Happy Dune: Part Two release day! I hope many of you are headed to the theater this weekend, perhaps for the first time to see a 2024 release. (If you need to see or refresh yourself on the original, it’s on Max.)
But maybe you just want to stay at home and watch something new on streaming. Here are 10 movies to help fit that bill in March 2024.
Captain Fantastic, Max
The lingering place of transcendentalist ideas in culture leads us to look at people who go off the grid to get in touch with nature as something to romanticize. But Captain Fantastic complicates that idea when Viggo Mortensen’s Ben Cash must bring the family he raised in the Pacific Northwestern woods back in contact with society. His enlightened, progressive ideals (ahem, celebrating Noah Chomsky Day as their totemic holiday) advance to such an extreme that at some point it crosses into ivory tower separatism rather than coming to love humanity all the more. Viggo Mortensen’s silently eroding strength perfectly embodies that of someone forced to confront the validity of their entire life’s philosophy.
Dreamin’ Wild, Hulu
“A soothing, sincere tune that puts a pep in the step and a song in the soul” is how I closed my review for Dreamin’ Wild out of Venice … which kind of seems like the only place anyone saw this movie. Bill Pohlad’s film is anything but the standard-issue musician biopic you’re expecting. It’s quite similar to his first film Love & Mercy (about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys) in this regard as it toggles reflectively between two time periods. Here, that’s the Emerson brothers as they make an album in their teen years that doesn’t set the world on fire … until decades later when it was rediscovered by a record label executive with taste. As adults, they’re now placed in the strange position of trying to pick up their dreams of success where they left off and realizing just how much has changed in the intervening years.
Dumb and Dumber, Netflix
So you’re saying … there’s a chance? Though you certainly wouldn’t know it by the prequel and sequel that completely dilute the concept’s appeal, Dumb and Dumber is quite intelligent in its comedic trappings. The gag work done to enhance the hilarity of this dim-witted duo’s shenanigans is impressively thought-out and nowhere near as inane as its characters. Big ups to Jeff Daniels here, who’s completely committing in a way that allows him to go toe-to-toe with one of the greatest physical comedians of all-time.
Emma., Freevee (available for free with ads through Amazon Prime Video)
As someone who would not consider himself much of an Austenphile, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved Autumn de Wilde’s whimsical take on Emma. (Yes, that period is part of the title.) Maybe it helps that if I ever got confused on the story, I could just remind myself to map it back to Clueless. But that seldom happened because I did find myself getting wrapped up in Anya Taylor-Joy’s take on the titular heroine who never quite matches up to her inflated self-image. A stealthily stacked supporting cast also really helps sell in the fun of the ensemble around her: Callum Turner! Johnny Flynn! Josh O’Connor! Mia Goth! BILL NIGHY!
Goodbye First Love, MUBI
You may recall from my primer on French director Mia Hansen-Løve last year that I recommended Goodbye First Love as the first film of hers to watch:
As I said, “This tenderly observed coming-of-age story follows a girl trying to move forward but cannot ever fully untether herself from the mental stranglehold of her adolescent crush. While it’s not my absolute favorite of her films, this is perhaps the best introduction because it has one of her most propulsively forward-moving linear plots given its extended time horizon. Goodbye First Love brings real wisdom and perspective to how feelings evolve — or don’t — with age.”
The Green Knight, Max
If you’re expecting Medieval fare that’s playing it by the standard playbook, then maybe The Green Knight isn’t for you. There’s something almost trancelike to the way that David Lowery approaches the mythology of the Knights of the Round Table. He locates the awe and wonder needed to make fantasies like this take hold in people’s minds and pitches an entire movie at that frequency. It’s avant-garde yet never feels inaccessible.
Ishtar, Criterion Channel and MUBI
There’s a great anecdote relayed in Matt Singer’s new book Opposable Thumbs about a kind gesture from Dustin Hoffman to an ailing Gene Siskel. Hoffman sent the critic flowers with the note “I need you to review Ishtar II.” Siskel, who along with Roger Ebert panned the notorious box office bomb, replied with the suggestion that they call this movie Ishtar II: The Comedy. Those legendary critics were not right on everything, and Ishtar is among those. This bonkers comic caper is nowhere near the disaster it was construed to be at the time of its release in 1987, and it’s actually quite funny and charming in parts. I’m not going to overinflate the brilliance of Ishtar, but it certainly provided me a mostly good time (though it certainly has moments of preposterous silliness). Filmmaker Elaine May did not deserve a life sentence to director’s jail for this movie!
Kung Fu Panda, Freevee (available for free with ads through Amazon Prime Video)
Is it time for us all to do our Kung Fu Panda rankings ahead of the fourth film dropping next week? I joke. But while DreamWorks’ animated series doesn’t necessarily inspire that level of fanatical devotion, it’s certainly far better than a lot of what the studio has piped out recently. These movies about an improbable savior and martial arts master, as brilliantly and uproariously conjured by the voice of Jack Black, are heartwarming fun for the whole family. (The second one made me cry a lot?!)
National Lampoon’s Animal House, Netflix
What other movies can say they’ve defined an entire experience in the popular consciousness? In the same way that Francis Ford Coppola said Apocalypse Now is Vietnam, perhaps John Landis could plausibly lay claim to saying that Animal House is college. It’s the very embodiment of young male immaturity and defiance of authority.
Sisters, Hulu
Like any power couple, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler know the key to keeping things fresh is to mix things up. While the hyperliterate wit of Tina Fey usually relegates her to playing the high-strung braniac type, she throws a curveball to Poehler and the audience in the role of the troublemaking sibling. It’s great fun to see their partnership through this variation in Sisters, even if the “adults throwing a high-school rager in their parents’ house” concept can’t quite match the duo’s dynamism.
My list of the best Coen Brothers movies for /Film got an update with Drive-Away Dolls now out in theaters.
One last interview with a 2023 Oscar contender for Slant Magazine: a chat with Mstyslav Chernov, the director of Best Documentary Feature nominee 20 Days in Mariupol. This was one of those movies I thought I’d never watch a second time, but I learned so much more about the brilliance of Chernov’s filmmaking by revisiting it for this conversation. (The doc is available in its entirety below on YouTube.)
My highest grade yet for Slant Magazine — a review of the upcoming A24 drama A Different Man, which I saw at Sundance. We should be talking about Sebastian Stan’s performance this time next year.
In addition to getting my full thoughts on the Tenet re-release, paid subscribers exclusively got my thoughts on whether there is such thing as a “better” Holocaust movie by weighing The Pianist opposite The Zone of Interest.
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
What paid subscribers are getting below that the free list won’t: collected interviews with this year’s Oscar nominees, a peek into one of the strangest corners of Internet community, and more…
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