Originally slated for release last year, the outlaw romance The Bride! is finally hitting theaters in March, and it looks like good, weird fun. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film is very loosely based on the old 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein. But it’s really about the Bride as a kind of modern myth—a cultural artifact from our collective unconscious. The estimable Maggie Gyllenhaal, always such a smart and intuitive performer, is behind the cameras this time as writer and director.
Jessie Buckley plays the title character, a murder victim unwillingly resurrected by an ambitious scientist (Annette Bening) and a lonely monster (Christian Bale, as “Frank”). The reanimated lovers embark on a Bonnie and Clyde crime spree of peril, pursuit, violence, humor, and choreographed dance numbers.
Check out the trailer online, and you’ll see that Gyllenhaal is taking some big swings here with presentation and tone. This looks like a dangerous movie, relative to its budget and pedigree. There’s an undeniable pulse of rage in this story, sublimated into B-movie genre concerns, and that seems like fertile artistic ground these days.
On the other end of the budget/spectacle scale, several narrow-focus documentaries are coming to local theaters in March.
Seeds, the documentary that won the Grand Jury Prize at Durham’s own Full Frame festival last year, brings some regional resonance. Director Brittany Shyne’s acclaimed film follows generational Black farmers in the South, digging deep into themes of family, ecology, and inequity. Shyne and her team spent nine years making Seeds, deploying gorgeous black-and-white cinematography techniques. It won the main prize at last year’s Sundance, too.
The intriguing documentary André Is an Idiot, meanwhile, profiles eccentric advertising creative André Ricciardi in the three years after he received a terminal cancer diagnosis. The film is essentially Ricciardi’s final creative project, as he stares down death with—depending on the day—courage, equanimity, fear, denial, and gallows humor. The “idiot” part refers to Ricciardi’s failure to get a colonoscopy that could have made all the difference. So bear that in mind.
Click around online, and you’ll find several other interesting documentaries in local theaters this month, including the musical biography Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It, the odd American-Chinese film Mistress Dispeller, and EPiC, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley archival project.
Quick Picks
Project Hail Mary is this season’s space drama, starring Ryan Gosling as an astronaut who makes a critical acquaintance 12 light-years from Earth. The film is adapted from the 2021 novel by Andy Weir (The Martian), and hard sci-fi fans will find lots of technical space science stuff to chew on.
The Japanese import Kokuho tells the story of an orphaned teenager from a yakuza family who undertakes the rigorous training to be a Kabuki artist. The film has been a huge hit overseas, and in fact, it’s now Japan’s highest-grossing live-action film.
For the kids: The Australian animated comedy The Pout-Pout Fish features Nick Offerman as a surly ocean vertebrate who learns about kindness. Other voice performers include Aussie comedian Nina Oyama, the great Amy Sedaris as a dolphin, and Jordin Sparks as a Siamese fighting fish!
Just in from Canada, the scary movie Undertone combines home-alone horror tropes, innovative sound design, and a clever plot concerning spooky podcasts and urban legends. Even the trailer will mess you up. You’ll want a theater with a good sound system for this one.
A couple of local events to note: Chapel Hill will host the eighth annual Cosmic Rays Film Festival March 20–22, featuring experimental short films and additional hard-to-classify presentations. Check the festival’s website for venue and ticket information. Support your local student filmmakers on April 7 when the Carolina Theatre in Durham holds the second Running Bull Film Festival, short films made by students at Durham public high schools.
Finally, heads up that several area multiplexes are running Oscar-season programs featuring this year’s Best Picture nominees in special one-off screenings. It’s a good chance to catch the films you missed in their natural habitat. Also, look for package screenings of this year’s nominated short films.
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