Peaky Blinders to The Bride!: 10 of the best films to watch in March
AlamyFrom Jessie Buckley in a reworking of Bride of Frankenstein to Tommy Shelby's big-screen debut, these are the films to watch at the cinema and stream at home this month.
Netflix1. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
From 2013 to 2022, Peaky Blinders chronicled the fortunes of a Birmingham street gang through the 1920s and into the '30s. The series helped to turn Cillian Murphy into a major star, as well turning flat caps into major fashion accessories, so it was no surprise when a spin-off film was announced. The Immortal Man is set during World War Two, when Murphy's anti-hero, Tommy Shelby, is dragged back to Birmingham while the city is being devastated by German bombs. There are some familiar faces from the series, alongside new guest stars including Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Roth and Barry Keoghan as Tommy's son. But is this the last we'll be seeing of Tommy himself? Stephen Knight, the series' creator and the film's screenwriter, hasn't confirmed anything. "I hope it feels like the end of a novel," he said in Empire. "It's the last few chapters of a long novel, where you get to round it off. And prepare people for what comes next."
Released on 6 March in cinemas in the US and the UK, and on 20 March on Netflix internationally
Disney2. Hoppers
The 30th animated feature film from Pixar Studios, Hoppers approaches a time-honoured cartoon staple – talking animals – from a new angle. The premise is that a girl named Mabel (voiced by Piper Curda) has her mind "hopped" into the body of a robotic beaver. This allows her to communicate with animals of all kinds (just go with it), and she soon learns that they are sick of being mistreated by humans. Will Mabel stick with her furry friends when they rise up against us? And can we assume that the animal-friendly premise will stop Hoppers from having any tie-in deals with burger restaurants? "There were times I was crying with laughter, but then I'd cry from horror, but then I'd also cry because of the tenderness in the story," says Lauren Ashton in Animation Scoop. "It's bold and feels ambitious, especially coming from Pixar. It's something really fresh and different."
Released on 4, 5 and 6 March in cinemas internationally
Signature Entertainment3. The Good Boy
Stephen Graham won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for co-writing and starring in Netflix's hit series, Adolescence. Now he can be seen in a somewhat different story about a troubled British teenage boy. He and Andrea Riseborough play a couple with their own ideas about disciplining the younger generation. Having watched the drink-and-drug-fuelled social-media videos posted by a rowdy 19-year-old (Anson Boon), they kidnap him and chain him up in the basement of their suburban house. And they won't free him until they've trained him to be a "good boy". Jan Komasa's black comedy thriller is "A Clockwork Orange by way of Misery, Pygmalion with stun guns and a telescopic baton", says India Block in The Standard. "There are many stand-out moments that had the audience in fits of nervous laughter that are too good to spoil. You never know which way a scene will turn, towards charm or squirmy fear."
Released on 5 March in Italy, 6 March in the US, 7 March in Germany, and 20 March in the UK
Alamy4. The Bride!
After years of success as an actor, Maggie Gyllenhaal made her directorial debut in 2021 with an Elena Ferrante adaptation, The Lost Daughter, which co-starred Jessie Buckley. Gyllenhaal's second film is inspired by a 1935 horror classic, The Bride of Frankenstein. But she was less interested in what that classic included than in what it left out. "I watched the movie, and I realised [the Bride] doesn't speak," Gyllenhaal said in Entertainment Weekly. "She's only in it for five minutes at most. She's still formidable, but I thought, there's a problem with this concept. It's called The Bride of Frankenstein, but it's really Frankenstein. So, who is she?" To answer that question, Gyllenhaal cast Buckley as a woman who is murdered in 1930s Chicago, and brought back to life by a patchwork monster played by Christian Bale. The Bride!, then, isn't a gothic horror film set among misty European mountains, but an explosive, brightly coloured gangster caper about two gun-toting lovers on the run. Gyllenhaal's husband, Peter Sarsgaard, and her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, join in the fun.
Released in cinemas internationally on 4, 5 and 6 March
TIFF5. Saipan
With the FIFA World Cup approaching, this is the ideal moment to catch a comedy drama set in the run-up to the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea. Saipan is based on the true story of a fierce clash – not between two teams, but between a player and a manager who were supposedly on the same side. The Republic of Ireland's captain, Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke), is appalled by the training facilities on the island of Saipan: the pitch is a wasteland and there aren't even any footballs available. But as far as Keane is concerned, the situation is made even worse by the relaxed attitude of Ireland's manager, Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan). "If you are not steeped in football lore or are no particular fan of the game, you might consider Saipan a film for sports enthusiasts only," says Jeremy Aspinall in the Radio Times. "However, thanks to fabulous performances and a witty, perceptive script that's more concerned with the game of life than the game itself, it has something for everybody."
