This month in culture: March 2025

With Love, Meghan

Netflix, March 4

If there were an award for the year’s least eagerly awaited show, Netflix’s With Love, Meghan would have to be in the running, if not quite the clear front-runner at this early stage of the year. Even the synopsis — “Meghan Markle invites friends and famous guests to a beautiful California estate, where she shares cooking, gardening and hosting tips” — summons up gasps of horror. The footage that has arrived via trailer indicates that this will be as vacuous as an Instagram reel brought to full, unlovely life, with its uniquely dreadful hostess conveying nothing so much as an onscreen vacuum where any kind of charm, grace or likability should be. It was delayed by several weeks because of the California fires; many might be forgiven for wishing that the entire project had been similarly immolated before being inflicted on our screens.

-Alexander Larman

Daredevil: Born Again

Disney+, March 4

The original Daredevil series was a casualty of Marvel Television’s ill-fated run-in with Netflix that produced a few excellent superhero shows — Jessica Jones and The Punisher — and a couple of utter stinkers… sorry Iron Fist. Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock languished in the wilderness for a couple of years before being reintroduced to the big, friendly corporate Marvel Cinematic Universe in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Now the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is back in a revamped and higher-budgeted series. Vincent D’Onofrio — of Full Metal Jacket and Men in Black fame — offers gravitas as villain Wilson Fisk.

-Matt McDonald

Mickey 17

In theaters March 7

Mickey 17, based on Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, has had a weird release arc: I don’t really understand why. The black comedy/sci-fi, directed by Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho, stars Robert Pattinson — perhaps the most interesting actor alive — as an “expendable” worker — his job consists of being sent out to do some dangerous task, dying in some horrific, predictable way and then being printed as a new clone version, to do it all over again. It’s a fun premise, and the trailer makes it seem hilarious, but it was meant to come out in March 2024, delayed till this January — and delayed again. Is that a bad sign? Yes, but that doesn’t mean it will be a bad film. It comes out on March 7 — and I can’t wait to see it.

-Ross Anderson

The Righteous Gemstones, season four

HBO, March 9

The best thing on HBO right now comes back for its fourth and final season this month. The last season left us with the Gemstone family finally united. The trailer for the new season appears to show the Gemstone children in charge of the empire as the family patriarch (played by John Goodman) is off living the good life on a boat somewhere. If you haven’t dipped into this amazing send-up of evangelical prosperity culture I’d recommend you set aside some time. It’s tough to say quite what and who makes this show: every main cast member is incredible, from Goodman to Danny McBride, but the supporting cast is what truly makes it, with Walton Goggins’s Uncle Baby Billy, who this season we see directing a film about Jesus’s teenage years, to Tim Baltz’s role as the most-likely closeted, cuckolded husband of Judy Gemstone. We’ll be sad to see this one leaving HBO but can’t wait for the season to start.

-Zack Christenson

Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney

Netflix, March 12

The American talk show has been in the doldrums for the past decade, thanks to the tendency to play for anti-Trump/“Drumpf” clapter instead of, oh, I don’t know, light entertainment. Step forward John Mulaney, the Chicagoan comic and Curious George lookalike, who offered six live Netflix shows entitled Everybody’s In LA during the streaming giant’s Netflix is a Joke Festival that were so off-the-wall and unplanned that they flipped the script on the whole genre. Now Mulaney is back with a follow-up, Everybody’s Live, which will see the stand-up return with his sidekicks, beloved character actor Richard Kind and Saymo the robot. “We will be live globally with no delay. We will never be relevant. We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore,” the comedian promises. “Not since Harry and Meghan has Netflix given more money to someone without a specific plan.” Sold.

-MM

Dope Thief

Apple TV+, March 14

You mightn’t have heard much about Dope Thief — particularly given that it’s an Apple TV+ show — but, if the ingredients are anything to go by, this could be really great. The showrunner and writer is Peter Craig, whose previous credits include Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman and The Town. The lead actor is Brian Tyree Henry, who killed it in Atlanta, Bullet Train and Widows. Oh, and the executive producer is Ridley Scott. I haven’t seen anything of it yet, but that’s a pretty great combination, and the premise is appealing too: two friends pose as DEA agents in order to rob a house, only for everything to go dead wrong. The first two episodes debut on March 14.

-RA

Black Bag

In theaters March 14

The hotly anticipated latest from Steven Soderbergh is a spy versus spy thriller pitting husband against wife. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender star as spies at the same government agency, deeply devoted to one another and to the job. When Fassbender is tasked with plugging a leak within the agency (that may or may not be his wife) we’re left with a very Soderbergh-ian tale — do their loyalties lie with their country or each other? With a script from David Koepp, whom you might know from Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, the last two Indiana Jones films or dozens of other hits, we’re in for a treat.

-ZC

The Alto Knights

In theaters March 21

No one goes to a Rolling Stones concert to hear the deep cuts — play the hits, they say. That’s what we have here — Robert De Niro, playing not one but two different Mafia crime bosses, a script from Nicholas Pileggi, the scriptwriter for both Goodfellas and Casino, directed by Barry Levinson, the man who brought us, among many other fantastic films, Bugsy. Safe to say the people in charge know their Mafia movies. The Alto Knights tells the tale of mob bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello, the aftermath of the assassination attempt when Costello tried to hit Genovese, and Genovese’s rise to become the head of his namesake family (formerly the Luciano family). You need a Venn diagram to keep track of the players, but it won’t matter — you’ll probably enjoy it all the same.

-ZC

Snow White

In theaters March 21

You just know some films are going to be dreadful, and there seems little doubt that Disney’s latest cash-in live action attempt, Snow White, seems destined to be one of the year’s weakest pictures. Not only has it been delayed and reshot and postponed repeatedly (always danger signs), it has attracted endless controversy, for everything from the supposedly colorblind casting of Rachel Zegler in the lead to the frankly bewildering presence of Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, as the Evil Queen. Then there are the hideous-looking CGI dwarfs and the desperate attempts to cash in on the Barbie magic by hiring Greta Gerwig on screenwriting duties. Those looking for shards of comfort may note the presence of Broadway veteran Patrick Page, but other than that, you don’t need a magic mirror to see disaster ahead.

-AL

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s February 2025 World edition.