The Film Maven Recommends for March 2025

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Am I the only one who thought March was a thousand days? Between the Oscars and :looks around: everything else going on, it just seems like we’ve been through a lot in just 30 days. I’ve probably mentioned this in a previous post, but I’m really seeking comfort in films and books, more than even during the pandemic, so let’s look at the good literature and films that brought a smile to my face this month.

*I’m interested in getting the subscribers thoughts. Do you enjoy the format from the last few months, wherein I lay out and discuss everything I’ve consumed in a given month (the Best and the Rest) or this wherein it’s just the movies and books I’ve enjoyed and recommend? Let me know in the comments or in the member chat.*

Black Bag (2025)

After the cinematic desert that was the first two months of 2025, March actually gave us movies. Or, for this film critic, it gave me several options between things I genuinely wanted to see. And while I’ve watched several mid movies this month the highlight for new releases remains Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. Much like Conclave which, ironically, is also a Focus Features film (I swear they aren’t paying me), I’m pretty sure I want to make Soderbergh’s spy drama my entire aesthetic.

I said it in my original review but Black Bag is the answer to “What if Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender played Kathryn and George as if they were Mr. and Mrs. Smith with a hint of Nick and Nora Charles and then funneled through a Le Carre novel with a Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf twist?” I stand by that 100%. It’s such a sexy, fun movie that, strangely enough, doesn’t get bogged down in the spy stuff that leaves you saying, “Okay, but who are they going after?” Weirdly enough, this was my mom’s biggest critique about the film — “It doesn’t go anywhere” — and she came up short when I asked her to tell me the plot to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Go for Cate’s wig and costumes, stay for Marisa Abela just running off with the entire thing. It’s out on VOD today, btw.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick

I’m continuing to work through a variety of books for But Have You Read the Book, Vol. 2 (Romance Edition) and R.A. Dick’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a surprising read, especially if you’ve seen the 1947 film. There’s an ambiguity throughout the book as to whether ghostly sea captain Gregg is truly a ghost or a manifestation of Lucy Muir’s conscience. The reader wonders if Lucy uses Gregg as the prism through which to justify her decisions or say things she can’t say considering the time period. It’s less a romance and more a feminist story of independence.

The Conversation (1974)

I talked about this when we did a Ticklish Business bonus episode on Gene Hackman after his passing but, at the time, I hadn’t seen his two most iconic films: The Conversation and The French Connection. I can now cross one of those off the list (thanks to the Criterion Channel). Much better writers than myself have written about Hackman and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. Watching it in 2025, where nearly everything in our house is listening to us, The Conversation almost feels quaint with Harry Caul (Hackman) hanging out in parked vans listening on reel-to-reel tapes and worrying about phone taps.

What stood out to me in this inaugural watch, though, was Hackman’s ability to give us the spectrum of emotions while listening, at different points, to the same conversation. You can see his mind filling in the blanks, entertaining the intrusive thoughts that we have on the daily about the context of what this conversation is. He evokes frustration at not having the answers and, eventually, fear at being complicit in something that he went into blindly. It was also bittersweet to watch this and also see the late, great Teri Garr as Harry’s girlfriend who loves in the dark, blinded by a love (or at least a connection to him). This one left me with a lot of food for thought.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

I’ve seen the film version of Chocolat a few times but this was a first time read of Harris’s book and I loved it. The movie is fun and cuddly but the book is far darker. The story of a single mother opening a chocolate shop opens up a deep look at religion and intolerance. Alfred Molina’s character, in the book, sees heroine Vianne as the incarnation of the Devil himself, sent to test him. There’s far more magical realism within it, akin to Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (the books and movies would make a great double feature).

Crimes of Passion (1984)

I’ve been working my way through Ken Russell’s filmography for the better part of a year. Ken and I have an interesting relationship wherein, even if I don’t adore the movie, I respect the sheer audacity of his work. There’s no other director I know that can go deep in the weeds with literary and philosophical references while also making you feel you’re on hallucinogens.

Crimes of Passion isn’t a top Russell film for me, but it’s certainly his kookiest and, yet, maybe his most romantic? Kathleen Turner plays a woman who, by day, works in corporate American and, by night, is a sex worker named China Blue. This movie has everything: Hollywood Blvd strolls, a sex toy named Superman, Anthony Perkins dripping in flop sweat (allegedly he was doing poppers in his free time because, YOLO). The movie is extreme but if you’ve seen any of Russell’s work the maximalism is usually mitigated by breathtaking cinematography and acting. Dick Bush, who worked on Victor/Victoria and Friedkin’s Sorcerer, is magnificent and Kathleen Turner is pure fire! Also, I give Tony Perkins props for just going for it.

