Best First Watches: March 2025
March has come to a close and yet it’s still so cold in Pittsburgh. This month has felt eternal, yet it was gone in an instant. I spent ten days in Austin for SXSW, but that seems like it happened four years ago. Now that I’m back, I blink and the day is gone. Time is weird, but I guess you didn’t come here to read my thoughts on the social construct better known as the Passage of Time. Without further ado, here’s what I watched and liked in March.
courtesy of SXSW
O’Dessa is weird. There’s no way around that. It’s a dystopian folk-rock musical epic with a set and costume design that look like they were plucked right out of the 1980s. It’s neon, apocalyptic chaos and I cannot get enough. However, I seem to be in the minority on this one and look, I get it. O’Dessa is a very hard sell. It’s one of those movies that requires you to really be tuned in to its wavelength to get it. I don’t blame anyone for not being on that weird wavelength, but it does disappoint me when people just dunk on the movie for being odd. This is the sort of work I love to champion. Wholly unique, with its heart on its ramblin’ sleeve, O’Dessa is a love story and a balm for a weary world.
courtesy of Sweetness
When I was growing up, I was obsessed with the Lindsay Lohan-led Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. If that movie had been made in 2015, it would have been a killer A24 flick. The is that a teenage girl (Lohan) hatches a plan to travel to New York City to see the farewell concert of her favorite band. Sweetness has a lot in common with Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen in the sense that they both center on teen girls who base their whole personality on loving a rock singer. It’s a fairly universal concept, but Sweetness takes things further and to a bloody conclusion. Teenage angst and obsession spiral wildly out of control, and that makes it such a fun time.
courtesy of LifeHack
I simply adore a heist movie. Don’t we all? There’s something thrilling about the chase, right? What’s incredible about LifeHack is that the film never leaves the confines of a computer screen. Like Missing and Searching before it, LifeHack’s action is all digital, but it’s never a gimmick for these characters. So much of the lives of young people (listen to me acting like I’m 75 years old) unfolds through Discord servers and text messages instead of in person, and LifeHack respects that in a way that feels genuine. It’s also just a really cool heist movie!
Credit: Bethany Michalski
I was born and raised on the teen comedies of the ’90s and the aughts. I’m sure long-time readers of my writing are sick of hearing me say this. Sorry, but my lived truth is that my worldview was shaped by those movies! She’s the He is a return to that magical genre of film that just doesn’t exist on the scale that it used to. It’s deeply funny, achingly sincere, and all-too-relevant for the current state of transgender people in the world. Two high school boys pretend to be trans so they can go into the girls’ locker room, only for one of them to discover they might actually be trans.
courtesy of SXSW
The last of the SXSW films I want to recommend. This one picked up a festival jury award and was the talk of the town – for good reason. Slanted is as if Mean Girls and The Substance had a Chinese-American baby. Honestly, that alone should be enough to pique your interest.
Universal Pictures, Focus Features
Steven Soderbergh is one of the busiest people in Hollywood right now. He released Presence in January, and has quickly returned to the big screen with Black Bag. I simply love a good cat-and-mouse mystery, and that’s exactly what Black Bag is. Cate Blanchett has maybe never been better and absolutely relishes her role as a femme fatale of sorts. It’s a fun ensemble cast that deftly moves in and out of suspicion. I mean this in the best possible way, but Black Bag reminds me of the political thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s.
Adolescence
Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix © 2024
Makes you never want to have a child! This four-episode Netflix miniseries is about a thirteen-year-old boy who is accused of murder. Each of the four episodes is one continuous take. Beyond the fact that it’s a mammoth filmmaking feat, Adolescence is a masterful deconstruction of the way young boys are radicalized to the point of violence. I fear the kids might not be alright! But I won’t know because I shan’t be having any.
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