Released on 13 March in the US
Alamy6. Reminders of Him
Never mind Marvel's superhero comics or Stephen King's horror stories. If you're a Hollywood producer searching for some source material right now, look no further than Colleen Hoover's bestselling romance novels. It Ends with Us was one of the biggest hits of 2024 (even if its success has been overshadowed by the subsequent legal tussles between its stars, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni); Regretting You came out last year; Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson will appear in Verity in the autumn; and this month's Hoover adaptation is Reminders of Him. Maika Monroe stars as a woman who was sent to prison after she was in the car accident that killed her boyfriend. Returning to her hometown, she tries to reconnect with her long-lost daughter – and to connect with a hunky bartender (Tyriq Withers). "Colleen was a producer, and on set every day, which she hasn't been on one of her [other adaptations] yet, so she was super involved," Monroe told the Radio Times. "We did a pretty great job of following the book, so I feel like the fans will be really happy."
Released on 12 and 13 March internationally
A247. Marc by Sofia
In Marc by Sofia, the Marc and Sofia in question are Marc Jacobs, the New York fashion designer, and Sofia Coppola, the writer-director of Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and Priscilla. The pair have been friends and collaborators since Coppola was at Jacobs' divisive "grunge" show in 1992, so she is the perfect person to make an intimate documentary about the designer's influences and motivations. She focuses on the lead up to the launch of Jacobs's spring/ summer 2024 collection, but jumps back and forth in time to create "a kind of moving mood board which takes us inside Jacobs's brain", says Radhika Seth in Vogue. "It offers not a conventional, talking heads-heavy fashion history lesson, but a total immersion in his world… a moreish treat that works as both a nostalgia hit and a closer look at one of the most fascinating minds in fashion."
Released on 20 March in the US
Searchlight Pictures8. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
March is an exciting month for anyone who enjoys seeing young women fighting wealthy satanists. One of the best films in that particular sub-genre is Ready or Not (2019), in which Samara Weaving's Grace has to battle her new in-laws or else be sacrificed to the devil. In the sequel, inevitably named Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Weaving returns, along with the first film's writers and directors, which means that Grace's troubles aren't over. Shortly after her eventful wedding night, she and her sister (Kathryn Newton) are chased around the grounds of a stately home by a whole cabal of homicidal super-rich families. But that's not all. A week later, on 27 March, there's They Will Kill You, which stars Zazie Beetz as a maid, fighting her way out of an exclusive Manhattan apartment block owned by a demon-worshipping cult. Maybe someone should make a crossover film called Ready or Not, They Will Kill You…
Released on 20 March in the US, 27 March in Canada, and 10 April in the UK
Alamy9. Project Hail Mary
If you fancy a deeply researched story of a scientist stuck on his own in space, then Andy Weir is your man. His debut novel, The Martian, was made into a hit film scripted by Drew Goddard, and directed by Ridley Scott. A decade on, Goddard has scripted another film adapted from one of Weir's novels, Project Hail Mary. Directed by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord (the directors of The Lego Movie and the producers of the Spider-Verse cartoons), this sci-fi adventure stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace, a biologist-turned-school teacher who is called in by the European Space Agency when energy-absorbing microbes are found to be dimming the light between the Sun and the Earth. With no trained astronauts available, Grace is sent on a solo flight to investigate – but he does bump into a friendly alien. "What's great about this movie is that there are so many things that make it harder to make," Miller said at San Diego Comic-Con, as reported in Gizmodo. "All of the zero G, all of the centrifugal gravity, the characters have to have a wall between them because their atmospheres are different… That difficulty is what makes it interesting and makes it special."
Released on 18, 19 and 20 March in cinemas internationally
Mandarin & Compagnie/ Kallouche Cinéma/ Frakas Productions10. Alpha
Julia Ducournau, the French writer-director of Raw and Titane, returns with a typically dark, visceral and challenging drama that divided critics when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year: it's not so much a love-it-or-hate-it film as a love-it-or-be-baffled-by-it one. Its titular heroine, Alpha (Mélissa Boros), is a 13-year-old a schoolgirl who appals her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) by getting an amateur tattoo at a party. A deadly virus is turning its victims into stone, and the mother, a nurse, is afraid that her daughter and her drug-addicted brother (Tahar Rahim) will catch it. Despite having had a sceptical review from the BBC, Ducournau's apocalyptic film is certainly a unique and haunting experience. "Alpha has continued to burrow the right sort of unease into my brain," says Donald Clarke in The Irish Times. "Few will endure its attack without admitting they've sat through something out of the ordinary."
Released on 27 March in the US and Canada, and 17 April in the UK
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