Random Harvest by James Hilton

James Hilton was the author behind Goodbye, Mr. Chips, a film I’ve yet to see. But his 1941 war story Random Harvest — adapted into a film starring Greer Garson and Ronald Colman — is a fabulous mix of soapy melodrama and romance. We meet a captain of industry who struggles with memory issues and, from there, the movie works backward as he tries to remember his war years. It plays around a lot more with structure than the film version and the writing is beautiful.

Midnight (1939)

“Every Cinderella has her midnight.” Midnight entered the pantheon of being a future comfort movie for me, and it should be for everyone else. Claudette Colbert plays a chorus girl stranded in Paris who, through a series of hijinks, ends up pretending to be a foreign Countess at the behest of a rich man hoping to use her to break up his philandering wife’s relationship with another. It’s zany while making perfect sense, proof of the best classic era films. Colbert’s comedic zenith was the 1930s and between this and 1934’s It Happened One Night she perfectly understands the financial humor that cemented post-Depression cinema.

The rest of the cast is utterly impeccable but the real stunner is the script, the work of comedic geniuses Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. There’s a scene wherein Colbert’s Eve and John Barrymore’s Georges have to come up with a fictional backstory for Eve’s fictional husband (being impersonated by Don Ameche’s Tibor) and it had me laughing for three days. It’s punctuated by Mary Astor’s deadpan acceptance of it, believing it’s better to be part of the crowd than admit she doesn’t get it. Just impeccable.

Laura by Vera Caspary

Vera Caspary was a fascinating woman. She was an author, magazine writer, Communist. Her books prioritize independent women navigating the job landscape, the one place where they find autonomy. Her novel Laura is no different, unless you see Hollywood’s (fabulous) 1944 adaptation. I love the movie version of Laura but the book is a stark story of an independent woman butting up against men seeking to control her. Unlike Gene Tierney, whom Caspary thought played the character like the shopgirl next door, book Laura Hunt just wants to live independently, date who she wants, and live life. She’s a great portrait of womanhood in the 1940s, and today.

The Goodbye Girl (1977)

The Goodbye Girl is the best movie I watched in March. It might be the best movie I watch all year! You can’t ever go wrong with Neil Simon adaptations, especially when it’s focused on New York (see, also, Barefoot in the Park). The story revolves around struggling actress Paula (Marsha Mason) and her struggle to raise her young, precocious daughter Lucy (Quinn Cummings) in the wake of Paula’s disintegrating relationship. When she learns her ex has sublet the apartment to another actor, Elliot Garfield (Richard Dreyfuss), they’re all begrudgingly forced to live together.

There are a couple things to love about The Goodbye Girl but what I love about Simon is his ability to make you wish you were in New York in that time period. This is NYC in the late-’70s as while it certainly looks grimy there’s a magic to it, especially within Paula and Elliot’s apartment. Simon adapted his play and, note for note, it is hilarious in the way great “opposites attract stories” are. Dreyfuss won the Oscar and he earned it, if anything for making me believe, and desperately wish, he was like Elliott. He’s picky, he’s romantic, he’s got conviction. His interactions with Cummings are adorable. Cummings, wow! How did this girl not become the next Jessica Chastain? Her worldly wise performance weedles its way into your heart without ever getting annoying in the way some “child-adults” can be. I just love this movie.

Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson adapted his own book for the 1980 film which is one of the best sci-fi romances you’ll see. Matheson, because he’s a genius, rightly understood what to change about the book that works better for the film. No surprise, considering he was a skilled screenwriter. But what I ended up appreciating about the novel, and why I think Matheson and I’d have been friends, is how deep in the weeds he gets about science and mortality. There are large swathes of the book where he discusses paradoxes and time travel elements, the questions readers might have. But he also gets deep into what living his life in the past would be like. It’s a great, existential, double with his other book, What Dreams May Come.

Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)

Dorothy Arzner is one of the few female filmmakers who worked during the studio era, her work often prioritizing stories about women put into harsh, domestic conditions and trying to figure out what to do. Merrily We Go to Hell is one such story, with Sylvia Sidney playing Joan Prentice. Joan falls in love with Jerry Corbett (Fredric March), a newspaper reporter struggling with alcoholism; five years later he’d play another famous alcoholic, Norman Maine in 1937’s A Star is Born. Joan and Jerry marry, but Jerry’s inability to put down the bottle threatens everything.

Sylvia Sidney was one of the most beautiful women in Old Hollywood. Her big, liquid eyes and bright little smile draws you in. It’s remarkable to watch her in the 1930s and then remember she’s Juno “Your caseworker” from Beetlejuice. But Merrily We Go to Hell is a tragic story about Joan’s desire to desperately make her marriage work, and save her husband from herself, and her inability to do it. The ending is a tad trite considering, but Arzner and Sidney make it work.