Hiller)
Once again, my Amazon Prime “Movies We Think You’d Like” algorithm has recommended a mostly forgotten, mid-budget adult dramedy which proves it is working with scarily perfect accuracy. To be perfectly honest, this movie really puts the mid in “mid-budget movie,” which is to say, it’s under-baked and less interesting than it wants to be. It’s trying both too hard and not hard enough to be “about something,” and the result is a kind of messy, middling, but mostly enjoyable adult dramedy about three different couples who become friends while navigating personal and professional crises. Stockard Channing is underused though fully committed to her role as a former granola hippie turned harried mom and public arts worker trying to keep the spark alive with her also hippie turned social worker husband (play with affable charm though slight disinterest by Beau Bridges). Some parts feel kind of hokey (like the generalized 60s nostalgia) and stale (the insider trading plot line featuring Robert Sean Leonard), but it has its moments.
Married To It is available to stream on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and Tubi.
Merrily We Go To Hell (1932, dir. Arzner)
Continuing on the theme of marital discord, this 1932 pre-Code flick from Paramount is a surprisingly sophisticated and progressive take on marriage and what women are trained to desire vs. what the realities may actually be. When alcoholic reporter/playwright Jerry Corbett (Frederic March) and wealthy heiress Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sidney) meet at a mutual friend’s party, sparks fly, but the charm soon wears off of Corbett’s drunkenness once the two are married, which is when the film really gets interesting. Directed by Dorothy Arzner—the only woman to direct studio films between the 1920s and 1940s—Merrily We Go To Hell is the ultimate “I can fix him” film before those were even a thing. Sidney and March are fantastic together with an enviable chemistry that makes the heartbreak of the couple’s descent all the more tragic. It’s a great, modern picture.
Merrily We Go to Hell is available to stream on the Criterion Channel.
2012 (2009, dir. Emmerich)
As is the case with most of Roland Emmerich’s films, this is incredibly dumb and a very good time. Just as I appreciate directors who take big artistic swings, I also like genre directors who very much stay in their own lane and own it. I’m not even gonna bother describing the plot because it is a) incredibly dumb as I said and b) essentially boils down to being about global catastrophe which is what all of Emmerich’s movies are about and c) involves building a lot of modern day Arks to survive what amounts to the Flood from Genesis but much, much dumber though slightly more believable than the Bible story (don’t tell my pastor this—we’re heading into Holy Week). 2012 bravely asks, “what if John Cusack was your best hope of survival?” and then builds a whole movie around it/him. That is, in itself, a big artistic swing if you really think about it. If you like watching the destruction of many world landmarks in increasingly ridiculous ways and hearing seasoned character actors like Oliver Platt deliver dialogue worse than what I’ve read in the audition sides I’ve been sent for student films, this is the movie for you. It is trash and treasure.
2012 is available to stream on Peacock and Hulu.
Tremors, (1990, dir. Underwood)
Free idea for Denis Villeneuve: cast Reba McEntire in one of the Dune sequels. I do think Reba could play a Bene Gesserit and when they tell her to “do the Voice,” she just sings “Does He Love You.” I mean in that video for that, she already looks like a Bene Gesserit:
Ok fine sorry Tremors. Anyway, Tremors is another very dumb, fun, B-movie that confirms my belief no one should live in Nevada and the only good things to ever happen there are the Vegas residencies of our favorite lady pop stars who are the true mirages in the desert. Tremors is basically Jaws but in a podunk desert town with alien worm-y things and doomsday preppers (including one played by Queen Reba) who I just know probably eventually voted for Trump and we should ask where they were on Jan 6. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward appear to be having the time of their lives hamming it up as handymen just trying to make a buck and get the heck outta Dodge as my dad would say. I love the mashup of Western with creature feature. The practical special effects are silly and beautiful in their old-fashioned, low budget way. I particularly like that the gore looks like Chef Boyardee that was microwaved for too long and exploded. I do not know that I will watch the direct-to-video Tremors sequels, but I do know not enough movies like Tremors are being made today and that must be rectified immediately.
Tremors is available to stream on Tubi.
John Wick (2014, dir. Stahelski)
Heads up that this movie’s inciting incident is literally a very sweet dog being killed. I sorta knew that but I did very audibly yelp and then cry because I can’t handle that. Luckily the movie is also about Keanu Reeves going apeshit on the guys who murdered his dog because that’s how I’d also feel and so it was a very cathartic experience. Keanu is very suited to a role like John Wick where he doesn’t talk much yet so much internally is going on and it all comes out in beautifully choreographed kung-fu. What I think works well about the John Wick franchise—beyond Reeves’ central performance—is its world-building. This is not the New York City I live in, it’s a very stylized, fantasy place where downtown hotels are fronts for busy hitmen/hitwomen who speak in coded language (side note: why do bad guys always own sexy nightclubs? is there a law that you must launder your money through clubs where everyone has pink hair and wears latex?). These movies know exactly what they are and who they’re for, and yet they’re slick-looking, fun, and very well-made.
John Wick is available to stream on Peacock.
Set It Off (1996, dir. Gray)
Easily my favorite of the month. This a straight up BANGER as good as any 90s action flick that got way more attention than this one. Once I finished it, I was honestly furious I hadn’t seen it until this year. Four down-on-their-luck black women in Los Angeles decide to start robbing banks to change their own financial and personal futures. But with each robbery, their need for more creates fissures in the group and encourages bigger risks. Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah are off-the-charts outstanding in this. Beyond its insane third act bananas action sequences, the movie also works as an incredibly nuanced and empathetic portrait of black womanhood and friendship. Highly, highly recommend this one.
Set It Off is available to stream on HBO Max.
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I wholeheartedly recommend watching Tremors 2, which loses Bacon and Reba, but adds a very luminous Helen Shaver as a geologist/love interest for Fred Ward (but is also a well defined character in her own right) and some absolutely hilarious moments with Michael Gross as Burt.