What I've Caught Up With, March 2026 Part 1

My stated goal every year is to watch 400 movies, and every month I fall a little more behind on that goal. Hitting that goal looks like 34 movies in March and I watched 30, which puts me at an average of a movie per day exactly right now. It seems like fate that I set that goal and always fall a little short of it. Still, it was a good month and I watched a lot of pretty good films and a few real stinkers.

What I’ve Caught Up With, March 2026 Part 1
Film: Dial M for Murder (1954)

Hitchcock was always at his best when dealing with people who weren’t necessarily career criminals but had a criminal mindset. Dial M for Murder is that sort of story. A former tennis player (Ray Milland) has evidence of his wife (Grace Kelly) having an affair with an old friend (Robert Cummings). He comes up with a plan to have her killed while giving himself a rock-solid alibi. Everything goes wrong, though—the killer who was to eliminate the wife ends up on the wrong end of a pair of scissors. Despite her innocence, it all looks like she was being blackmailed about the affair and killed her blackmailer. It’s a twisty plot, but it’s second-tier Hitchcock.

Film: Armageddon (1998)

Critic Mark Kermode has said that Michael Bay has “pornographic sensibilities” and nowhere is that more evident than in a film like Armageddon. A giant asteroid is heading for Earth and because we need to make sure that scientists and people with degrees are held in contempt by Bay’s mouth-breathing fans, the only people who can save the planet are guys who work on an oil rig, lead by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. The science is ridiculous, akin to movies like 2012 and The Core, but in space. It’s a cast of thousands as well, because that’s what Bay does, but it’s edited by someone on meth and Red Bull. Armageddon is an assault on the senses and the intellect.

Film: The Browning Version (1951)

A teacher named Andrew Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave) is forced to leave his boarding school due to illness. He discovers in his last few days that, as a classics teacher, he has become something of a joke. His wife (Jean Kent) is cheating on him with another teacher (Nigel Patrick). He’s not well-liked by the other teachers, and his students consider him a figure of ridicule. As he prepares to leave, one of his students (Brian Smith) offers him a gift that causes his life to come into focus. The Browning Version is based on a stage play and is very much an actor’s film. Michael Redgrave is the focus here, and his Crocker-Harris is one of the purest distillations of quiet desperation ever put on film.

Film: The Last Dragon (1985)

While I remain of the opinion that Kung Pow: Enter the Fist is the funniest send-up of martial arts films, I give a lot of respect to The Last Dragon, which is clearly a comedy, but also wants to take itself a little seriously. A Bruce Lee-obsessed martial artist named Leroy Green (Taimak) looks for a new master and has to fight against a self-styled Kung Fu criminal named Sho’Nuff (Julius Carry) and a crooked producer named Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney). There’s also a love interest subplot featuring a musician who Leroy keeps saving. It’s silly and fun, and features a moment where Leroy’s younger brother (Leo O’Brien) pop & locks his way out of being tied up. How can you not have fun with that?

Film: Six-String Samurai (1998)

Sometimes, you come across a movie that is clearly someone’s fever dream. Streets of Fire is a film like that, but even that collection of nuttiness doesn’t compare with Six-String Samurai. Imagine a world where Russia nukes the U.S. in the late ‘50s and the only part of the country that really survives is Vegas, which is ruled over by Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll. But now Elvis is dead and Buddy Holly clone Buddy (Jeffrey Falcon, who also wrote and produced) is headed to Vegas, joined by a feral child (Justin McGuire), and pursued by Death (Stephane Gauger), who is clearly a stand-in for Slash. Buddy is armed only with a tattered umbrella, a katana, and a hollow-body guitar. None of this makes sense, and most of it is disconnected, but this is clearly a labor of love. This is another movie that, had it come out in 1982 and had I seen it then, I would have been obsessed with it.

Film: The Merry Widow (1934)

When I tell you that The Merry Widow is a movie starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, you already know about 80% of the film. In the flyspeck country of Marchovia, Count Danilo (Chevalier) is commanded by his king (George Barbier) to woo Sonia (MacDonald) because she owns half of the country. Through some mistaken identities, we have a meet cute, some anger, a falling out, and a reuniting, exactly as you expect. The songs are fine (MacDonald’s operatic style is grating) and the story is obvious, but you could do worse. Edward Everett Horton as the Marchovian ambassador to Paris is a standout, as always.

Film: Déjà Vu (2006)

On Fat Tuesday, a “patriot” (Jim Caviezel) detonates a bomb on a ferry in New Orleans. ATF agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) investigates and finds evidence of that bomb. He also learns about a body of a young woman (Paula Patton) recovered after the blast who looks like she died in the explosion…but her time of death was two hours earlier. Doug is soon contacted by FBI agent Paul Pryzwarra (Val Kilmer), who lets him in on a new investigative tool: essentially, they can look into the past, exactly four days and six hours, to catch the perp. But, of course, Carlin wants to save the girl. This is a decent time travel story, even if the ending is kind of guaranteed, and it’s very clearly a Tony Scott film. Good cast of secondary stars—Bruce Greenwood, Eldon Henson, and Adam Goldberg, for instance.

Film: Certain Women (2016)

Certain Women is essentially a collection of three shorts taking place in Montana, based as it is on three short stories of Maile Maloy. In one, a lawyer (Laura Dern) deals with a client who demands she sue on his behalf despite his already taking a small settlement. In the next, a woman (Michelle Williams) deals with her dismissive husband (James LeGros) and equally dismissive daughter (Sara Rodier) as she tries to build a house. In the third story, a ranch worker (Lily Gladstone) forms a tentative relationship with a women (Kristen Stewart) who is teaching a class on law for teachers. This isn’t a film that feels like it has a destination other than just the stories that are happening, and that’s probably enough.